Project Tankbustas: Part 5

Part 5, sorry, its a brief one.Things have been a bit of a rollercoaster since part 4, I must say.

OK, sometimes you try something, in the knowledge that it is an interim step, and it just don't work. I had planned to experiment in Das Clay, and hopefully learn something useful. The main thing I learned was that Das Clay behaves very differently from green stuff, and probably just isn't meant for 28mm sculpture. It's not without its merits as a material, scenery for example, but it's ill-suited for this project. A shame, as clay is the classical material for prototypes. Anyways, I moved on to stage 6, and tried to freeform a Squig. Here I made a crude armature from wire and tinfoil, and proceeded to feel things out.

 

 

My habit for rushed hyper fixation was evident almost immediately with this guy, as I initially just wanted to get a base layer of putty on, but I ended up going for a face. And applying a half-remembered technique for fur. Not bad for a first try, I suppose, although he looks more surprised than anything. My second attempt used thinner wire, but more pre-existing bits in its construction. I used a bead and a water pistol bit for the main body, and some round bits for the eyes. This was more immediately pleasing than the first, although it ended up with a derpy pug look. I added fur and other details later on. Kinda liking it TBH, maybe I'll paint it for next week. 

 

As I'm still feeling this out, I don't have a huge amount to say here. So here's some in-progress pics, hopefully I'll have something more substantive next week. Cheers for now.

 

 

Gunpla: The RGC-83 GM Cannon II (HG)

As I have alluded to in the past, one of the things about the Gundam franchise is that it likes to return to the well. Bandai is very inclined to revisit the original Universal Century and especially the One Year War timeline, bolting on new narratives for a new line of kits. On some level, there's space for this, as your typical Gundam anime features a world war and its aftershocks, but it becomes a failure of realism after a while. People desperately seem to want the Federation and Zeon to go another round, but that can't really happen without skipping forwards a few generations. So what the U.C storyline looks like instead is a series of increasingly spiteful terrorist actions committed by Nazi remnants whom lack the resources for a proper war, with the Federation being required to hold the idiot ball to enable that, until that entire generation finally dies off, and lets their grandkids make new mistakes. It is equal parts bleak and pathetic, and I can't help but see the business practices that created this, rather than any narrative justification. Don't worry, I am edging towards my point. Today's subject, the GM Cannon II is from the OVA Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, set in the gap between the first two Gundam TV shows. 0083 is likely the purest example of the trends I described above, it featuring a Zeon fleet for whom the war hadn't ended, whom steal a nuclear-armed Gundam in an attempt to get bullets firing in anger again. It's been a good while since I last tried to watch it, but 0083 is probably my least favourite of its ilk. It tries very hard to forge new links between the various Gundam instalments, but it's not great as a stand-alone story, with much behind the scenes aggro. 

 

The GM Cannon IIs place in all this is to be a kind of multi-layered nostalgia hit. Its there to take the place of the old Guncannon, whose concept never really made it into the franchise template, as artillery is less cinematic than the series norm. It did inspire the GM Cannon however, which was part of the "gunpla first" Mobile Suit Variations thing, which sought to do things like mine layers and trainers, stuff for the serious scale modeller Gundam had attracted. The GM Cannon II was both a nod to that, and another OVA spin off, War in the Pocket. Specifically, it inherited the armour concept from the Gundam NT1 "Alex", although a little changed, a shield based on the one used by the GM Command sub-family, and some details reminiscent of the Guncannon Mass Production Type I've built previously. It also shares parts with the GM Custom, as does the kit, a walking misnomer that 0083 also features, but that's another story. That also explains the mismatched colours of our subject. As an in-universe concept though, it's probably fair to say that mobile suits like this were ageing into obsolescence. The preponderance and proliferation of energy weapons with the apparent death of Combined Arms Warfare meant  there was simply less call for something like this. Mobile suits are basically jet fighters not tanks. The GM Cannon II is however a design I'm inclined to like, fiction be damned. I'm fond of big, chonky bastards that look like they can trade injuries with the best of them. 

