Hey Everyone! Blackout501st here! this is my first time making a thread here on TFW. today I would like to share with you a project i've worked on over the course of the last 4 months. its called Venatio In Aeternum, which is latin for "The Eternal hunt".

first a little background, I am a ceramics student at Grossmont community college in El Cajon, California. this is my third semester in the ceramics program, and each semester I always try and make something transformers related, and each semester I try and make something bigger and better than last time. this semester I really wanted to challenge myself. before this, the biggest things I've made have been heads or busts of transformers. but this past semester i wanted to make a full figure. it took me about a week to decide on what exactly i wanted to make. I knew from the beginning that I wanted him to be huge. after mulling it over for a while, and thanks to some recent third party acquisitions, I decided to go all out. I decided to make G1 Predaking. I originally started this project back in late February, but by the time a friend suggested posting a thread here on TFW about it, I had already finished over half the project, so I decided to just wait till the entire thing was completed before I posted the thread  

UPDATE: here is the final product moved up to the first post as well

​

This thing was going to be colossal. so I started from the bottom up, with the legs. I used my G1 2010 reissue predaking, and images of his box art from G1 as a reference.

Headstrong​

when you're working with clay, the lighter and hollower you can make something, the easier it is in the long run. the technique I use is very simple, you just make a box out of slabs, then build parts onto the box. I started with headstrong, cutting most of his parts out of slabs, attaching them on to the main skeleton, working from the main leg to the foot, then finally to the rhino head itself, which is hand sculpted. everything that's thicker than about half an inch has to be hollowed out and have tones of air holes poked into it. one of the unfortunate things about working with clay is that if it has an air bubble in it when it gets fired, the air expands in the extreme temperature and breaks apart any clay that's around it. I've had pieces crumble to dust because of air pockets or water pockets. this is why it is essential to hollow things out, poke air holes into anywhere where air might be trapped, and to allow the piece to completely dry out before firing it in the kiln.





after completing the headstrong component, I used him as a scale between the g1 predaking toy and the eventual size of how big i wanted this predaking to be. not only did I want him to be in scale, but I also wanted to make his proportions as anatomically correct as I could, unlike the g1 toy which has 4 massive limbs and a not so massive center body.

next post is the Tantrum component!

 

Tantrum

Tantrum​

Headstrong and tantrum were the easiest of the 7 components to predaking to make. at their core they are just single boxes with lots of kibble attached around them. this is why they took the shortest amount of time to make. Tantrum however was more complex than his counterpart because of his arms and legs, which stuck out from the main body, as opposed to headstrong, who's kibble could be built mostly with slabs ontop of slabs.





another interesting thing to note about clay is that when you fire it, it shrinks, more or less depending on the temperature it fires to. for bisque firing, my school fires to cone 06, which is about 1850 degrees Fahrenheit. what causes the clay to shrink is all the water content evaporates from the clay, leaving nothing but the Silica itself. at that temperature a process called Quarts inversion takes place, and turns the clay from dirt to stone. therefore you have to take this shrinkage into account when you are building the piece. you make things slightly LARGER than they should be, that way when they shrink in the kiln, they come out the perfect size. here is a picture of both the legs, one fired, one not. you can clearly see how much the piece shrinks when it's fired, in this case about 7% of its total volume.



next up is razorclaw part 1!

 

Razorclaw part 1

Razorclaw, part 1​

Size is obviously a limiting factor when it comes to ceramics. you can only make a piece as big as your kiln allows it. and at a college, where you can't take up an entire kiln for just your piece, you are limited as to how big you can make things. since i knew that eventually this statue would be well over 2 feet in height, i decided to compartmentalize him from the start, splitting him into 7 components: tantrum, headstrong, lower razorclaw, upper razorclaw, divebomb, rampage, and his accessories. then just assemble the entire thing when its all glazed and painted up. the tallest individual piece in this project was razorclaw. I separated him at the waist in this instance.









something else I wanted to accomplish with this statue is I wanted him to be in an actual dynamic pose. not just arms and legs strait forward like a g1 brick. so the legs are at a slight A stance. and to accomplish that, I put pieces of clay at slight angles matching the angles that the leg components were tilted at, that way when it was dried and fired the hips could rest on the legs at the knee without moving or wobbling at all. this makes for a very firm and solid stance when you put the whole thing together.



this was also a little nerve racking however, since I had to mold the clay to that angle while it was still wet so it wouldn't develop cracks later on. this made me turn blue holding my breath moving it back and forth from atop the legs down to my work station  





next up is razorclaw part 2!

