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October 25, 2006

Ever thought how you would update Soundwave to something more modern than a tape player with Cassetticons? A lot of people have. I’ve thought about it, too. 

The CatFormers are my own knock-offs. They bear an uncanny resemblance to my three housecats and transform into cookies. Although I haven’t drawn them yet, the guardians that they are stored in are none other than cookie jars. Okay, so maybe that’s not cool enough for the real Transformers…

I never minded the mass shifting in the original cartoon, but I wanted to come up with an idea for modern alternate modes that would avoid mass shifting altogether. I focused on thinking of an alternate mode for the cassettes because it is critical that they have forms to handle the size of their robot modes. I know it’s not sound-related, but here’s my idea.

Do you think it would work? It might be difficult for someone to carry off such heavy luggage, but it could make for some neat stories of Decepticon infiltration.

But what about Soundwave? Or Blaster, for that matter, since he is also a tape player. Well, now that we know what the cassettes have become it opens up the possibilities.

It would unfortunately make more sense to modify Soundwave’s name for the first two modes. As the bus he’d have to be called Greenwave, or as a yacht he’d be called Tidalwave. Uh…no. I think a helicopter would be the most appropriate and most cool form for Soundwave. I suppose as a helipcopter he could be called Airwave, but it’s close enough to just call him Soundwave. A helicopter makes a sound that would allow Soundwave to keep his name, and even carry his minions inside him. 

But do helicopters really carry luggage? The answer is Yes. 

Yeah, I don’t know about you, but the luggage idea is growing on me. I like the helipcopter, but I really like the bus!

October 19, 2006

For starters, the animation in this movie is good. A live-action adaptation of The Last Unicorn was recently considered, but I don’t think they could capture the magic the cartoon movie had. In my mind, some things are better left as cartoons, rather than being made into live-action adaptations. The same goes for the Transformers, from what I’ve seen of what is unfortunately becoming of them and the canon storyline in the upcoming movie. I would love to see, in a few years time, someone redo a Transformers movie the right way, like how the classic Godzilla movie came out right after that absolutely awful 1990’s version of Godzilla. I guess that movie was so bad that the Japanese had to remind everyone what Godzilla was really supposed to be by making a movie to pave over it. Transformers fans may be in for some déjà vu….

But back to The Last Unicorn. The story is about an unicorn that goes off on a quest to find out why she is the last and where all the others went. I think the unicorn symbolizes innocence, like that special quality we have as kids. She meets a magician and a middle-aged woman and together they search for something called The Red Bull, that drove all the unicorns to the ends of the Earth long ago.

more and more human and begins to forget what it was like to be a unicorn.   She falls in love with the King’s adopted son, Prince Lear, but the relationship is doomed when they find the entrance to the Bull’s lair below the castle.

For years I wondered why he wanted to trap them in the sea, and why keeping all the unicorns made Haggard feel young. I was looking at some of the sealed boxes in my collection the other day when I made a connection between why I kept the figures in sealed boxes and why Haggard kept the unicorns in the sea. I’m not keeping the packages sealed because of the value that they will retain. I’m keeping them sealed because I want to be able to pick the package up and feel that same wonderful way a kid would feel picking up the package and opening it. It’s a throwback to childhood and it truly makes me feel young!

I also treasure the characters out of the package because boxes aren’t fun to play with. Yeah, I’m a bit of a big kid…but playing now consists of the sort of stuff that you see on this website now, such as the photos I’ve taken. I have more ideas for photos to take, kitbashes I’d like to do, dioramas I’d like to set up, stories to write and pictures to draw. Just think, if adults didn’t do that sort of stuff, write stories and make cartoons with the toys when we were kids, the toys would have seemed pretty boring on their own.

On a different note, I’ve updated the list of figures in my collection. Now there is a date stamp on the page, showing when it was last updated.

October 15, 2006

I almost can’t believe the picture of Jazz and Hound is finally finished! That took a looong time! Kudos to others out there doing their own artwork. It can be a long haul to get a picture done. I can get the line drawing done inside of two hours, but the characters and background of this picture spanned two weeks.

The inside of the Ark is so orange that, if I lived there, I’d be getting out as much as possible to see some other colors.

October 11, 2006

A short mid-week post again this week. Today I adjusted the picture sizes on Hound’s road trip so they fit together better. I also added a new picture of Hound. This one is of him posing next to a sandcastle.

As it turned out, looking at all the gradients while doing detail work on my next picture gave me such eye strain that I had to go back and write some more of the next story to give myself a break. It bugs me that it’s not finished yet. I’m going to be so glad to be done the picture soon since it’s been a ton of work. 

October 7, 2006

Even more characters are added to the cast of An Insecticon Disruption. I’m new to the fan fiction scene so I didn’t know how my stories would turn out, but I’m pleasantly surprised at the direction they’re taking so far. As it turns out I like to write using a lot of characters. Somehow, as I imagine the story I’m writing, I just can’t see how only a couple of characters would be present. I also really like writing action sequences and the repair scenes. Those are exciting to write!

I also put up a thumbnail with the description of each story. There is violence that occus in the next story but, like The Spark Cell, no more than is necessary to tell the story. These are giant fighting robots, after all.

Speaking of big, fighting robots, take a look at this bad boy. I just got him.

This is Cryo Scourge from the Transformers Cybertron line. He’s a big, cool, three-headed dragon. From the sound of his character description, the red dragon Scourge turned into this guy. His robot mode looks typical of the new toys. I’m not too fond of his legs being the dragon’s hind legs. The overall robot mode is pretty good, but it makes me think of the juvenile characters in the Transormers Cybertron cartoon. I watched the cartoon a couple of times and all I can say is this: where are those kids’ parents?!

