Badcube Sunsurge

He just arrived yesterday. It's a pretty fun figure that will do for my Masterpiece display. Wonderfully, his transformation is not a copy of the Masterpiece Lambos and features another fun new chest collapsing mechanism that I'm starting to expect from Badcube releases. I seem to be having trouble with the left side chest panel though. You have to mistransform his feet to get him to be the same height as MP Sideswipe.

I used my Canon 500D Close-up conversion lens to photograph the included Chip Chase figure, but the normal lens to photograph Sunsurge. I kept his bottom out of frame so I wouldn't have to spend time blending him into whatever he's sitting on. The background is a summer sunset shot with my Hoya FLW filter. The mountain is just a rock from my garden with a field blur applied.

The Chip figure is actually larger than what I'm showing here. I wanted to more closely match the scale shown in that particular scene of the cartoon.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVOFBEZEpIWE1Sczg

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The Death of Prowl

I saw The Movie with a couple of friends at the theater. I was 8 at the time. Sure, a planet of nameless robots just got eaten by Unicron, but I don't think those deaths had any impact. It was not until the slaughter on the shuttle did I realize The Movie was doing something different.

Sure, Brawn charged the Decepticons without even a blaster in his hand and got a hole in hisshoulder for his troubles. No big deal; he's been shot in the head before and survived. Oh, Prowl is vomiting smoke now. Ironhide and Ratchet were next to fall, but I don't think it really hit me that they were all dead until Megatron blew off Ironhide's head. Kinda of a bad showing for the Autobots, now that I think about it.

I used a Canon 500D close-up conversion lens so I could fill the frame with Masterpiece Prowl's head. It certainly emphasized how sloppy the paintwork and molded detail are. The majority of the work for this picture was spent in touching up all the imperfections on the face, helmet, and crest. Mind you, this is an official Takara Masterpiece, not a KO. I also removed the backpack since it was a bit out of focus due to the shallow depth of field provided by the macro lens.

The background is just a shot of my trusty panels of Mechanical Chain Bases, with an orange overlay to simulate the ceiling of the shuttle. The eye glows are created from fiddling with the inner and outer glow and color overlay layer effects. The smoke is created from my custom brush. The few minutes spent making it are certainly paying off in how often I use it.

Hi-res link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVR0J0TnQ0RmZCdU0/view?usp=sharing

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Fallen

I saw a picture of Optimus Prime holding Elita One that I wanted to replicate. I was going to use MP-10 Optimus Prime, but he's too large when compared to Mastermind Creations Eupatorium. Instead, this is the clear version of Transformers Prime First Edition Optimus Prime.

I don't have a toy of Cybertron to photograph so I used a picture I found on the web. The background is my own photo of a cloudy summer evening. The lightning is created within Photoshop.

Hi-res link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVYnZUbmQ3SWRBN0U/view?usp=sharing

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X Transbots Apollyon and Masterpiece Starscream and Soundwave

I wanted to see what else I could do with the shots I had taken for my collages. Here are the big three. I applied some Color Balance and Hue adjustments to get them to go with the sky.

The sky is from a cloudy summer evening, using a magenta filter on my lens. The ground is a close-up of the rock formation at Natural Bridges Santa Cruz, with the birds removed.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVTnRpRlpmY29NdU0/view?usp=sharing

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Planet X Vulcun with Rage Over Cybertron Optimus Prime

I was debating whether or not to replace every element in the source picture, but quickly realized I'm not yet skilled enough to reproduce everything on my own. Instead, I opted to add what I could with my own photos, and let interesting bits show through so that the final picture would be more dynamic.

I started with a Render Clouds layer and masks to give the picture more atmosphere. It also helps to hide the feet of some of the figures. Without it, Vulcun would look like he was floating over the ground.

Starscream required a little work to hide the hollow gap behind the cockpit, but otherwise just needed a little fiddling with saturation levels to not appear overly bright. His contrails are photos of a candle flame stretched out.

Optimus Prime has quite a bit of hollowness and holes on his arms and legs, that I filled in. Most of that work didn't make it into the final composition so next time I'll have to remember to compose then fix. It's very subtle, but without Layer Effects enabled for the panel lines and Autobot symbol, he would look very dull. The eyes and weapon glows have a more obvious impact. Unfortunately, his head articulation doesn't really allow the figure to match the dynamic pose of the source material.