As far as older kits go, this high grade is pretty good. Its based on polycaps, but the joint design is fairly comprehensive, and almost luxurious in the ankles. There’s actually six(!) hands, with a little stand on one of the runner dto store the spares. You also get two blades for the beam sabre that stores on the left arm, which TBH is exactly the sorta corner you’d expect to be cut. Its main weakness is in the are of colour accuracy, this being one of those designs that has red thrusters and a sticker sheet, which I misplaced at some point. I’d started this kit, forgot about it, and only came back to it when I needed to dogsit for someone. Dunno what I was thinking at the time, its a nice build. When I was snowed-in later that week, I went in to paint some details, use a gundam marker, and apply some weathering techniques.

 

Its not my most complex work, but job’s a good ‘un.

Transformers: Generations Selects DK-3 Breaker is Something That Exists

You know what? Another Thursday Transformers bonus article! 

  The 1982 Diaclone "No. 5 4WD Hilux" Toy, blue and yellow variants.

 

So, last year, I was at the Brum Toy Fair, enjoying the company of the people I was with, and spending money. I spotted today's subject on discount, and felt tempted. This was a mould I'd completely missed out on during the chaos of Earthrise. I did some more browsing, and made a shocking discovery, loose examples of Hoist and Trailbreaker, the mass market releases, were going for equal or greater money. At that point, the random Diaclone-inspired repaint from a premium imprint seemed like the obvious choice. I'd just pretend that it was "faded comic colours Trailbreaker", or maybe the Shattered Glass version, and I'm sure you'd come to the same conclusion in similar circumstances. Something making that easier is simply that Breaker isn’t a character with any real history, even by the standards of Diaclone tribute toys. This is the first Transformers toy with this name, and his only fictional appearance is to be named-checked as somebody whom died off-page in a comic. Possibly the only trivia of note is the "DK-3" prefix on his name, a reference to Diakron, which was Takara trying to release Diaclone stuff in Western markets mere months before Transformers got going. As such, I’m gonna be spending a lot of time referring to the other uses of the mould, and how they came to effect this one.

 

The robot form is undoubtedly good, if merely Trailbreaker in blue. This is because the original Diaclone toys in this case were simple, one colour, variants of each-other and Hasbro haven't done anything to mix up the formula here. As Trailbreaker is therefore so evident in the toy, this prompts a discussion of character models. So, what often happened with the original Transformers is that their appearance in animation and comics was often wildly different from the toys they were meant to be. When the 1985 toys came out though, something odd occurred. The new character models were often a fair bit closer to the toys, but also retools of the 1984 cast. So while the toys might be near identical, fictionally they definitely weren't. This was weird. Trailbreaker and Hoist were a good example of this, and reimaginings since have had to tread the needle between these conflicting depictions while still being able to release them as the same basic toy. What seems to have gone down with this Earthrise mould is that the designers favoured Hoist, and treated Trailbreaker as the secondary retool. This has the ever-so-slight downside of Trailbreaker having Hoist's "friend-shaped" proportions rather than a heroic build. And, let's be real here, Earthrise was going hard on the whole cartoon accuracy shtick, so this choice was a self-defeating one.

That doesn't really matter as far as Breaker is concerned, he's a blank slate, but I offer the above as context and explanation. Breaker is a big chap, being a head taller and visibly wider than a deluxe of similar vintage. He’s not quite voyager sized, but definitely is edging that way. His gut-to-biceps ratio makes him look more fat than muscular, and in all fairness this is a bit of welcome variation. Not every Transformer needs the mechanical equivalent of washboard abs The blue is very attractive, with vibrant silver and red in the mix. There is a certain degree of overt hollowness at play though, something not uncommon for his vintage, definitely on the notable side here. It's where the impression of size comes from while still being a deluxe. Functionally, he's got a lot of the good stuff, Legacy standard articulation and the 5mm ports are plentiful. Due to a transformation quirk he technically has two sets of knees, which is useful, although the shoulder gubbins do limit the neck. His gun completely covers his fist, giving a nice gunarm, and you can untab part of the backpack to use as a shield. Certainly not a bad robot mode, with both presence and play features.