And the best part about Cryo Scourge is that he makes sounds and has flashing lights. There’s a button on his back that you press and the eyes, mouth and top of the head flash red and he roars. And if that wasn’t good enough, when you insert the cyber key he makes the transforming noise. It’s perfect! I never had a toy that made transforming noises before.

Now I’ll have to take Primus out the box and see what noises and lights he makes…I think the Unicron figure I have does the same thing.

October 4, 2006

A small mid-week update...Actually, it’s almost the end of the week for me since I’m taking Friday off and making it an extra long weekend (Monday, October 9th is Canadian Thanksgiving). The funny part is my family decided to all go out for Greek food this year instead of going to the effort of cooking and cleaning up after a turkey dinner. I love Greek food and I don’t mind the change.

As you can see I changed the image on my main page. This one is more to my liking as I am such a big fan of the Autobots. I really want to put a piece of my own artwork up instead, but I’ve got to practice backgrounds first!

Another link is added to my Links page. The Michael Smith Website is neat because he collects realistic looking videos of Transformers from all over the web and puts them in one place. This part of his website was down for awhile, so I’m glad to see he put the videos back up.

I picked up my second display case tonight after I got the call that it finally arrived. It looks just like the first one. That said, I once I get it organized I’ll post some pictures in My Collection.

Oh – and one last thing! I just found out someone else had the same idea for a Binaltech Prowl, only that person went one step further and made a Prowl sticker set that’s now available through Reprolabels. So, guess what I’ll be buying….

October 1, 2006

I’ve got some pretty cool new stuff up today! Yesterday, I went on a road trip and took my Alternator Hound with me for fun. I took lots of pictures of everything we saw under the theme of Hound’s BC road trip. I realize this is reminiscent of traveling with a garden gnome…

I also moved my kitbash photos onto the Fan Art page, since I sense a trend emerging toward taking some neat pictures of my Transformers figures. You’ll find the pictures of Hound’s road trip there also. We stopped and took in a sand sculpture competition on our way. I put a link to those photos in the text of Hound’s adventure on the Fan Art page and through a Sand Sculpture button on the Scenic page. Have fun checking it out! I had a blast!

You may be wondering why that unfinished picture of Hound and Jazz isn’t being finished. Well, the answer is two-fold. I’m just so darn busy doing all this other website stuff, and I’m working up the motivation to try my hand at putting a background into that picture before I post it. So, patience…

Otherwise, I’ve got more ideas than I’ve got time to pursue (darn full time job!). We’re into some good, clean Autobot-Decepticon action in An Insecticon Disruption. I can’t promise anything, but I’m hoping that I’ll be done it sometime in October. As the case was with the Spark Cell, I don’t have a good sense as to how long it will be, so it’s a best guess of timeframe. I don’t want to rush a good thing. Rest assured it is being worked on frequently. 

September 24, 2006

Well, not much to report today, other than updates to two of the pages. I’ve been playing with my new DVD drive and put some Transformers cartoon screenshots on the Mount St. Helens page and the Red Alert kitbash page. They were really needed for comparison to the cartoon world.

September 19, 2006

Well, it took a few days longer than expected to take the pictures of my kitbashed Alternators because the weather here wasn’t cooperating at first. But the rain stopped and I got the pictures taken that I wanted to take. So here they are: kitbashed Bluestreak, Red Alert and Prowl!

I managed to procure a head for my next kitbash – Trailbreaker – courtesy of the local Toys ‘R’ Us. So, I’ve got the new head, and a Nemesis Prime. All I need now is the time, and to order the new sticker set.

This website stuff has been keeping me very busy lately – but it is a lot of fun to do. The next fan fic is coming along slowly but surely. I added the Aerialbots to the cast of characters. I count featured characters to be those that have speaking lines or those that play a critical part in moving the story forward. Someone who is mentioned in passing is not counted as a featured character.

September 16, 2006

I’ve added a couple more photos to the West Coast Forest collection in the Scenic section. I was just at Buntzen Lake Park again to retake a couple of pictures that didn’t turn out the first time, and found that movie crew trailers are set up in one of the main parking lots to shoot a new National Lampoon movie. It looks like I’ll have to wait until they’re done before I can try retaking a couple of other photos.

Vancouver is sometimes referred to as “Hollywood North”. We have a mild climate and all the basic geography for filming within a few hours drive of Vancouver: mountains, islands, sea, forests and a true desert in Osoyoos. It gets quite hot and dry in the interior in summer. I’d love to go back to the south-eastern part of BC to the Kootenays and take some pictures of the hoodoos there.

I also added a couple of amateur aerial photos of Vancouver here. I took these a few days ago while on a seaplane coming back from the Victoria area for the day. If and when I get the chance to take better photos, I’ll replace them.

Oh yes, and be sure to check out the last photo added to the main gallery on the Scenic page...

September 15, 2006

Phase One of Mission Kitbash completed. Everything is going according to plan….I just received my two Nemesis Primes in the mail today. Now all I need is a new head then I will be ready to transform one of these Decepticons into a new and improved Trailbreaker. I don’t anticipate any difficulty in finding another Decepticon whose head I can remove. Ha, ha, ha, ha.....

Stay tuned for another update in the next day of two, when I will reveal my three latest modified Alternators: Red Alert, Prowl and Bluestreak. All three more closely resemble the original characters than their Alternator designs and color schemes. The final touches are being applied at this moment before the photos are taken.

Also coming are photos of display case #1 of my Transformers collection, which I just arranged last weekend.

September 4, 2006

Today, west coast forest photos from two local parks are added in the Scenic section. I’m currently working on painting a new picture for the Fan Art section. This one is a picture of my two original favorites, Jazz and Hound. I’ve put up a thumbnail but will link to the picture when it’s complete.