 

Razorclaw part 2

Razorclaw, Part 2​

another frustrating thing you have to work with in ceramics is putting your work on blocks or stilts if it doesn't sit flat to the ground. with the center mass portion of razorclaw this was necessary, because of his Lion mane. it goes down farther than the bottom of his torso, so while i was building him he had to rest on slabs of dried clay a good 4 inches off the table. working with something that's raised off your work space, no matter how high, is nerve racking because even a small fall can ruin a piece and require you to rebuild pieces or in worst cases, completely start over. you would be surprised how gentle and slow you can take things when you've put so many hours into making something perfect.

this was perhaps the most complex component of predaking so far, mostly because I didn't have a completed limb to use as a guide, and also because it required a lot of hand building.











The head itself was the part that was the most fun *aside from the wings* to make. its all hand built, and took me a good three hours to get looking just right. but I absolutely adore how it came out. well worth the effort!





Remember the part where I said having your work raised up off the table can be nerve racking? I was completely blue while trying to take this picture. I was so scared that I would sneeze or look at it crosseyed and the whole thing would come crashing down.  



next up is Rampage!

 

Rampage

Rampage​

another one of the reasons I decided to compartmentalize this project was because of a bad experience I had in my first semester of ceramics. It was my transformers project for the semester, and It had a ton of love and effort put into it. and then, the scourge of the air pockets struck again, and the entire back half of the piece exploded in the kiln, completely ruining the piece. I was crushed, but I made sure from then on that I would never have a piece go kaboom in the kiln again, and that if it did, it wouldn't ruin the entire piece. that is why I make all my big pieces in parts now, partially for space and size constraints, but also because that way if one piece explodes in the kiln, the entire piece isn't ruined and I can just remake the one piece that broke.

another reason is sometimes if you're trying to build something at an angle or in a pose, its easier to make it in parts then attach it when its fired than it is to build it as one solid piece. the reason being is when clay dries out, when it's called "greenware", the state where its still dirt before its been fired, it is EXTREMELY fragile. and once it's dried out to a certain point, its nearly impossible to repair until after you fire it, which usually requires glue and paint and what not. its much more preferable to get a piece through the kiln intact and as quickly as you can, that way its much easier to handle without worrying you're gonna break it by looking at it crosseyed. this is what i decided to do with both the arms, separate them at the elbow, especially in rampage's case since laying down flat, his shoulder would be at an extreme angle compared to the rest of the arm.









next up is divebomb!

 

Divebomb

Divebomb
​

by this time in the project timeline, there were only a couple weeks of school left and in order to finish this monstrosity in time, I was having to take clay home and work on it basically every free minute I got for almost a solid month and a half strait. most of my work was done on Fridays and weekends while marathoning transformers cartoons on netflix while I worked. divebomb was probably the simplest of all the components to make, most of his kibble and detail work are flat boxes and lines with very little curvature to it. the only difficult part about him was his hand, which was open, as opposed to the closed hand which holds the sword on the rampage arm. it was tricky to get the fingers to look just right, but it ended up turning out really bad ass.







next up, predaking's accessories!

 

predaking's Accessories

Predaking's Acessories​

after completing the 5 main components, all that was left to do was predaking's wings and weapons, all of which were incredibly simple and quick to build. the wings are separated into 3 pieces, the main backpack that attaches onto predaking's back, and the two wings themselves. the wings are colossal, measuring 29 inches from wingtip to wingtip. the sword itself in its original form measured 30 inches long, and shrank a good FOUR INCHES when it dried out. the gun was just a big box with a barrel and detailing on the sides. I completed all three of these components within the span of a single day. good thing too, cause the next day was the last day we were bisque firing stuff in class! if I didn't get it done that day, it wasn't getting done at all!  









next up, painting glazing and assembling!

