The Energon Pub

hey yall this is bugging the heck out of me how the movie toy prime's tranformation is different from the movie. can anyone tell me what differences there are b/w the two? (toy and movie). the robot forms don't even look the same

*Im actually trying to make a movie accurate transforming prime from scratch so im trying to figure this out

Good luck!

I havn't studied the differences yet, btu the biggest is (which I'm sure you already know) is that in the movie, Primes hands are housed behind the front grill of the truck i believe, while in the toy, they are the stacks. Atleast thats hwo it looks to me.

We never see an actual full transformation of prime, like an angled shot where you see everything.. so hard to tell the rest.

also in the flic the grill and engine fold into the stomach On the toy the grills his feet and the engine forms the legs

voyager movie prime has his hands under the hood/behind the grill.

peegoo wrote

"Im actually trying to make a movie accurate transforming prime from scratch so im trying to figure this out"

Good luck, just remember OP is composed of 10,000+ parts that move all around when transforming

peegoo wrote:*Im actually trying to make a movie accurate transforming prime from scratch so im trying to figure this out

Maybe a dumb question, but care to share, high level, how you're going to do this? Would be interested in see pics of the end result...

wow thanks guys for the input. hahah ayeah i know there are a bajillion peices im jsut trying to see if a more accurate toy can be done. i also noticed that in the truck mode, its not even proportional to the actual peterbilt.

as far as what im planning to do for now is to buy a scale model kit of a peteribilt 763 (i think thats the model #) . unfortunately its a bit small its a 1:32 scale i think. im pretty much going to cut it up a lot.

as far as the robot peices, it depends. i have to see how big the model kit is. if i get lucky i might get the "movie replica " figure and kind of cut and glue peices together. ill have to make a "blueprint" figure for reference first though..the joints will be hard to figure out too

I'm just having a relaly hard time figuring out which part of the vehicle mode goes where on the robot mode. i know some of the transformation is pretty much impossible because according to ben procter's prime transformation study video, alot of it jsut can't be done realistically on a figure this size.
however, it would be awesome to see if the majority of the transformation sequence can be duplicated in a figure.

Everytime Prime Transforms in the film, he Transforms differently, and at different speeds.

Which I guess would give you free reign to design his transformation however the hell you want.

In short, there is no real movie transformation. It's all about the flash. Coherence is out the window.

what the
he transforms differently each time?! realllyy??? man thatd be pretty dumb if true
if thats true, i don't really want to make one anymore lol

good luck with that, its going to take you a long time

first off to do this you would need a computer and a cnc machine then you would have to measure and calculate all the moving parts.how he transforms in the movie was threw special effects i dont think thers no way of doing it in real life.I dont think any one here has study his transformation frame for frame because no one has the movie yet.so buy the movie and you have to watch it frame for frame.

of course your probably going to make many models.if you where avle to do this it will take over 3 years or longer depending on what kind of life you have.and the cost of this will be very expensive i mean i have considerd things like this and easily over 3000 dollars.Dude its impossible.

peegoo wrote:as far as what im planning to do for now is to buy a scale model kit of a peteribilt 763 (i think thats the model #)

The film truck was a 379 model.

tommy tek wrote:first off to do this you would need a computer and a cnc machine then you would have to measure and calculate all the moving parts.how he transforms in the movie was threw special effects i dont think thers no way of doing it in real life.I dont think any one here has study his transformation frame for frame because no one has the movie yet.so buy the movie and you have to watch it frame for frame.

of course your probably going to make many models.if you where avle to do this it will take over 3 years or longer depending on what kind of life you have.and the cost of this will be very expensive i mean i have considerd things like this and easily over 3000 dollars.Dude its impossible.

I'm sorry, I completely agree, there's just one sentance here that reeeeally tickles me:
"How he transforms in the movie was threw special effects"
The big transforming robot truck is one big special effect, he's nothing BUT special effect.

tommy tek wrote:first off to do this you would need a computer and a cnc machine then you would have to measure and calculate all the moving parts.how he transforms in the movie was threw special effects i dont think thers no way of doing it in real life.I dont think any one here has study his transformation frame for frame because no one has the movie yet.so buy the movie and you have to watch it frame for frame.

of course your probably going to make many models.if you where avle to do this it will take over 3 years or longer depending on what kind of life you have.and the cost of this will be very expensive i mean i have considerd things like this and easily over 3000 dollars.Dude its impossible.

You wouldn't need a CNC machine ... they aren't for that. What he needs is a good CAD program. One that lets him design parts, assemble them and THEN digitally manipulate or transform them all before fabricating a single pc of plastic.

Either that, or he'd better be really good at math/ mechanical engineering. It takes a team of engineers to design these toys, but could be made by an experienced person by himself/herself. It just takes time, patience and know how.

If he's setting out to do this ... I'm sure he's somewhat capable and knows what he has to do. I'd like to see it when it's done.

(P.S. I'm an engineer and program CNC equipment as well)

Good luck on your project!

I hope you do make one coz I really want to see the end product.

I got the impression that there were a lot of cheats in the movie transformations, like parts overlapping passing through each other where you can't see, and subtle scaling up and down of parts.

If that's the case, it may not actually be possible.

Of course I don't know for sure.

Maybe this will help

http://www.benprocter.com/SITEv2/HTML/P ... s_02.html#


There are two quicktime movies that show the transformation.

Very interesting website...

great link

Yes, awesome link! Thanks!!

yo, long time no post
first off i just read the interview on ign with ilm who did the cg for transformers.
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/825/825256p1.html
he pretty much says that they scaled the robot parts up and down for the tranformations. so duplicating a close transformation to the movie is pretty rediculous ahhaa

with that being said here's my progress
i mapped out different pictures of prime from the movie pictures and promo shots as well as the leader class toy. after comparing them, i found that the truck mode is not to scale with the actual truck . it's actually substantially shorter in scale. so that could be good news because if ican recreate a more scale truck, it'd be able to fit more prime inside. but- the leader class prime is so chunky and huge even given the smaller scale of it's truck mode. in case you're wondering the back cab and teh traler end of the truck in the toy is shorter.

so i can't make an accurate transformation (as many of you guys have made clear) but i do want to at least be able to come up with a transformable prime that's
1. to scale
2. has a close-to-movie robot form

i'll try to post up some pics of my progress. i have to do this kind of ghetto style until i get more time to get better materials. right now i'll be working with cardstock and wire to get a feel for how much mass i need.
-any of yall have suggestions for making stuff like this?

let me know any suggestions you guys would want for the figure, like features, weapons, lights, details etc. i'm pretty excited because now i know for sure taht it's impossible to duplicate the movie ahhaa. i'll have more creative liberty. keep posting everyone, i'll read anything yall post and feel free to pm me. plus someone needs to tell me how to post pics anyway lol

craggy wrote:voyager movie prime has his hands under the hood/behind the grill.

Man backpack prime has everything under that hood, I hate that figure.

That link was GREAT! I can't believe they didn't use the GMC version of Ratchet. IMHO ... that's much much better than what they used.

I guess it's nice to get all different vehicles, but c'mon ... that's more G1.

It's different enough from Ironhide for me.

AlienQuiksilver wrote:That link was GREAT! I can't believe they didn't use the GMC version of Ratchet. IMHO ... that's much much better than what they used.

I guess it's nice to get all different vehicles, but c'mon ... that's more G1.

It's different enough from Ironhide for me.

Huh? I didn't see anything about Ratchet in that article?