"You have failed me for the last time . . . again"

"You've failed me for the last time . . . again"

Starscream, the trope namer for the overly ambitious subordinate who's ready to take over for the big bad at the first sign of weakness. I've always found it hilarious how he was so quick to declare that Megatron had fallen and assume command of the Decepticons. I can't help but feel a sense of vicarious pride for the smug bastard during his crowning ceremony in The Movie, only to laugh when Galvatron finally shows up and does what Megatron should have done so long ago. I wish they had shown how Starscream managed to subdue all the Decepticons, including Devastator, after jettisoning a mortally wounded Megatron. My biggest complaint about his portrayal in the live action movies is that we never saw that traitorous aspect of this character.

I suppose I could have shot Masterpiece Starscream with his crown and cape accessories at the height of his glory, but I suffered from new toy syndrome with Maketoys Meteor. Although the mechanics of shooting Meteor and Despotron were simple, I did have to spend a bit of time finagling the figures into position because of Despotron's arm sculpt butting against Meteor's chest sculpt.

The final image is a composite of a couple of shots - one with purple gel and another with orange gel on my flash. In Photoshop, I combined them together, exposing whichever parts of each layer I felt worked against the background I had chosen. The background is a shot of some random fall evening. I also added some color overlay layers to further enhance the purplish and orange reflections. It's a subtle effect, but worth the effort I think because the figures would just be a somewhat plain off-white otherwise. The reflections of the clouds and trees on Meteor's body were done with a layer mask and a slightly transparent brush to allow the background to show through.

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Jazz

Jazz was one of my favorites. Fortunately, he survived the great toy purge of the '86 movie, but he seems to have lost some prominence in the third and fourth seasons of the cartoon. For some reason, I always thought of him as Optimus Prime's second in command, and was disappointed that the mantle of leadership was passed onto Ultra Magnus and then Hot Rod instead.

Unlike my previous two portrait subjects, Jazz is definitely lacking in viable options. Generation Toys J4zz is more IDW-inspired; so is Reveal the Shield Jazz from so long ago. There is still no official Masterpiece version of this character. Is this a case of official car licenses getting in the way of toy releases?

I shot Maketoys Downbeat in my light tent, with a magenta gel on my key light to try and match the background I had chosen. Besides the usual time spent cleaning up blemishes, I also added some eye and headlight glows. Too bad the figure's hand doesn't retract to match the shot from the cartoon.

The background is a shot of some random summer evening when the setting sun was leaving visible light streaks in the sky, even to the naked eye.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVOGpnWC1mNjJLc1U

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Any Last Words?

Optimus Prime and Megatron fighting in the Los Altos mountains overlooking the Silicon Valley. This is my fourth picture of Optimus Prime losing to Megatron. I wonder what that says about me.

I haven't figured out a decent way of replicating believable dirt terrain for indoor shooting so just cropped out where Megatron's feet would be touching the ground. 

I composited separate shots of Maketoys Striker Manus and Rioter Despotron against a sunrise shot taken at Black Mountain in Los Altos. Two hours of hiking to get that backdrop and a few more. I used a Flourescent color temperature to change the warm orange sunrise to purple and blue. Craquelure Filter Gallery give both a battle-worn and damaged look. The smoke is drawn in with my custom brush. Some of the debris from Optimus Prime are cut-outs while others are brushed in. Megatron's fusion blast is just a normal brush with Inner/Outer layer glow styles and multiple Field Blurs applied. I also drew in Megatron's smile.

I got the inspiration from a picture that Dane Dougherty had posted.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVU1FPSWdtOWhwMEk

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Fallen Comrade

I didn't break Trash-Talk just for this shot. That's a feature of the figure. I posed him, Cogwheel, Striker Manus, and Badcube Sunsurge on some desert panels from ToyHax.

I created the fire wth my custom smoke brush. 

The background is a shot of Hollow Bean State Beach. I tried to blend the two together. Damn, California beaches are so dreary, even in the summer. I need to make my way back to Hawaii.

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More Than Meets the Eye - Hound vs Rumble

Although this multi-part episode has two scenes where Hound tosses Rumble, I wanted to try some new techniques so chose the underwater scene.

I shot Maketoys Gundog on some Toyhax desert tile stages. The rocks in the foreground and background were cut and pasted in from some shots I had taken at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Masterpiece Rumble was added in using layer masks so I could get one leg in front and one leg in back of Gundog. He's a bit on the small side so I had to scale him up a bit. There were a lot of plastic flash and paint blemishes to cover up.

The Filter Gallery actually has an Ocean Ripple filter, but I found the Canvas Glass filter to provide the effect I wanted. It's not quite perfect, but close enough. This resulted in a lot cleaning up around the edges of the figures though. I also added a dark blue overlay to darken the scene.

Unfortunately, Photoshop hiccuped or something. Although I was saving constantly, after I did an export and closed down the app, I couldn't find my project file. I searched the entire disc for it, and it's not in the Recently Opened list. I'll just have to recreate it. More practice I guess.

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Auto Beserk

This turned out to be a lot more involved than I had originally thought. I took separate shots of Masterpiece Optimus Prime and Red Alert, Maketoys Hellfire, and Generations Hoist. This was necessary because Hellfire's arms aren't long enough to hold Red Alert in that position.

Red Alert's legs were pasted into position from two separate shots, one for each leg, because he can't actually bend into the position that I needed and to prevent a robot up-skirt shot. I used those odd brushes to apply the scorch marks. I had mispositioned Optimus Prime's arm for the shot so had to resort to cutting and pasting it into a new angle.

The sky is a shot of cloudy summer evening.

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We're in for trouble ... big trouble

I suppose I could have done this shot previously with TFC Ironwill, but I just wasn't feeling it with that figure. Masterpiece Ironhide, with his crying face, is a much better fit for this scene. Ironhide's quick release button for his face should be a new standard feature. I could have waited for Masterpiece Ratchet as well. I can always drop him in when the figure comes out.

Ironhide, Wheeljack, and Gundog were shot together. Medic was shot separately since I wanted to maintain that weird animation error of this scene. I had to scoot Gundog to the left more to avoid hiding his face behind Ironhide's arm.

The background is just a set of Mechanical Chain Base panels with a Hue/Saturation layer applied to make it orange. The monitors were created by just painting on a blue square and then running it through a Grain Texture filter. The rock is a shot of a boulder at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve with a Hue/Saturation layer applied to remove the moss color.

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Megatron Must Be Stopped

Since I don't have a spaceship figure or runway to photograph, I thought I'd try simply superimposing the figures on a screen capture of the scene. I still had to use the clone stamp to erase where the cartoon characters were peaking through the figures

The sky is from a summer sunset with a Hoya FLW filter. The hill is from a local park.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVSnFFZ1ZtU0JkcVU/view?usp=sharing

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