When I was a mid-teenager in the mid 90s, Transformers was done. Generation 2 with the dumb "cube" thing failed and Beast Wars wasn't out yet so Transformers was just one of those dead cartoons from the 80s that only maybe occasionally came up in a conversation with friends who also watched it as a kid. When I made up this character I named him Ravage as kind of a light homage to that old Transformers show. I stopped drawing my characters and stopped drawing altogether for the most part not long after Beast Wars came out, but years after that, after the other TF shows that followed, then the live action movies... Well, now his name sounds more like a rip-off because the TF characters are pretty big and well known. Maybe I should call him the Ravager from now on... Not that it matter I suppose since its not like I'll ever be doing anything with these characters. Anyway, over the last several years I have been occasionally making figures of my old 90s characters. Been looking for one that would work well for Ravage(r) for a while and saw a Fortnight figure that looked great for it. Loads of cutting and resculpting, added sculpted tail, and full repaint of course. I'll add a couple of my cheesy old drawings of him at the end to show what the goal here was. And here he is with some of the other characters from that stuff that I've made. And this mess...
Killer! I am always impressed with action figure customs (more so than tfer ones in general, as action figures do not have screws, and have a lot more rubbing issues). This is amazing bro!
Ah, takes me back to the 90's. Kinda has a G2 Battle Beasts vibe the them. I really dig Stampede, the elephant.
Oh snap dude! You are an artist too? I have a portofolio full of characters I've kept since I was a teenager . Those drawing are great! Don't stop man, put your stuff out there...i've been thinking hard about drawing a mini series. I guess painting these transformers is sort of an outlet in that regard too.
Ya know, honestly I think Transformers are still the most challenging and interesting even despite having done hundreds more than anything else. They do have screws, but also often pins and glue too, and you have so much more to take into consideration and work around due to the transformation aspect. Usually other figures like Neca, Figma, Revoltech, and Play Arts are easy and fun but I will say if anything is often more of a pain than Transformers its Marvel Legends. Ha thank you. That old 90s comics thing where any "cyber" body parts were just chrome with lines across them. That cracked me up. So true. I think I've heard that said before about my Cybernal junk and I googled those then. I might have actually had at least one as a kid, and you're right, very similar. Out of the many things that influenced me when I was making these up I don't think Battle Beasts ever came to mind though unless subconsciously. My crunchy old memory recalls BB as a thing that came and went pretty quick. Hah, well wishful thinking would be that with how styles of decades ago always resurface as the latest cool thing, one day the 90s style will be so popular that the right person sees my garbage and loves it so much it becomes the biggest thing ever with a series of live action movies, reboots of the movies, cartoons, comic lines for centuries, video games, a theme park that dwarfs Disney world, holographic matter simulation interactivity system programs on starships for entertainment 300 years from now, and thousands of children named after the characters.
This really takes me back. Me and a friend of mine used to do very similar customs as teenagers. Most were created from the early Toybiz Marvel/X-Men line. We would draw up concepts, then piece them together and paint them up as best we could. All of this was with the thought that we would submit them to Wizard magazine and get them published in their monthly custom figure feature. Long story short, I love this. Fantastic work, my friend.