 

Breaker's altmode is a made-up and blocky camper van, one not dissimilar to the Toyota 4WD High-Lux of the original toy. That backend area is the main area of functional difference between the Hoist and Trailbreaker iterations of this mould, with Breaker obviously using the latter. Like all good remoulds, this does change the character of the vehicle, although this does end up benefiting the robot mode more. Breaker does not feature compatibility with the short-lived airlock system, but he can instead have his gun on top like an actual turret. As opposed to just plonking what is obviously a rifle on the vehicle for storage, or otherwise stowing it. Earthrise toys dialled the 5mm port thing back a touch, so having the turret option is welcome. You can also fudge it between the front wheels, if that’s your thing. The overall appearance of the van tends towards realism, but not from all angles. The dark colour palette helps a lot with the serious vehicle bits, but there's a lot of robot on the underside in contrasting bright colours. The hands are very obvious and ground clearance is minimal at best. On the plus side, translucent windows and headlights. Well, I say its a plus, I have a doubt. There is substantial use of translucent plastic in the chest area, which becomes the front of the van mode. I assume this is where they made up the difference for the toy's larger footprint, as opposed being to more selective in the use of such plastic. Or just simply just casting the whole bit in matching blue and just painting the damn windows. It's a breakage concern as the wheels connect to directly to that famously brittle plastic, and these wheels attach via mushroom peg. Of course translucent plastic isn’t an inherent negative, and this toy certainly does not have colour matching issues, so your mileage may vary. It could be fine. Then again, if you're a toy designer, and you're gonna do the entire front end in the stuff, only the paint it? I'd say you were probably doing things the wrong way around, and I hope you've taken preventative measures.

While Breaker is clearly something that exists, I want to like it more than I do. As a repaint of a mould I missed out on, Breaker does have value. And he is a nice blue. The base toy meanwhile seems to suffer with some unforced errors. I wonder if Hoist was somebody's pet project, because the mould is too specific to him, and, sorry to bang on about it, the use of translucent plastic like this is something they know not to do. I certainly feel I got my money’s worth, don't get me wrong, but if you just want a boxy carformer, or merely a Diaclone tribute, there’s other options. I mean, there's another Selects version of this mould on the way now, and, as near as I can tell, they've removed translucent plastic completely for that.

Project Tankbustas: Part 4

Part Quattro Bajeena...

The warrior elite of the Ork race, Nobs are either found leading mobs of their minions, or in dedicated squads of asskickers. This makes them the rough equivalent of Sargent-types in other factions, although the mechanical execution is a bit different. Nobz don't actually improve the leadership or morale if the squad they lead, rather they are large and in charge. Physically bigger, generally better stats, and wielding a big axe or power klaw. It's a bit less special these days, but Nobz had W2 on their profile, which had them encroaching on the old HQ slot in terms of raw talent. Even in 10th, the presence of a Nob is often an active ingredient in a mobs melee potential. As the name implies, they tend to be dicks. When it comes to Tankbustas, things go a bit askew. Tankbustas we're originally about using Tankbusta Boms, guess what they did, up close. Having a Nob in that situation was beneficial, but over the editions the unit instead became mainly a shooty one, with unfettered access to rokkits, and Tankbusta Boms basically vanished. Factor in the "exactly what's in the box" unit design of 10th, and we have a melee-centric leader with no melee options and the stock ranged weapon of the unit. Yay. Maybe he and the Tankhamma lad should swap weapons? You could just put a rokkit on a big choppa. Not that the Tankhamma lad by himself makes much sense when the rest of the mob is shooty. An entire mob with them? That would be hysterical, lethal, and brief. One by itself? No.

 

As the somewhat testy tone of the above paragraph might imply, I was feeling a touch uncertain about this one. I had previously used up a lot of nob bits in another project, and I wasn't keen to buy more or cannibalise something. This left me with two broad options; A) cut up a set of big choppa arms, changing the pose so it's less axe-like, and adding a boomy bit, or B) going one-handed for the rokkit launcher, and then figure out something for the off-hand to do. I went for A, and the entire process proved to less of a ball-ache than I feared. The trick is to pick ork arms with gloves or obvious cuffs, and cut at that border. You then take a really small drill bit to drill holes into either side of the stump, and glue a little bit of paper clip into one bit. This gives you a supporting armature, and as long as you are careful with the glue, you should be able to test fit things before finalising the whole pose. I will admit to not being 100% happy with the pose and the length of handle, which gave me a few second thoughts. But, I had limited bits, and I wanted this to be "extra", so I stuck with it, attempted to position the head to better match the arms, and opted to mull over how best to detail it. However, as the tricky bit was now done, the Tankhamma lad was now looking a lot less challenging. I quickly found two choppa arms that roughly matched, snipped off the axe heads, and rotated each so both handles could be joined toether. Some slight bodging later, and that was done, merged with a few choice bits to speed the process along.

