here's a quick illustration…



also while i was going over your design, i thought maybe it would be good to hinge part of the beetle shell at the bottom so you can use it as a rear support and stabilize the figure upright from falling back given it's going to so back heavy. this would also allow you to elongate the shell more to hold more of the bot parts inside so it doesn't show as much in beetle mode. and you'll also get more of the "skirt cape" look as the original source.

 

Thanks for taking the time to put that all together, I definitely see your points.  

 

no worries, glad if i can help. feel free to tell me to back off if i ever start crossing the line and stepping on your "creative" toes.

 

Nothing to worry about. I appreciate the input and ideas. I don't always think of everything so it's great to have other people give input!

 

may i ask what program you use to create your designs? i would love try my hand at creating some of my own. i have a little bit of 3D studio max experience when i was younger, but that was eons ago. so anything i try now would probably be from square one again with respect to my skills level. let me know your thoughts on any recommendations you could give.  

also do you have your own 3D printer? i've noticed you mentioning sending your designs to shapeways to test print. if you don't, i'm surprised at that given you seem to do a lot if modelling.

 

Thank you very much for the in-depth and helpful explanation of your reasons and decisions, really makes it more understandable now! It does seem seem tricky yet complex but I still love your work and project, may it come to full fruition!!!

 

Absolutely.

In 2017 I decided I wanted to start getting into this stuff. I've always been a bit of a toy customizer, and 3d printing was really becoming a very accessible thing that pretty much anyone could get into. I did some research on different software suites, with my focus being on limited learning curve, robust features, and low cost. In that I found Fusion 360.

Fusion's very easy to understand, has pretty solid features, and among their licensing tiers is a free hobbyist/student option. If you want to give it a shot, I started with this video, which runs you through a good bit of the basics. If you find you like it and want to get more into it, I would highly encourage watching Kevin Kennedy's awesome Learn Fusion in 30 Days playlist. Over several videos he goes through all of the features and tools in simple, easy to follow along with demonstrations that aren't forever long. Youtube is a wealth of knowledge for the software, and there's also a great user forum on reddit at /r/fusion360.

I don't, sadly. I was in the process of researching them to order, and had found the one I wanted, and then Corona hit and I was laid off. Unfortunately the economic situation at Casa de Nocv is not the best as we spent the past three months burning through savings, and it isn't looking to get better any time soon, with so many people trying to find work.

Getting one is a top priority, though. Shapeways has been a great service to use as a hobbyist, and make a little money from, but their overhead is so high and their service a little limited. I'd really like to offer my figures as printed in color materials, and already assembled, rather than a single color model kit that you have to paint and build yourself. When I did my cassette bots for DX9's Soundwave, the thing I heard the most from the people that didn't get them was that they didn't have the desire or skills needed to paint figures even though they wanted them, so I think offering already made ones would help tons with sales.

Thanks so much! With any luck I'll have the prototype in hand before the end of this coming week.

 

I really like what you got going on here! If only this character got more attention in media. Question about the wings. Do they split apart at all, and swing to each side? Or do they rotate up to make a backpack? I wasn’t sure if the side model was final, or if you were just doing a turnaround to show parts. Again man, this looks really awesome!

 

Thanks! Her concept is really interesting. I had never heard of her until she was suggested by someone, but in working on the design I could start to see why she's got a bit of a cult following.

The wings don't split like in the original art. I know they kind of become these side skirt things, but that just wasn't feasible for a couple reasons. 1) She's designed to be around 6.5 cm tall, which does cause some parts-size limitations 2) more parts means more material, which means more weight in the back 3) more parts also means more things to try to cram under the wing shell or put on the outside of and goof up the ladybug look 4) the original art pretty much omits half of the bug wings in her bot mode, while I couldn't just make them disappear.

So, instead of the sort of miniskirt profile the original art had, I tried to keep that spirit and go with more of a ball gown or trenchcoat kind of profile. Because her whole body has to fit into the shell of the wings, they end up pretty large. Early on I had tried to figure out a way to split the wings, but found that even if I could make that work, having them off to the sides more and being so large, they would get in the way of the bot legs.

With the weight issue, I had to consider how slim her bot is, and how small her feet are. The combination of those two things means that having too much in the back will mean something that falls over a lot.

