ZMFTS Update Log (2010) I'm always making little changes here and there that won't merit a mention in the updates log, but just about anything new that I've added to the site can be found here.  Keep in mind that some links on this page will no longer work as the site continues to evolve.  Always start from the home page to find the most current links! 11.26.2010 kitbashes Got three new projects from my top three favorite things-that-I'm-a-fan-of.  First off, we have a brand new generic background character from the original Transformers cartoon.  Well, I guess he's not brand new at all, since he's actually been there all along since 1984, but I don't think anybody ever noticed him before.  Anyway, there's a character from the original pilot mini-series who looks a bit like Hound, but he shares a color scheme with Sideswipe.  Coloring mistake, you say?  Ho, ho!  Perish the thought!  This is Battlefield, a heretofore undiscovered, previously unnamed Autobot who only shows up in one scene and never got a Hasbro toy!  This is my version, rendered in super-deformed Robot Heroes style. Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away...  Ever since they came out with the super-cool Electric Power F/X action figure assortment, I've always wanted an action figure of C-3PO with glowing eyes!  They never came out with one as such—sure, there was the 12" Action Collection doll, but I'm talking about something that's actually to scale with all the other 3 ¾" Star Wars toys I've already got.  The only thing that ever came close was the C-3PO head and torso accessory that came with a Chewbacca action figure a few years back, so I took those parts and combined them with a regular C-3PO action figure to create my version of Electronic Power F/X C-3PO.  (My current pet peeve: people who call him C-3P0.  It ain't See Threepeezero, folks.) I've also got an all-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles project to show you.  As we all know, Krang, that chortling, burbling brain from Dimension X, had both a humanoid robot body as well as a mechanical bubble walker that he used when his android body was in the shop for repairs.  The bubble walker was actually created by Playmates Toys as a substitute for Krang's full-sized body, and it ended up making a few appearances in the cartoon.  My version is accurate to the original cartoon series, including a completely rebuilt bubble walker with all-new accessories as well as a facelift for Krang himself! 9.13.2010 kitbashes After a hiatus of about ten years, I finally decided to start working on s'more Final Fantasy II projects.  (Purists will know the game as Final Fantasy IV, but I grew up in America, not Japan, so to me it will always be FF2.)  Anyway, I did an action figure version of Edge, making my fourth project of a character from the game.  Going forward, I have tentative plans to do every playable character from the game.  (I was having some difficulty coming up with toys to turn into Tellah and FuSoYa, though.  For some reason, there just aren't too many old man action figures out there.) 8.25.2010 That's right, it's the official C-3PO themed update.  I would love to show this to Anthony Daniels without feeling like I'm inconveniencing him over a silly fan web site obsessed with toys.  Well, anyway. kitbashes Recently I felt compelled to find yet another set of the old MPC model kits of C-3PO and R2-D2.  I have immensely fold childhood memories of building the original kits with my dad, and isn't that why most of us are collecting toys—trying to recapture the feeling of happier, more innocent times?  Anyway, I had previously done a fairly straight build of the kit in 2002, but this time I decided I wanted to mix things up a bit and paint him into his tarnished, mismatched colors from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  I also improved on the design of the model kit a little bit, so let me know what you think.   This is sort of a cheatsy half-project, but about midway through coating C-3PO in silver paint (so I could paint over top of it but then sand it down so that it looked as if the bare metal was exposed), it occurred to me that he looked just like TC-14 at this phase of the project.  So, I pretended that I did this deliberately and took some pictures of it.  Please feel free to ignore this. Finally, after all this business with model kits was over and done with, I realized how inadequate the smaller-scale action figure versions of C-3PO actually are as he appears in Attack of the Clones—lacking paint applications that would really do justice to the protocol droid at this stage in his career.  So, I did a much smaller action figure version of poor, rusty C-3PO.  This is currently my favorite project by merit of the fact that it's the one I've finished most recently. I also took the opportunity to update a bunch of pictures of my Star Wars projects, mostly replacing the movie screen shots and adding some comparison shots of the official toys that Hasbro came up with after I showed them how to do it.  (I'm being facetious here.  Mostly.)  As an aside, for those of you who are making screen shots from the Star Wars movies on DVD, I would love to know how you do it.  (They're coded to only play on my computer through proprietary software that won't allow me to take screen captures, which annoys me immensely.) 7.18.2010 Wow, another update.  Making up for my lack of productivity earlier, one supposes.  