Due to an unexpected turn of events, it was a few days before I got around to the matters of detailing and sculpting, but that also went smoothly. I took the same approach as the boyz I did last week, adding a mixture of straps, plates, and handles to things. This turned out sufficiently well for me to decide in favour of a break. These two need some additional finishing and tweaking, but I think I’m best off putting them aside until the painting stage. i.e. a minimum of 3 weeks away. Things have gone better than expected, but I don’t want to speedrun this. Having fresh eyes, after making some squigs, is probably a good idea..

BeastBox: BB-01 Dio is Something That Exists

Do I have to explain BeastBox again? Righty, mechanical beasts that compress into boxes? Very collectable? 15+ age bracket? No? Oh, click here then. OK, let’s have a quick chat about a BeastBox I got recently. What is, technically, the first.

 

Dio, or D10, is the mascot of the BeastBox brand and 52Toys in general. His eye forms part of the company logo, and the cutesy robo-animal style a lot of the earlier box moulds had begins with him. Dio is sufficiently popular to see frequent and numerous re-releases/retools, the creation of Mega-Dio, a model kit, and today's subject. While numbered as BB-01, this is actually a revised version with 3mm port functionality for a wider play pattern. As such, Dio mrk2 (1.5?) features a twin gun turret, but to get the full use of these ports, you'd need assorted accessories sold separately. This brings me to the most significant difference Dio has from what followed: he's a 4cm cube not a 5cm one. This makes him a wee bit smaller, so he wouldn't fit in a boxcharger by himself, not that he comes with one. So, he is perhaps a less complete experience than other box toys I've written about. 

 

That having been said, actually handling Dio made its the reasons for its popularity very obvious. Part of that is visual design, backed up with effective joint design. Dio has an immense amount of character; the big head on expressive neck joints, the tiny T-Rex arms, big legs with great movement, and simple but not overdone tech details. He moves in a way largely ideal for something with this body plan; his joints are working with the box mode, not against it or sacrificing for it. Maybe there could have been more in the tail, and the arms are vestigial, but I’m very happy with the neck and opening mouth. Said box mode is not flawless, although the use of flat panels and the blaster to fill a gap counts for a lot. I do like how the lower legs extend for beast mode, that’s a welcome flare which could have easily been skipped. Dio is immensely charming as a fiddle toy, pleasing both the "serious collector" and the "awwwwwwww" bits of my brain. Elegantly designed and adorable. And given that the turret both rotates and tilts, it can blow shit up too.

 

Bringing Mega-Dio into the conversation makes for some interesting contrasts. If regular Dio is a baby, Mega-Dio is the mature animal, reflecting the growth in complexity beast box has seen. The pair seem to be in different scales, and ultimately having different design philosophies. Its a bit like comparing a Gundam with its smaller "super deformed" version, except the cute one came first. Mega-Dio is much more about the transformation, which has grown on me, but perhaps paradoxically, omits knee joints for it's otherwise adequate articulation. This means that MD is bit less nimble than what it's updating, but it is a worthy tribute. It kinda depends on where you stand on the matter of complexity versus brevity, with the pair on opposite sides of the spectrum. Of course, this is very much a "why not both?" situation; you can peg baby-Dio in box mode atop Mega-Dio. I mean, its daft, but its a thing you can do.

Maybe its because this version of Dio is a revised version, thus benefiting from experience and such, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I like this. I’d ordered Dio very much as complement for a Mega-Dio, and because its something you kinda well, do, if you’re collecting BeastBox. While I was initially disappointed by the lack of the storage case and such, Dio rapidly won me over. He’s great. Not a complex toy by any means, but very good at what its choosing to do. Possibly iconic, in the unironic sense of the word. And definitely something that exists.

 

Transformers: Legacy Evolution Beachcomber is Something That Exists

 Maybe I should just call this Transformers Thursday? Make it official?