 

painting, glazing, and assembling

Painting, Glazing, and Assembling​

glazing is actually much more peaceful than building something in ceramics. in the classroom in particular, it becomes very quiet with concentration and is very relaxing. with Glazes, there are a few colors that are very difficult to get. among them, are red, orange, and yellow. these also happen to be three colors that make up the majority of predaking's color pallet!   I couldn't have picked a worse combiner to make in terms of colors and glazes! thankfully that's where these things called stains come in. you mix the stain into any clear glaze and it comes out the color you want. so for the black and the orange, I used stain. since stain is also pretty expensive, I decided to use some nice acrylic paint for the rest of his colors.







after he was all glazed and painted, the next and final step was to assemble him like the combiner he is. in my ceramics program we use chemical epoxy that when mixed together heats up and creates a very powerful bonding agent that can hold tremendous weight and makes a perfect glue to stick ceramics together. this stuff cures in about 5 minutes, but it takes 24 hours to completely solidify. so the process of putting predaking together took about a week to do. this was also the time to reattach any small pieces that may have broken off while a piece was still unfired.





one of the unforseen problems I had with this project was the sword. clay doesn't like being long and thin, and tends to snap. when I took the sword back home to paint, it slipped right out of my hands and broke into several pieces. after a quick trip to home depot, I came home with the material I needed to make a much better looking, and more importantly, a much lighter sword that wouldn't bend or break under its own weight, as I feared the ceramic sword would do. that was also the last part of predaking I actually had to construct, because since the sword could support its own weight, it didn't need to be glued down into the hand.



next up, in all his glory, predaking fully assembled!

 

Predaking fully assembled

The final product, PREDAKING!​

and here he is, after four long months of slaving away at this monstrosity, over 200 hours of work, many gallons of blood sweat and tears, and many stress filled all night'ers, my masterpiece was complete. fully assembled, Predaking stands from his base board to the top of his back cannons a staggering 29 and a half inches tall. from wingtip to wingtip, he is 29 inches as well. and his sword measures 28 inches long from tip to handle. so in all three dimensions, he is well over TWO CUBIC FEET big. he is truly a colossus. I was literally jumping up and down with excitement when I finally stepped back and took a look at this guy fully assembled for the first time. it really is hard to get an idea of how big he is just from the pictures. I wanted a challenge when I started making this guy, and a challenge he was. I could not be happier with how he turned out.

here he is in all his predaconian glory, PREDAKING!









and here he is, for a size comparison, with deluxe strafe, scorn, slug, drift, voyager grimlock, Neca Coyote Tango, Cherno Alpha, Atlas, and Fansproject's Intimidator. as you can see intimidator barely even comes up to his knee.



but there he is folks! I hope you all enjoy him as much as I enjoyed working on him!    

 

Phenomenal! And every one of its synonyms.

 

Even though you kept updating us almost every day, reading all the little trials and tribulations with each part was nice to follow up with. I knew you could do it, man, and yet I'm still impressed that the end result turned out this good.

We actually stopped in at Blackout's house to check the Predaking progress when he was working on the Razorclaw pieces, and we were both just in awe of this kid's work. Also absolutely nervous of even moving near the table he was set up on, because DUDE NOBODY WANTS TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING THAT BREAK. But yeah, especially hearing about all the long nights spent on this project when the class time was running thin was just crazy.

End result was totally worth it. I still feel bad that it's actually too big to submit to Botcon's art show.  

So, the follow up is going to be a to-scale Metroplex, right?

 

Wow! this is incredible. I am a studio art major and started with a focus ceramics. but shortly switched to 3d modeling cause i couldn't get the blockyness that i loved. and you did it INCREDIBLY well! i am so impressed. this looks amazing. arms a big big, but i love the look hah

amazing man!

 

Thank you very much for your kind words! I can confirm that getting things to stay smooth and blocky on this guy was SUCH a pain in the ass since it takes very little effort to deform a flat surface when you're working with clay, due to it's flexibility when it's wet. There are definitely no flat surfaces on this guy, everything is a little bumpy or not quite strait, but that's just how the clay is.

And SPEAKING of the arms, I'm glad someone other than myself finally brought that up! The reason the arms ended up being a little big was because I didn't have many of the parts with me while I was working on them for reference, so I had to guess how big I should make them while also considering the shrinkage rate. Evidently they didn't shrink as much as I would have hope they would!   but everything considered I think it works well with the entire piece

 

      NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS! I obviously would do trypticon first. But nah, in all honesty I would be hard pressed to make something this colossal again, in the future I'm gonna try and go big but not AS big, simply because of how unwieldy this guy turned out to be. He's 58 lbs, but he's a FUCKIN HEAVY ASS 58 lbs.

 

Thank both of you very much! You have no idea what kind words like these mean after working on such a colossal project for so long mean!  

 

Yowzas! What an accomplishment!

 

Very nice, and welcome to TFW2005.COM!

Just for future reference, "Fan Art" is our forum for illustrations and "Customs" is our forum for artwork that has more than two physical dimensions  

 

Fucking awesome !