Pictures
Pose 1 Pose 2 The Matrix of Indescriminate Justice
NOTE: The Rail Gun is from an SD Gundam model.
Behold, my ah, impressive skills. Er, it's actually not to bad for my first real kitbask that involved extensive modification of the exhisting body. Plus the scan actually makes what is only a moderately crummy looking job look much worse. I may add a few more pictures later. Alos I havn't yet built him a gun. I'm planning on modifying the left over Heavyarms gatling cannon into a hand held weapon. Also the only arm knife makes a reasonbly nice sword for prime. I alos want to add an autobot symbol on his arm but I have littel confidence in my ability to paint that detailed, at least not with the equipment I have. Maybe a print out of the symbol glues on would work.
Construction
Well I started with my allready assembled Heavyarms 1/144th model. I figured since I had the superior action figure I didn't really need the model, and the model is fairly readily available anymore if I ever feel the need to replace it. The first thing I did was modify the head. Also I pulled off all the pieces I knew I wouldn't need, such as the shoulder pads and waist armor.Basically I pulled off the antena (which was a bit difficult since I had glues them on). I then switched them to opposite sides of the head so the shorter piece would be in front, then glues htem back on in a more upward fasion. I alos cut the chit piece off while I had the head apart and painted it all blue while it was apart. Then after reassembleing the head and attaching the antena, I painted the face mask and forehead spot silver then re-affixed the original eye sticker. Next I went out to buy some thin sheets of plastic for use in building the arms and legs and other details, but I couldn't find any, so instead I improvised and cut up a plastic baseball card sheath. It actually worked perfectly, and I ended up using less than half of the plastic. If you need a cheap source of plastic and have some of these around they are great.
Anyway, I then cut square pieces for the new shoulders, which was difficult to dow ith my dull pocket nife, but I soon discovered that a regular pair of scisors cut the plastic ver easily. so another tip, if you use this source of plastic, scisors will work fine for blunt work, finer details may require some other tools though (see below). After gluing the new shoulder pieces together and while waiting for them to dry, I decided instead of making new rectangular legs, I'd simply keep the original HA's legs. I rather like the way they look and in the end it worked out nicely because Prime has gas tankson the sides of his legs and the HA legs have those pack things that sort of resemble stylish gas tanks. I also replaced the two rubber pieced that held the original hip armor on with some short pieced of model tree plastic, I figured the rubber pieces would come in handy in the future and Prime would not need them. I then cut pieces for the belt area and painted it up silver with yellow spots. The smoke pipes were made from the shoulder thingys HA had and some of the same model parts tree stalk used in the hips.
Next was the hardest part. The chest area. I had originally planned ot add actually windows in his chest, but I then realized i didn't have any transparent blue plastic. so instead I decided just to paint the plastic I had and make the windows solid. After cutting a hole in one chest panel, it ended up being more trouble than it was worth, and I almost ended up wrecking the entire panel, which would have been quite difficult to replace. At this point I thought of a better way to construct the chest and windows, but i couldn't even go with this plan since it would have required the hole I had just cut to be filled in. so instead I glues the blue plastic pieced to the chest, then clues a red border overlapping it. I did have to use the dremmel again to cut the panels correctly as the scissors caused the plastic to split sometimes. anyway the end result was a slightly less satisfactory chest area with pieces that don't quite fit correctly. But it does open up still, though you can only see one of the windows from the inside. Also I was going to build a matrix to go in the chest, but i decided instead ot leave the cool gatling cannons, so instead of the Matrix of Leadership, Manga Prime carried the Matrix of Indescriminate Justice.
Tech Specs(I don't beleive in overpowered leaders, at least not too overpowered.)
Optimus Prime (Manga Prime)
Function: Autobot Commander
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."
Strength: 9 Speed: 8 Endurance: 9 Rank: 10
Intelligence: 9 Courage:10 Fire Power: 10 Skill: 8
On an additional note, I will never again bitch about crappy Hasbro Tech Specs.
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