Kanrabat, if we ever get another rehash of Astrotrain it'll be in whatever the regular Generations line is at the time. And I mean, looking at Hot Rod... I wouldn't bank on a mold made for Studio Series giving you any improvement but the non-C.O.M.B.A.T. feet.
chuckdawg1999 wrote:Animated is a different look that isn't meant to represent the G1 toy/design.
Mm.. The look, no. But as for the design, his transformation layout owes a lot to G1 Hot Rod: The hood becomes the chest while the sides of the car become his arms, with the park lights ending up in his shoulders. And he has the engine flip away to reveal a chest panel, proving that
that's not a valid reason for faux-parts. That's the main reason I brought him up, really.
chuckdawg1999 wrote:TR/Legends has two different chest transformations that will give you a solid torso, or the chest you want with gaps in the torso. I think MP-09 was the only one to be able to pull off a proper hood/chest transformation.
The ideal is a hybridization of the two flavors of the chest transformation: The solid sides and tabs - and, if necessary, an altered version of the bumper tuck - of the TR version, combined with the no-cutout front and flip-away engine of the Legends version. Boom, perfectly good Hot Rod chest.
Jeddostotle7 wrote:Neither of those examples prove that you can do specifically the cartoon-style transformation of his hood without faux parts, because neither of those are particularly styled like the cartoon version.
Animated Rodimus may not be styled like the cartoon version, no, but he's still strongly influenced by G1 Hot Rod's cartoon parts layout. Including hiding the engine, which was why I brought him up.
TR/Legends Roddy meanwhile is
heavily designed to resemble the cartoon - that's why the canopy is hidden away in robot mode, that's why the rear wheels fold behind the legs to give a clean appearance, that's why he has 3 pipes to a side instead of the Classics version's two, that's why he has the cuffs, why the hood forms his chest just like in the cartoon and original toy, and why on the Legends version the exposed engine block flips around to be replaced by his chest panel. If he's not designed or styled like the cartoon version, then neither is the Classics Seeker mold.
Jeddostotle7 wrote:As is, cartoon Hot Rod's actual hood in vehicle mode and chest hood in robot mode are genuinely different shapes (robot mode has an angled bend about half-way through that the vehicle mode's doesn't have, as well as different shaping to the edge), so it's kind of impossible to pull it off as accurate in both modes as this figure does without faux parts.
"The animation model doesn't draw the part consistently between modes" is not generally a good reason for using faux-parts - it falls under what I call "Cartoon accuracy to the point of stupidity". In cases like that, the designers should call the animation on its sheer nonsense and just use the actual part for the job it's obviously supposed to do rather than sacrifice the transformation quality for a questionable visual gain.
The angled bend in robot mode is nothing but a warped version of the hood's curvature in altmode, and can be safely discarded in favor just using the actual, curved hood. The pointed edge in altmode can be likewise thrown out
or it can be accommodated by tucking the pointy part in (via the same mechanism as Titans Return, just cut differently). Ta-da! Hot Rod chest that looks plenty like the cartoon, without the transformation unnecessarily jumping through hoops or using faux-parts.