| BUMBLEBEE AND
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
CLASSIFICATION: ORIGINAL SCULPTURES
CREATED BY: CRAZYSTEVE
MATERIALS USED: RESIN COMPOUND, FABRIC DYE, ENAMEL PAINTS
MEDIA APPEARANCE: "MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE" PART 1 (BUMBLEBEE); "FIVE
FACES OF DARKNESS" PART 3 (SLAUGHTERHOUSE)
"We've got to get these energy conductors back
to Iacon!"
"I'm right behind you!"
Preamble: I had absolutely nothing to do
with the creation of the CybCon 2004 exclusive toys this year, but they're
so tremendously cool that I just had to put up a page devoted to them.
(Besides, I still did all the artwork, so I should at least get partial
credit for the final product.) The first of them is an original,
fully-transformable version of Bumblebee in his Cybertronic vehicle mode,
as seen in the G1 pilot episode. Joining him is a representation of
Slaughterhouse, the name I gave to the generic background Decepticon from
"Five Faces of Darkness" part 3, seen here in a Cybertronic form identical
in design to that of the other Decepticon jets before they were given Earth
modes.
Construction: Slaughterhouse is cast from
the same mold as the other
resin Cybertronic
jets that crazysteve has created in the past, but this color scheme was
produced specifically for CybCon. Slaughterhouse was named for the
fact that the animators used Onslaught's color model for him.
Unfortunately, I didn't provide crazysteve with a color key like I
really should have, so he basically had to guess at what colors to make
Slaughterhouse based on my artwork and screen shots. As a result, his
secondary colors ended up more yellow than green. Still, I think he
turned out really nicely. (I'm particularly proud of this one. While
I didn't have anything to do with the creation of the toy, I did create the
character and write the biography for his packaging, so in a way I think
of him as "my" character. That's my PVC repaint of Slaughterhouse
in robot mode pictured next to CybCon 2004 Slaughterhouse in vehicle
mode.)
I couldn't even begin to describe all the work
that must have gone into creating Bumblebee. When crazysteve said he
was going to make a Cybertronic version of Bumblebee, I'd assumed he was
just going to start with the keychain toy and glue some resin wings to his
arms or something. I hadn't imagined in my wildest dreams that he was
going to design the toy completely from scratch! As he worked out the
sculpt and transformation, he sent us regular updates on his progress, including
pictures of the prototypes in various stages of completion. A few details
changed during the course of the project (like the shape of the wings and
the design of the pegs holding the arms in place), but the basic concept
never changed. The only piece of him that isn't completely scratchbuilt
is the face, which was molded from the original Bumblebee toy.
Bumblebee was cast in resin that was dyed black
first, then the outer surfaces were painted yellow in the appropriate places,
so that none of the paint would scrape off during the transformation process.
The outline of some of the sculpted surfaces, like the windows and
paneling, was traced in pen to help bring out the detail. The finished
product has a wingspan of 3.5 inches in Cybertronic car mode and has about
the same height measurement in robot mode at the head, making him not too
much bigger than your basic Mini Autobot.
The package artwork that I came up with for Bumblebee
was actually based on an early prototype, in which the wings were a different
shape and the design of the snap-on forearms hadn't yet been finalized. I
did the Slaughterhouse box art, meanwhile, long before I got to see
the finished product, which is why I didn't draw him with his guns in place.
(Between this and the business with Slaughterhouse's colors, I think
I've developed a newfound appreciation for the types of miscommunications
that can result during the production of an official toy).
I also designed custom instructions for Bumblebee,
an obvious necessity since he's an original toy and not just a repaint of
an existing Hasbro product. Using a set of G1 instructions as a template,
I came up with the appropriate line art and accompanying text and, once it
was all assembled, printed it out and folded it up into a fairly accurate
facsimile in the style of the original instruction booklets. (A little
while later, I realized that the original instructions actually had
full-color photos of the toys, so I threw one of those together as a
novelty.)
Comments: I've also uploaded a separate
page that goes into a little more detail about the
battle scene art I designed for
the CybCon 2004 packaging. |
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