Independence Day

Happy Independence Day! This is going up early since I'm going to be too busy or too lazy to work on stuff the next couple of days.

I'm not a huge fan of of the Michael Bay movies, but find them to be mostly a fun if sometimes nonsensical romp. If nothing else, these movies have put Transformers back into the public mainstream. They didn't spur me back into collecting (that was the High Moon games), but made me remember my favorite childhood toys.

Movie Masterpiece Bumblebee is a pretty aesthetically pleasing figure, despite some design flaws. I put some color overlays on him and the Memorial to reflect the colors of the fireworks.

The fireworks are photos I took from last year's Independence Day show. The Lincoln Memorial picture was taken on a recent trip to Washington DC.

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Soundwave

Soundwave was definitely my favorite Decepticon. As a child, I found his monotone and synthetic voice to be unforgettable. Future iterations of the character have not managed to recapture that magic for me though. Forget the voice of Siri and Alexa, if NASA were to let me anywhere near the voice of their future shuttle AI, this is what I would program it to sound like. This was the Decepticon that instilled fear in me. Cold, unfeeling, calculating, and seemingly dispassionate - he was the one Cybertronian that ticks off that fear of the rise of the machines. His small army of extremely loyal minibots made him a force onto himself. It was fortunate for Megatron that Soundwave was unfailingly loyal.

This is also my favorite of the official Masterpiece Decepticons. The figure captures everything iconic about the character and is better engineered than any of the Seekers. The minions are smaller than I would have liked, but I can understand the need to make them fit into his chest. I can't wait to replace them with the oversized ones from Ocular Max though. Since I have the Hasbro version, I had to replace his yellow eye visor with a third party add-on. I suppose I could have painted it myself, but I didn't have the confidence to paint back then.

I shot Masterpiece Soundwave, Laserbeak and Ocular Max Jaguar in a light tent, propping KFC Mandy on a USB adapter. I used a purple filter on the lamps to impart some magenta highlights. In Photoshop, I added eye glows and cleaned up screw holes, especially on Mandy. I probably should have made Soundwave bigger, but I couldn't have without his legs and Jaguar disappearing off the bottom of the picture. Plus, I didn't want to obscure the background too much.

The reflection in the water is actually their real reflection. When the bottom edge of your subject is uneven, it is not a trivial exercise of copying and flipping the picture. Fortunately, my plexiglass surface is very reflective. I did apply a Gaussian blur to give the reflection a more watery effect. I also added water lines because I've been watching Bob Ross.

The background is of the Washington Monument during a recent trip to Washington DC. I woke up at 2:30 am PST and faced the 40 degree weather (still can't comprehend that number) to take pictures. I wished the sky had been more dramatic with clouds.

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"I am become death"

These space scenes are fun to create. One difficulty is knowing when to stop piddling with it - should I add more explosions and lasers, how about some fog, clean up the edges just a bit more, tweak the colors, etc. At some point, I just have to hit the save button and walk away so I can move on to other projects.

Mastermind Boreas was shot in a light tent. Various curve and photostyle layers were used for color grading and achieving the look and feel I wanted for him. The red body glow are from Inner/Outer Glow layer styles. I created his head lights from a white polygon by placing two Field Blur points on either end of it.

The planet is a Spherize distoration of a circular cut out of lava tiles. Various layers of shadows and glows were used to make it look like it has an atmosphere. The sun is a lens flare render. The nebula in the back is from a picture taken on a cloudy day. The stars are created from a couple of noise render layers.

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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.

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Megatron

I haven't yet decided if I will do a full review of Megatron 2.0 because of advisory warnings about paint chipping during transformation. My copy of Apollyon has never been transformed because of the same issue. In the meantime, I decided to try another portrait.

For some reason, Megatron never instilled in me the same amount of fear and awe as Optimus Prime inspired confidence and respect. Maybe it was because just about every episode ended with his schemes being foiled and very often he was the one to sound the retreat.

This is another character not lacking in choices. I went with Takara Megatron 2.0 mostly because of new toy syndrome. I covered up some visible screws and a few out-of-the-box blemishes. Inner and Outer glow layer styles were used to add some pop to the eyes. His Decepticon symbol also has Inner and Outer glow layer styles enabled, with some experimentation with a Gradient overlay to achieve a subtle shimmering effect. I shot him in front of orange construction paper, which imparted an orange hue to the highlights.

The background is a sun I created from first doing some rendering Difference Clouds, cutting out a circle, Spherize distorting, and applying an orange Hue/Saturation layer. The streaks around the sun are from a Radial Zoom Blur. The stars are from a couple of Noise layers.

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Jurassic Battle

Giant robot dinosaurs! Why are they fighting on some moon in some distant solar system? Who cares. I justed wanted to use Planet X Apocalypse in a space scene.

Apocalypse, Vulcun, and Caelus were shot together because they are interacting with each other. Quirinus, Summanus, and Neptune were shot separately and dropped into the picture. I had to cut and paste Summanus' and Neptune's heads in from different shots because they can't look up like that. Blemishes and screw holes were covered up. Glowie bits are Inner and Outer layer styles. Quirinus fire breath was created from my custom smoke brush. I added a dust cloud by overlaying one of my cloud photos.

The stars are a couple of noise layers. The swirling galaxy in the background is from a NASA photo of a hurricane that I distorted. The foreground surface is a NASA photo of the moon's surface. The planets are from marble texture images I found online and Spherized. The sun is from a lens flare.

It's pretty fun and simple to create these kind of space backgrounds. Just another option until I get a chance to photograph some more sunsets.

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"I am all that is or ever was or ever will be."

Of course I would want to do a space scene with Toyworld Spaceracer. Instead of doing a simple star field or reusing the wallpaper I had found for Planet X Mors, I decided to follow some tutorials and create one from scratch.

The star field is made of two noise layers. The planet and moons are Spherize distorted circular cutouts from marble textures I found online. The nebula are created from a photo of wispy clouds taken on a summer day and one I found online. Finally, I threw in a lens flare to simulate a sun and because I'm apparently being influenced by JJ Abrams school of cinematography.

I purposely left his head sticking up a little bit. Floating up there all by himself all the time, he's probably a little bored and addle-brained.

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