I don't like putting batteries in my figures so it is no big loss that Planet X Vulcun's red bits don't glow. It's an easy enough effect to add in Photoshop, and it helps to cover up some of the screws. Being a great figure, there are no gaps to fill in.

I left in parts of the picture of Optimus Prime and Grimlock because they resemble buildings and structures. Maketoys Nemesis is taking the place of the structure in the top right. Maketoys Utopia and Fall of Cybertron Shockwave are there to add interest to otherwise empty sections of the picture.

In the skies above Cybertron, I added a few more Seekers and a moon. The smoke cloud and meteors were added by creating a custom brush out of a Render Clouds layer.

The building on the left is the same set of Mechanical Chain Base panels from my previous picture, with bits masked out to let the background picture show through.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVNWp0R2hPbWx3STQ

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Planet X Vulcan with Fall of Cybertron Starscream

Thanks to Erik Rosenquist for this idea of recreating this scene from the game. It's not exact. I changed the angles of the characters because their shoulder pylons would block out their faces.

Planet X Vulcun is an amazing figure. I can't stop messing around with him. I am so glad this Planet X set is complete. I only had to cover up a couple of screws and add in some glow effects.

I never noticed how hollow Starscream is. There is a huge gap along his left side and a bunch of small holes in his right thigh. I also had to mask out his club fist and stitch in an articulated hand from Perfect Effect. It's a subtle effect, but I changed the color of his cockpit canopy to more closely match the scene and added a pink glow to his chest/shoulder panels. The thrusters are from a set of picnic torches, with Hue/Saturation adjustments.

The background is a set of four mechanical chain bases. The shot was taken with a purple gel on my flash, with color temperatures further tweaked in Photoshop. I also applied a Spherize distortion filter. Unfortunately, I don't yet know how to do a cable coming out of the background and into the foreground so I just upped the fog effect.

This was pretty fun to do. I'm going to have to comb through scenes from the cartoon, games, and other materials to get more ideas.

Be sure to download the hi-res file at:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVSEgyc2M0RE9nZVk/view

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Planet X Dinobots

Planet X Caelus - Fall of Cybertron Swoop
This was my first third party purchase. I'm so glad I took the plunge because there are just so many great figures out there that fill gaps in Hasbro's line or simply improve upon what is available.

I started with a photo of an overcast day and enhanced it with some more drawn in clouds. That custom smoke brush is sure coming in handy.

The star streaks are Motion blurred, Guassian blurred, Noise layers. 

Caelus doesn't have as many obvious places to add in glowing bits. I still need to work on making a more convincing afterburner.

These are my favorite collection of Transformers, but a third party company needs to get working on articulated neck and tail extensions.

Planet X Neptune - Fall of Cybertron Sludge

I kept the same background as Quirinus so I could focus on touching up the figure. Since the upcoming Paddles is just a remold of Neptune, it's probably too much to hope that he will have the articulated neck and tail as well as replacement parts for Neptune.

Even without them, this is still a great figure. I love the size in comparison to the rest of his team. His hammer weapons are a nice change of pace from the usually included swords.

Planet X Quirinus - Fall of Cybertron Slug

I hadn't noticed until now that Slag was renamed to Slug in the game.

Compared to the previous project, this was a piece of a cake. I intend to do the same for the rest of the figures.

Unfortunately, there are no caves nearby so I had to make do with a photo I took of a nearby park to serve as my background.

Planet X Summanus - Fall of Cybertron Snarl
This is an absolutely beautiful figure, with all the transparent plastic plates and spikes. Unfortunately, transparent plastic was also used in joints and mount points so you have to handle this figure with some care. I still love it though. Makes me wish that the Autobots, or Shockwave in this case, didn't just stop at five Dinobots. At least Paddles is in the works.

I probably shouldn't hold my breath for an articulated neck and tail add-on pack.

Planet X Vulcun - Fall of Cybertron Grimlock
Although I already did Grimlock, I wanted to complete this picture set. This is an amazing figure that corrects all the faults of the Hasbro version. It feels so great to finally complete this line of Dinobots.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVNHFHa3JqekJabVE/view?usp=sharing
Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVT3FvUXpSdHZGdmc/view?usp=sharing
Hi-res image at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVeEtFU3NqSzNCT2s/view?usp=sharing
Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVVlI2RUJqTF9FbXc/view?usp=sharing
Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVN29EWHJxdU9aM0U/view?usp=sharing

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