| GALVATRON (CANNON
MODE)
PROJECT #413
CLASSIFICATION: SCRATCHBUILD
PARTS USED: TOO MANY TO LIST
MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, SUPER GLUE, ACRYLIC PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE
"You cannot stop me... I am Galvatron! I
am your destruction!"
Preamble: Galvatron was a tricky
character to tackle. Doing repaints of characters who turn into
real-life cars and planes is comparatively easy, if only because there are
plenty of existing toy cars on the market (which is why most of my die-cast
projects have been predominantly Autobots). Once I started thinking
about building similar-scaled projects based on the future-era characters
introduced in The Transformers: the Movie, I knew I would have to
get a little more creative. The best way I could think of to build
a cannon-mode Galvatron was to take the PVC figure, chop it up, and reassemble
it. How wrong I was, gentle reader. How wrong I was.
(Even though I did use some parts of the
Galvatron PVC figure to build this, I'm classifying this as a scratchbuild
since so very little of the original figure went into the making of
this one.)
It took me a long time to hunt down a second PVC
Galvatron for a decent price; I finally got the Heroes of Cybertron
version on eBay. I already owned a translucent version of the Japanese
figure that I had previously painted into Galvatron's colors, and to be quite
honest I think I liked my color scheme better than the one Hasbro came up
with for the Heroes of Cybertron figure. (I took a
comparison picture of the two
figures together for posterity, before I chopped mine up to build the cannon
mode.)
Construction: Hasbro had to make some
concessions when designing the original Galvatron toy, whose transformation
to cannon mode doesn't really match the way the character transforms in
animation. Specifically, his legs actually retract into his body completely
when he transforms (they probably could have done this with the Hasbro version
if it weren't for the primitive electronics package in his upper
torso). Considering how many of Galvatron's robot parts weren't
the right shape for his cannon mode parts, I probably could have just started
from scratch (Galvatron is apparently made from magical shape-changing metal).
I did end up using the original weapon, shoulder pads, and sights,
but everything else is made up from a menagerie of parts I had laying around.
(I had started a version using the
original torso from the PVC
figure, but I put it aside for a few months because I was really dissatisfied
with it and eventually just started over.) The finished version was
assembled from 49 different
parts, including the cap from a Crayola marker; the helicopter tail pieces
from a broken G1 Blades toy; the upper torso from a Robot Heroes Grimlock;
the feet from an R2-D2; a LEGO mini-figure head, and the cap from a
tube of super glue. About half his components had to be sculpted from
scratch, using chunks of PVC plastic from chopped-up SCF toys. (Don't
worry. I only sacrificed the ones I don't care about. The world
has too many Dai Atlas figurines anyway.)
Note that Galvatron is also made from magical
color-changing metal. His upper torso is purple in robot mode,
but it changes to grey when
he transforms into his cannon mode. This may be an artifact of the
original color model on which his Hasbro toy was based; perhaps the color
key artist neglected to update the color model for his alternate mode when
his robot mode was revised. (Which means, of course, that Takara's
anime reissue of the original Galvatron toy is horribly, horribly inaccurate.
But I digress.)
Comments: Testors model paints have
always been my brand of choice, but it seems like all the local shops have
stopped carrying the acrylic paints. (They still have enamel paints,
but I can't use those on my PVC projects because the plastic reacts badly.)
Anyway, lately I've been using some new craft paints that come in these
great, big bottles. They dry to a decidedly dull matte finish, though,
which means that if I want a glossy look to my robot projects I have to spray
them with an enamel coating. It's an extra step that irritates me,
but these things just don't look finished to me unless they're nice and
shiny. |
|