 

 The 1985 Transformers Beachcomber Toy

Introduced in 1985 as part of the latter bunch of minibots released, Beachcomber is very much one of those crowd filler Autobots, whose fictional appearances are actually quite minimal. He's memorable, don't get me wrong, but he's memorable for but one episode, "Golden Lagoon". Therein, he finds a very nice glen, full of untouched nature, but also untouched reserves of the super metal Electrum. This leads to the area being utterly ruined. As it would. It's almost an ecological parable, but the execution ain't great. Said glen is also where the "Paradise Parakeet" name-dropped on the box comes from, but I'll come back to that. Beachcomber has not done very much else, although you see the name and colours a lot on toys with similar altmodes. There's simply a lot of Autobot cars, so he was predisposed to get lost in the shuffle, but I'd like to suggest another explanation. You've got an 80's toy advert, and this guy whose whole deal is that he's a geologist by trade and pacifist by a nature. It's not the personality profile you necessarily want in an action-oriented series, because he refutes the good versus evil conceit, doesn't want to do action scenes, and some underpaid/jobbing writer probably wouldn't want that headache. Maybe that’s why Derrick Wyatt wanted to kill him off. A fun way to treat Beachcomber, one seemingly a favoured by the fandom, is to depict him like a pot smoking hippy, but you can't really do that in kids media. Beachcomber is basically admirable, but possibly belongs in a more nuanced franchise. 

 

The 2018 Transformers: Power of the Primes Beachcomber Toy

So if Beachcomber is inoffensive but under-utilised as a character, and a memetic stoner, what's he like as a toy? Well, this is a chap whom invites discussion as to toy budgets and build quality. We've been getting minibots as short/small deluxes for a while now, so it's no shock to see Beachcomber in the deluxe pricepoint, and he's doing better than most when it comes to partsforming and such. The toy does not rely on a big chunk of the vehicle mode coming off as alleged shield, and does not have exposed hands issue Huffer had. Beachcomber is however not notably complex as say Cliffjumper was, with the transformation not being substantially different from his last toy, a small legends class in the ill-famed Power of the Primes line. This is probably the result of screen accuracy rather than (just) cost-cutting, but there's a few things about the build quality that raises questions about the budget. The toy features rubbery tires with pinned wheels as opposed to the mushroom peg style, which is something of "it's been so long, I can't remember when they stopped doing that" situation. It's chest also features a slider arrangement, a dramatic head reveal by way of that, and somewhat less of the carved out hollowness common to modern toys. Three possibilities present themselves: 1) there's been some creative accounting, so part of Beachcomber's budget ended up elsewhere, 2) fancy touches like good wheels are actually somewhat expensive, and 3) Hasbro is just padding their margin somewhat, see also Wizards of the Coast. Could be one of those things, or some combination there of, I don't know. The net result is that the toy feels nicer in hand than his stock images suggest, but not so nice as to dismiss my concerns about its value proposition. I got this for 19 quid on discount, rather than 25, and I think that was reasonable, but I wouldn't have felt great if I'd got it full price. 

 

Let's move away from the more contextual, big picture stuff, to focus more about the merits of this toy. Beachcomber's altmode is a dune buggy, specifically a 1982 M1040 Chenowth "Hellfire" Fast Attack Vehicle, which, yes, is military use. I will admit to not knowing that before looking it up, but it makes sense given Warpath & Powerglide exist. To muse for a moment, this obviously more right wing that you'd expect given his hippy persona, but I feel you could easily do a Vietnam-vet-turned-war-protester, or retired badass thing with Beachcomber. As these vehicles go, it looks good from most angles, and rolls like a dream, but there definitely angles which you don't want to look at. The head retracts into the body, but there's no panel to properly conceal it, with the torso doing little. The vehicle also has a certain gappiness around the seat area, although in all fairness dune buggies often resemble overgrown BMX bikes or industrial scaffolding, so perhaps no harm done? I do like the presence of diamond plate and how 5mm ports are worked into the sculpt around there. Play value is pretty good too, rolling better than any Transformer I've handled since Botshots, and then there is the "Evo Fusion" thing. Beachcomber features a bumper/gun accessory, a grey piece painted black, which has more going on that it looks. You can peg it on the rollbar as a weapon, something that does no harm to the look of the vehicle, but if you leave it on the front, there's additional tabs to keep straight. It's very much an optional piece too, so unlike most modern minibots, you can stick it in a draw somewhere if its not your thing.

