| PERCEPTOR (MICROSCOPE
MODE)
PROJECT #231 "Fortunately, I am stuck in microscope mode..." Preamble: Back when Takara started producing the incredibly cool SCF figurines, I built up a small piecemeal collection of clear and pewter variants. I wasn't about to buy entire cases just to get the handful of characters I wanted, and I knew I could get the unpainted versions for fairly cheap (or free, in some cases) and just paint them myself. When Hasbro started selling them domestically under the Heroes of Cybertron banner, I ended up getting most of the characters I wanted that way. I still had a handful of unpainted Japanese figures left over, though, so I started looking into other ideas for them instead of simply painting them in their normal colors. There really aren't any differently-colored permutations of Perceptor from the cartoon worth mentioning (except maybe a version covered in cosmic rust), and I wasn't really interested in painting him into his prototype colors from the Hasbro toy catalogs. Then I got to thinking about how I'd never gotten around do doing an alternate-mode version of Perceptor for my collection of die-cast miniatures (you'd be surprised how blessed few action figures come with microscope accessories), so I pondered the possibility of chopping him up and reassembling him in his transformed-mode. I became so taken with the idea that no other alternatives were even worth considering. Construction: I ended up disassembling Perceptor into about 20 pieces. I had to separate the upper body from the lower body and reattach it, since he's kind of tilted to one side and I wanted the microscope mode to be as bilaterally symmetrical as possible. I cut the chest panel off and flipped it around to form the microscope stage, cutting off the mirror and reattaching it beneath the stage, pretty much like the way the G1 toy actually transforms. I significantly shortened the arms, cutting off the focus dials on each arm and reattaching them using pieces from a model kit parts tree (the only such parts of the project not built out of Perceptor bits). For the legs, I chopped off the feet and then sliced off the bottom of each leg to make them a little more symmetrical with respect to one another. For the eyepiece, I'd thought about simply gluing the peg from his light cannon into the hole for his head, but that didn't quite look right to me. So, I took the extra step of building an eyepiece mount (using a piece of his rifle) and attaching the scope to that. I attached the scope to the mount with a pin, so it swivels freely. (I'd actually cut the scope from its moorings and reattached it with a pin, intending to add another point of articulation, but it only pivots by about 20 degrees or so.) I also filled in the holes for his fists and shoulder cannon with putty. All that was left to do was paint him. Rather than stick to the semi-inaccurate Heroes of Cybertron paint scheme, I studied some cartoon episodes and came up with a slightly more true-to-animation color model. Painting the figure was kind of tricky, since there are lots of tiny pieces that are less than a millimeter apart from touching one another. (I ended up creating a new paintbrush just for this project, and afterwards I wondered how I ever got by using a brush with so many bristles.) Results: I am so pleased with this project. It turned out better than I could possibly have imagined. I'm half-tempted to start chopping up more PVC figurines and try to rebuild them into vehicle mode, but I suspect that very few of the sculpts will lend themselves to that quite as well as Perceptor did. (I think I could do some promising things with the Fortress Maximus PVC, but first I'd need to, y'know, actually get a spare Fortress Maximus PVC.) |
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This Page Created 3/30/2004
Last Update: 10/16/2009
©2004 Inspiration Studios
Transformers and Heroes of Cybertron
are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc.