Hmm. kitbashes Fans of the old Ninja Turtles cartoon will remember the episode "Super Bebop and Mighty Rocksteady," in which Krang creates robot versions of those two lovable mutants, Super Rocksteady and Mighty Bebop.  (Yes, I got that right.)  They finally made action figures based on them several years later, and while the sculpts were very accurate to the animation, but the colors were way off.  Anyway, I wanted to do versions of my own that were more accurate to their starring episode, so here are my versions of Mighty Bebop and Super Rocksteady. 7.9.2010 Hey, look!  More projects! kitbashes Okay, so here's the deal.  In the old TMNT cartoon, the Ninja Turtles were always running around in those private eye disguises, right?  Way back in the day, Playmates Toys did a version of Don, the Undercover Turtle, but not the other three.  (Yes, I am aware they did versions later with cloth trench coats.  I own those, too.  Trust me, they're not worth the hundreds they go for on eBay.)  Anyway, I wanted to do versions of the Turtles in their trench coats that actually looked the way they did in the cartoon series, so without further ado, I present to you my versions of Undercover Donatello, Undercover Leonardo, Undercover Michaelangelo, and Undercover Raphael.  (These also served as my prototypes so I made sure I got the colors right for when I do the "regular" versions of the Turtles.  I'm probably going to work on the paint mix a little more because I don't think I got their shade of green quite right.) 6.25.2010 I really have no idea what I'm doing sometimes. This has been a very unproductive year for me.  The biggest and most important project that's occupied my attention of late is my two-and-a-half year old son, who consumes a great deal of my free time and is, of course, eternally a work-in-progress.  I don't think I'll be kitbashing or repainting him, though, since he's one of the few items in my collection who's absolutely perfect just the way he is. With that said, there's a lot I still want to do before this site ever sees its final update.  I've been gobbling up action figures and little toy cars and things for many years with the intent of actually doing something with them at some point, so it would be a shame to have actually found the perfect starting point for so many projects but never end up following through.  Problem is, I also get distracted by other things like Super Mario Galaxy 2 or my efforts to convert my 200+ cassette tapes to mp3 format.  Then, of course, there are my greater career aspirations which always seem to end up on the back burner, but I've been making a concerted half-hearted effort to work on that, too. So, with that being said, this is what I've finished lately that's worthy of adding to the site.  (What I really need to do, honestly, is invent a device that will squeeze more hours into each day.  That would be really useful.) kitbashes So, the other day I was thinking about Foot Soldiers, specifically all the goofy-colored ones from the old Nintendo game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, and I decided I really wanted to have a go at doing my own versions of them.  Problem is, I don't own that many Foot Soldier action figures, so I did the next best thing and came up with digital repaints of all of 'em.  (Now, I do consider this cheating since they're not "real" projects that I can sell on eBay or whatever, but I did also lump them all together as project #442, despite there being over a dozen of them, so I do hope that this in some small way makes up for the sheer inauthenticity of these non-existent projects.) As for TMNT projects that actually exist in three-dimensional space, I finally got around to doing an action figure version of Granitor, the "other" Stone Warrior who appeared alongside General Traag in his debut episode, "Hot Rodding Teenagers From Dimension X."  This was a labor of love for me since he's a character I've always wanted to own as an action figure, but it took me a while to figure out how to really do him justice. Also, I took two of the licensed Nintendo kid's meal toys that Wendy's restaurants did a few years back and turned them into oldskool versions of Mario from his grand and glorious 8-bit days—specifically, the regular version of Mario and the powered-up Fiery Mario.  I actually finished these months ago, but I thought I was eventually going to put another coat of paint on them or something.  Obviously that's not going to happen at this point, so here they are. fan fiction Last month on alt.toys.transformers we were all writing short little vignettes about various characters from the Transformers mythos, and I cranked out a handful of fun little micro-stories, one for each year that the G1 toy line was on the shelves, each focusing on a lesser-known, unsung character from that year.  (This is very different from the writing I normally do, which has a much larger and grander scope, though I suppose "Children of Cybertron" is essentially a big collection of character vignettes all strung together.)  Anyway, if you'd care to read them (and shame on you if you haven't already), they are "Memories" (starring a 1984 character); "Roles" (1985); "Eyes" (1986); "Cooperation" (1987); "Moods" (1988); "Nicknames" (1989); and "Words" (1990).  Check out the thread on ATT when you get a chance, because there were a lot of other really good character studies by other authors, too.