The generally positive vibes continue into robot mode, doing the whole Sunbow G1 look, but not in a way that's limiting or daft. Beachcomber is on the shorter side for a deluxe, but he's not Cliffjumper short, and tends towards the stocky/blocky. I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of how you could meaningfully improve the robot form without moving to a different price bracket. Its likeness is on point, there's concealing panels to fill out the calves, 5mm ports are tactfully worked in, and Legacy standard articulation is present, with wrist swivels. The only weakness of note is how the seats and rollbar become the heels, which is acceptable, but not ideal or especially functional. Yes, a paint application is a little scuffed, and there’s some cut marks, but that's just something that happens. It's a very solid robot form on multiple levels.The gun? Well, if it bothers you, it can peg into the back. Oh, and he has a bird, yes. Paradise Parakeet. This rubbery little chap is based off the blast effect system from Siege, and so can perch on Beachcomber in various places, just like in the cartoon. But, it also means, that you can have a gun that fires birds. And on that note, this article comes to a natural conclusion. 

 

As the flow and warming tone of this article might indicate, Beachcomber kinda won me over. There's certainly complaints to be made, and an open question over the value proposition, so its not flawless. But this toy gets a lot right as well. What will probably decide it for you is availability; I’m told this is hard to find in the USA for example, so if you overpay for this, you’d better really fricking love Beachcomber. Because while he is something that exists, he’s not existing quite enough for a deluxe. Assuming that the price is moot for you though? I doubt you’d be disappointed.

 

Electrum rave party! 

 

Project Tankbustas: Part 3

Part trio...

 

Stage 2 sees what it is arguably the simplistic aspect, the kitbashing of the rank & file. When it comes the older style of ork plastic Boyz, methods to kitbash a rokkit launcha are fairly well-known and relatively straightforward. I don't know if this is the case for the new Ork Boyz, GW seems to discourage kit bashing these days, so maybe not, but I digress. Making the rokkits themselves can be achieved with a bit of tubing and greenstuff, and I've done a few of those here, but I find the process fiddly as I can't cut straight to save my life. I like beads for that more these days; you'll have to look around for a good shape, but once you have it, it cuts down on faff. Alternatively, the business end of a felt tip pen has possilities, and I've used a few here. Making a shoulder-mounted, bazooka style launcher is also something relatively easy. You take a choppa arm piece, and snip off the axehead. You then take another tube, or a convenient bit of pen in this case, and have that lay on one shoulder, with the boomy bit resting on the axe handle. You still need to dress it up a bit so it doesn't just look like a tube, but you get good results with modest effort, especially as opposed to simply cutting up a shoota and plonking a rokkit where the killy bit used to be. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you have the bits spare, mind you, I was just aiming for something more involved here. It's also basically how you make Rokkit Pistols, as I have here. You get a slugga, trim off the bullet gubbins, while keeping the hand/trigger, and then attach a smaller type of rokkit up front. Barring some glue mishaps, arming these three lads was a therapeutic experience, but I was also sculpting bits for them at the same, and that experience is what's gonna be valuable to the project going forwards. 

 

 

So what did I do here in green stuff? Well, I modified each head, sculpted some armour plates, and some straps to hold spare rokkits. This was an iterative process, with putty being made into thin strips and panels, place on the model, and them smoothed with water. This is something in need of patience, which I often lack, as the two-part putty needs to left to cure and/or dry-out before putting details atop of it. Often, I went back in to trim bits with a craft knife for a sharper line, or to sand it. The heads are probably the mode involved, as these featured targeters/bionik-eyes/git-finders and the removal of ears to cover with helmets and such. Adding a hand-guard thing to the rokkit launchas was something that added at lot to the look of the thing, but didn’t require much effort. Just tidying it up once it had cured.

 

Now, I’ve got some doubts as to how this all will look with paint on it. I’ve done hats and such in decades cast, and they looked OK, but I’ve not tried helmets and armour. I may need to tweak them further. I know I need to correct that boy on right... Hopefully, they’ll be fine when I eventually paint the whole unit in stage 8.