Prototype print ordered! Pricing looks like it will be about $40 for the 32 part model printed in black nylon.
How did I bypass this tiny beauty all this friggin time? I'm definitely going to need to grab one myself! Silly question, is Beet-papil in the books?
Always a cool feeling to have what was only imagined held in your hand. I'm going to take a stab at assembling later today. There's some tweaks I want to make to bring out some of the smaller details more, and to make assembly easier for others, so I don't think I'll be painting until the next print.
Aside from one of her sets of spider legs breaking, assembly went fairly well. Unfortunately there's a bit of a material expansion issue that I now know that I need to compensate for in the design. That caused the ball joints in her back, for her shoulders and middle spider legs, to end up extremely tight. I wasn't delicate enough in working the ball around in the joint, and the force of twisting on the legs caused them to snap off. But hey, that's why I print these things for myself before letting anyone throw any money at them. While the ball joints in her back turned out just a little too tight, all of her other joints turned out perfectly. I think the tightness of the ones in her back is due to all of the surrounding material that the elbows and hips don't have, which allows them to be a bit more flexible. The mushroom joints at the knees and wrists turned out especially good. I've had problems with getting those kind of joints to work well in the past, but I really hit a sweet spot for them on this one. In terms of articulation, I couldn't be happier. There's a ton of range of motion in her arms and legs that allow for very dynamic and expressive poses. She even pulls off a smashing SHL pose that I think looks great with the silhouette of her spider leg adornments. Her alt mode works fairly well. However, something's off in the legs that is preventing them from closing up to form the spider's abdomen. I think a little extension of the depth of her lower legs will fix that easily. One of the things I'm not thrilled with is her height. I was really aiming for something that would look like a 4th to NA's trio, but she ended up a good bit bigger. While I have some revisions in mind that will fine tune her proportions, and bring the height down a little, I don't think I'll be able to quite get to the shorter height of NA's bugs. However, I'm not sure if that's the worst thing. My goal is to also do the four taller, "deluxe" Insecticons, plus the never-produced Beet-papil Ladybug. If the two ladies end up being in the middle between the original three and the larger four, I think I'll feel alright about that.
Looks like a fantastic first print to me, well done @NOCV! And nice job getting the tolerances so close in the first go! Alt mode looks great, I think the style is really nice. She really fits in with the NA insecticons. And her robot mode is fantastic. Great articulation, she really looks like a “real” toy. I can’t wait to see her painted. Are you going to go with newage toon or toy coloring? It looks like your pics are the original / toy release, so I assume that deco? Thats a real shame about the bot height, although alt mode looks pretty close to newage scale. I was hoping that it would match up a little closer, myself. That being said, her height looks like it would go really well with the Hasbro chug insecticons (and MST insecticons, when they get to them). After you clean up your tolerances, you may want to fork a “chug scale” version of your model, before you tweak the height.
Not an expert on this subject matter but aren't some female insects/bugs bigger than their male counterparts? The whole affair after doing the nasty and than eating the male as nurishment for the unborn young. Maybe a nice nice for an addon, a sack of eggs that will become the Insecticon swarm. Unleash the real horror of the Insecticons that we didn't get to see in the kids cartoon of 1984!
As someone who is quarantined with a tall wife and a swarm of hyperactive kids, this terror hits too close to home...
Thanks so much. That's probably the best compliment I could hope for! Yep, I'll be painting mine with the toy deco. I don't have any of the cartoon deco Insecticons. I always preferred the bolder contrast of the toy colors. That's largely true for spiders. I spent the past two days working on tweaks, and I'm happy to say I got her height down without any real compromises, just some adjustments to the arms and legs: The uncolored ones are the original version, and the tall yellow column between the two robot modes represents NA Kickback's height. The purple section on top of it is the difference between my new version and NA Kickback. The new version should look much better with the NA Insecticons. I also updated the classic head to be a little more accurate to the TFA look.
Liking the proportions for both modes on the new version. Are those gun ports for alt-mode on the bottom of the feet?
Yep. Gotta have that alt mode weapon storage. The weapons use 3mm posts, so the foot ports can also be display stand attachment points.
Just absolutely fantastic. She may not match NA's bugs exactly, but she looks damn good both on her own and standing next to them. I think she's enough of her own character that she doesn't need to be paired with the boys, anyhow. I can't wait to see the next iteration! Great work!