You can see a full turnaround of her in this post.

If she were going to be a larger figure, like deluxe or more, I'm sure alterations could be made to get that aspect of the design closer to the original artwork. I tried to bring the original design to life as best I could, but in the end I had to go with what I believed would work best with the small scale I was aiming for.

 

if you could purchase a 3d printer now, what would it be?

 

The X1 Sidewinder. It's what @waffel uses and he's made some great, multicolor bots with it.

 

I was wondering if spitting the wings would be possible, but I see it’s too tall an order for so tiny space.

And, I guess there’s not that big of a difference between New Ages Legends - / Legion (perhaps) size and the size of Iron Factory’s Legends Femme Formers? Granted, it’s still better to scale it off the NA Insecticons.

Also, would you mind documenting some of your painting process? I’d certainly appreciate some guidance in moving up from being a simple panel lining amateur to a painting novice.

 

With these two gals, there'd be a bit of difference. They're both 6.47cm tall, and IF Slipstream is 7.87cm tall. That would put the bug girls at the horizontal purple bar that runs through IF Slipstream's chest canopy.

Definitely, I can do that.

 

Oh, I elided something I probably shouldn’t have.

Do you think it would be possible to do split wings at a roughly IF Femmeformer height, or is it really only feasible at Deluxe size?

Again, I think it’s better that Beety scales with the NA Insecticons, but I’m still curious.

Then again, at Deluxe size, I wonder if you could just have the wings open up on the back without the multiple panels draping down like a scarf so that the wings and bug legs can rest on the ground. Still, it might be too heavy, even if she was mostly posed in crouching or charging poses to distribute the weight.

Another revisionist idea that comes to mind is turning the wings into combat bucklers that could be held in each hand, which would probably be too heavy, as well, and, more importantly, fail to realize the origins concept art as faithfully as possible...  

 

Splitting the wings really isn't the issue. They could either be on ball joints that mount into the black carapace section behind the head, or swiveling mushroom pegs. I think the issue is more what does that achieve, and at what detriment to the rest of the figure. Either of those solutions will add more bulky structures to pieces that are meant to be smooth and elegant, and more weight to a portion of the figure that I expect will have a good bit of weight to it.

The mushroom pegs would probably cause the least bit of visual impact, as far as messing up the beetle shell look, but then what does that achieve? The wings split out to the sides, leaving an inverted V of negative space between them, but now the tips of them aren't close to the ground so they can't provide any stability to offset the weight they add to the rear of the figure, and now the insect legs are also more visible since the view of them isn't obstructed by her robot legs.

The ball joints would add much more material to provide the spherical socket, and having those would allow the wings to turn the outside edges of the wings in towards the figure's center, or to pivot and be positioned in a more elevated position. Turning the wings in towards the figure's center will make the bug legs stick out further, and the wingtips to jut out to the sides, and pivoting the wings upwards will move the center of gravity behind the figure and cause it to fall backwards.

At a larger scale the thickness of the insect legs can be reduced in comparison to the rest of the figure here. They're 2.5 mm thick so that they're not flimsy, can support the weight of the figure in insect mode, and not break from the torque of moving the ball joint. On a 6.47cm tall figure, that 2.5mm takes up some space. At a larger scale they could stay the same thickness and retain their strength, but would take up less space on the figure. That would allow for something like the wings splitting around where the two large circular thruster/exhaust port things are in the middle of them, enabling the rear halves of the wings to pivot around and be positioned on top of the front halves of the wings, resulting is something that would look more like the original art.

To do all of that, I do think it would have to be a small deluxe, or current Hasbro legends size.

It's not that I don't want to do it, it's just that there's limitations on things this small, even with strong materials like nylon.

 

Are you going to make an alternate head with a “maskless” face? I am not good at drawing Transformers, but something like this:

 

No way. She looks way too cute without the facemask.  
But in all seriousness, no. The sprue's already laid out, and adding parts that change its size and amount of material used would inflate the cost.

 

"I am not good at drawing Transformers" *draws awesome Transformer*

 

I was thinking the same thing!

 

You could have extra parts as a separate 'upgrade' kit for the figure... And honestly, something about that smirk is kinda' scary...