This is a fully accessorized tribute to the talented Chris Latta, the voice of my favorite villains of the 1980’s: Starscream, Cobra Commander, and D-Compose. This combined several projects I had wanted to tackle for a while all into one custom figure. It involved everything from heavy modification/kitbashing and sculpting to detailed custom paintjobs; taking 6 months to complete. This placed first in the Botcon 2014 custom figure contest.


Masterpiece “Death Throes” Starscream

The MP Ghost Starscream was modified to correct the inequities of the MP-03 and appear closer to MP-11 by repositioning the hip mounted tail fins. It was further modified to fit inside the D-Compose pretender shell, for the tailfins to attach to D-Compose’s weapon as a type of axe, and to include a headmaster style tech spec readout in the cockpit. Dry transfer decals from Hasbro Asia were applied before a custom paint job intended to resemble a mid-death transition to Ghost Starscream. The hands and nose cone were painted blue (why Takara didn't in the first palce is a wonder), the panels were lined with a Gundam pen, and the jet engines were painted to glow. I thought the ghost paint job would tie in loosely to D-Compose’s zombie theme. Cobra symbols were added to the tailfins as a tie-in to the Cobra Commander headmaster. The small chrome pilot was also painted to resemble Cobra Commander.

Cobra Commander Headmaster

I wanted the headmaster to look more like a GI Joe figure in a flight suit with subtle cues of headmaster armor, namely the armor on the arms. The headmaster was kitbashed from Human Alliance Sergeant Chaos, Headrobots Hothead, and MP Skywarp parts. The legs were modified to be double jointed to allow for it to fold-up to head mode. The head natural fits into a recess on the back of the MP Seeker mold. The paint job is close to Cobra Commander’s blue uniform color, but in a metallic finish.

D-Compose Pretender Shell

The Inhumanoids television show and Hasbro toyline is perhaps a bit less well known today, but was a very important part of my childhood. What’s not to like about 10 story tall monsters from the center of the Earth voiced by Chris Latta? Given that the best of the G1 Decepticon Pretenders were monsters, D-Compose is in my opinion a better choice than the G1 Starscream pretender shell.
The vintage D-Compose toy was completely dismantled and rebuilt to be 2-inches taller, include room inside for an inner robot, and a removable magnetic back hatch to allow access. The improved D-compose has new hands, a pelvis and hip bones, a neck, and a scratch built alternate cartoon accurate head. MP Starscream can fit securely inside D-Compose with the wings extruding from his back just like the G1 Pretender Starscream. He was given the most detailed and disgusting paint job I could muster with lots of sores and oozing puss and blood for good measure.

More pics of the D-Compose custom here.

 

This is really cool! Congratulations!

 

Beautiful work my friend, you are very talented.

 

Holy shit, man.

The paintjob on Screamer most of all is just mindblowing.

 

That is AWESOME! Thanks for sharing this!

 

I love the Starscream and Cobra Commader combo, but I must admit the D-compose pretender shell must reference something I'm unaware of. It looks like a dead version of one of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, but I don't recall starcreams pretender shell resembling that.

Awesome work regardless of my ignorance in such matters.

 

Thanks

Check out Inhumanoids on Youtube. It was a Hasbro toyline and TV series on at the same time as Transformers & GI Joe but with much more of a horror/kaiju theme. It only lasted one season...probably because parents didn't approve of the horror content on Saturday mornings!

Best part of it...Chris Latta did D Compose's voice...he sounded just like Cobra Commander and Starscream!

I had never related his appearance to the Dark Crystal guy, but you are dead on!

 

Greatest tribute ever!
This head for D'compose is buch slicker than the one in your other thread. Excellent skills presented here  

 

Pure awesome-NESS!!!!!

 

You should have him snacking on a wheeljack. Because Chris Latta.

 

WOW!! Amazing concept and tribute. The star of the show is that Starscream though, I absolutely love it, the mid transformation life to death is so well done!!
Just Awesome mate, awesome.

 

I can't believe it's been more than 20 years since Chris left us at only 44 years of age (that's only 10 years older than me...). I'm sure Chris would be mighty proud at your beautiful & fitting tribute to him.   Luv your work Mate!  

 

Gorgeous work!

 

Spectacular work, and a simply amazing tribute piece to Mr. Latta. Congrats.  

(And quite humbling to be reminded that he left us at the same age I am now.)

 

These are all amazing ideas man. Bravo!

 

saw this at the con. mega mega boss  

great meeting you in person btw. i was the dude that made the kreo devy.

and congrats on the win; much deserved!

 

This is amazing! Fantastic work on all of it, it looks incredible!

 

I am impressed. That headmaster is bad ass

 

That's different. Very awesome, though!!