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 suchsure, 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 toystrying 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 Cloneslacking 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 daysspecifically, 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.
|