The Energon Pub

Let's face it, Rapid Run sucked when it came to articulation. About a year ago, I was inspired to improve that to some degree, and managed to give him knee joints by rounding the sliders, and removing panels from behind his knees:




Well, now I've got round to working on his arms, too. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it without hampering his transformation, but I finally came up with a solution:




The current forearm is a cast of Cyb. Hardtop's, although I'm going to try Cyb. Hot Shot's as well to see if it works better.

This is an awesome idea. I'll try it out on my Sideways.

Thanks, glad you like.

I've now got a pretty successful cast of Hot Shot's arm, with pretty minimal cleanup work to do on it (a couple of air bubbles have crept in, and I need to do a bit of filing to clear off some overspill). Once it's set up properly, I'll do that and see how it looks on the fig.

If someone wants to try this for themselves, I have a spare Arm-Sideways (just sans Minicons). PM me if you're interested.

I felt the same way about this guy. I'm glad to see someone improved him; nice work!

Great work!!! Now, why couldn't Hasbro done that in the first place

Well, I am losing the missile launchers (though I may refit the dud Minicon pegs to his arms), so he would be somewhat lacking in gimmicks (and let's face it, they like their gimmicks). Although he'd still have had the Headmaster thing going for him (which I'm also ditching, mind).

The legs, though, I've no idea. All it involved was removing a bit from behind the knee and reshaping the slider, which if they'd done from the start would have involved no extra work, and less plastic used per unit.

Actually, the bit that's causing me the most trouble at the moment is the head - I'm trying to find a way to make it retract somewhat into the torso, while still giving it the articulation. I think I can do it, but it's tricky...

Well, the left arm's pretty much sorted. At the moment it's only wedged in rather than glued, and there's some cleanup to do, but it's nicely firmed up now and fits well. At least now I know it's okay, I can get onto the other arm.

Here's some shots to show how much better it looks than the original arm, and to give an idea of how much more articulation it has now.








And one of the other big advantages of the new arm? Now he can carry a gun!

If you want articulation for when the head is inserted, you could try not inserting the arms into the torso, You can then move the head from side to side. The downside of this is that the faction symbols wont be visible anymore.

I wasn't quite sure what you were suggesting, but it's just clicked. No, this guy's not using the Headmaster-type feature. He's just going to have his own head which folds/slides into the torso. I've already removed the two slidey faction symbol sections.

Quick picless update.

I've finally got round to casting the right arm, and it's turned out even better than the left - not an air bubble in sight! It's been trimmed and glued onto the arm panel; I just need to wait a few days for it to firm up so I can make final adjustments.

The scratchbuilt head I was working on has been ditched in favour of a modded cast of Cyb Hot Shot's head. Again, I turned the cast out today, and it's come out beautifully. Once it's firmed up in a few days, I can install the ball joint (from Alt Sideswipe's wrist) and do some extra detail work on the head.
Meanwhile, I can be working on the joint that helps folds the head into the torso...

very nice Ramrider. looking forward to seeing the rest.

Update time...

Coming along quite nicely; I've fitted the head now. Still need to make some aesthetic mods, but it works. The head now rotates 180 degrees and folds down into the chest for bike mode - it doesn't go all the way in, partially because it won't fit and partially because if it did I wouldn't be able to get it back out. But it makes it inconspicuous enough for the sake of the disguise - no exposed chins like Energon Ironhide!

Bike mode - it looks from this photo like the head sticks up quite a lot, but I actually think it looks okay in person. Plus the finished head design should help it blend in with the canopy. And yes, it does have light piping...



Robot mode:





..and showing how the head retracts...