Finally, here he is! The only true Blaster, unlike that silly imposter from the cartoons. Budiansky's Blaster was more than a little Batman-esque, most of the time having a smaller companion along for the ride. After having lost his friend Scrounge to the smelting pools, he travelled to Earth across the Space Bridge (which actually WAS a bridge in that version). There he encountered Circuit Breaker and her team, and was captured. After being released, Blaster joined the officer team of the Ark right in time to mourn Optimus Prime's passing. Although he eventually recommended Grimlock as a new leader, he came to regret this. Along with Goldbug, he was ordered to track down a human but eventually rebelled, causing him to have to fight Grimlock. This rivalry was a major part of the Swedish 1988 comic book run, and with Blaster prominently on the cover of the first issue I ever owned, he became an instant favourite. After being blown up by Starscream, he kind of disappeared. Even though he was eventually revived into his Action Master form, there he got his cartoon style head and lost pretty much all of his personality. I had some vague plans to make a posable version of G1 Blaster for a long time, but when I eventually got Masterpiece Grimlock who was pretty much in perfect scale with him, I got working. Since Blaster eventually contained a bunch of electronics as a Microchange toy, he's quite empty inside. I initially had grand plans, but for various reasons I had to scale them back. There's still room for a tiny MP3 player in his chest, which I plan to get once my economy stabilizes. He was also going to have lights in his head, which is why I spent ages drilling out his eyes. But after having the green stuff cure, something must have come loose and the LED wouldn't work. Bummer. Blaster is made from the following: G1 Blaster, with most of the connecting joints cut out. A bunch of Bionicle joints. KO Robotmasters Optimus elbows. KO Swindle hands. The alternate face off SOTA M. Bison. Various plastic bits and styrene. Green stuff. Some of the joints worked stunningly well, as if they were supposed to go there all along. The shoulders aren't as perfect, but worked well enough. I worked off his very first appearance in the comic, as well as a sketch I drew to see how much posability I would go for. Since I wanted a comic book look, I'm not going to replace the stickers I removed. The gun was completely built from scratch and attaches to his back with magnets, as Blaster usually carried his gun like that in the comic with no apparent mounting. Early on I had plans to buy a new Blaster and his gun, but that fell through. Instead, I used my old worn one. There was a few things wrong with it. His old (missing) gun had a broken peg in his shoulder, and there was a hole through the cassette window. I drilled out the peg and completely replaced the window with a newly detailed one. I was going to replace the head all along, making something closer to scale. I started by cutting off the face of M. Bison, also making him slightly more angular. Even though that's a human face, he's chiseled enough and Blaster always had a fairly humanoid, smooth look to him. Since I was going to have LED eyes, I drilled into the middle of the head. The forehead was built in thin plastic (a TF package I believe) and wrapped around green stuff which was roughly formed into a head. I then added the "mohawk" and rounded off the head, then adding the horns. Finally, after priming and painting, I added the visor which was made from a blue Bionicle packaging. I went with blue eyes to go along with his first appearance rather than use yellow eyes which I felt was a bit cheap. Even though I had to scale back my grand Masterpiece-ish plans a bit, I'm very happy with my Blaster. It's amazing how well the 24 year old figure works with some modifications.
thats really really nice..just wonder why u dint make the face into toon accuracy?the fist is articulate rite?thats nice...i even no chance yet to replace my blaster fists.. same with me about the rifle..we have to make ours..u can review mine from blog addrss down here..overall very interesting outlooks
he turned out realllly well, man. I am curious, however, as to why ya didn't go on ahead and give him a waist joint?
Wan de Real: I didn't make his toon face because I never watched the toon so that face means nothing to me. I saw your Blaster, it looks really neat and is more posable than mine. I didn't want to look to closely at it before I finished mine as I wanted to figure out the joints myself, but it seems we used similar leg solutions. It's really clever how you made the shoulders work with the original metal bar, I'd like to see a picture of the insides of that, if possible. I'm not a fan of the painting, but I'm guessing that's some really old work? Your newer stuff looks way better and i'd like to see you revisit Blaster I'm also not a fan of his arms being that wide. Since I never owned the original gun, I'm guessing that it's to make it easier to fit against his wrists, but it was never an option for me. I actually didn't know his hands would swivel until I took him apart... Redline: There's not really a lot of space down there, and if I had gone with the initial plans of having a leg speaker, I couldn't pull any wires through a revolving joint. Also, I rarely use waist joints on existing figures so I don't really see a need.
I may not be a fan of the Marvel Comics Blaster [just yet, as I'm plowing back through the tpbs that IDW is putting out, courtesy of my wife ], but I have to say that I always enjoy your work; this piece doesn't disappoint! I really love everything you've done with this piece, and your affinity for this version really shines through. Great job
Nice job! There were things about the Marvel Comics version of The Transformers I've taken a fancy to! This is one of them!
I have to second Superquad7's comments. He may not be the Masterpiece you were hoping for, but I think he definitely qualifies. The colors, the shaping/molding, very excellent.
did you use the oversized Optimus Prime RM knockoff on this one? And can we get some info as to how you did the elbows? Thanks
The elbows were made by taking out the black elbow part from Blaster and sawing off everything but the last few millimeters on each side, so I end up with a thin plate that slides into his upper arm and basically just the piece that goes around the screw post inside his lower arm. I then cut the exact same length out of Optimus' elbows, which ended up being mostly just the bending joint itself. It was slightly wider than the hole in Blaster's upper arm so I needed to trim some, while still allowing the sliding piece to stop at something. Here are some pics showing how I used Bionicle joints for the rest. In each case, I just removed the static black plastic, kept just the pieces that actually connected with the outer case and replaced the joint with actual moving parts. He was extremely easy to construct this way. See how naturally the joints connect to his hips and inside his knee.
thanks dude, can you clarify as to whether you used the oversized rm KO of prime or the regular sized version? I am asking bc I would like to do something similar and i have sets of the oversized prime KO I would be glad to use, let me know.
I have no idea if mine is oversized or not, but I guess so. I don't have any way to measure him right now but he's exactly as tall as a DVD case.
