The Energon Pub

After many customs, notably these:

Spaceship Optimus
Apetimus Supreme, Pyroflash, and Rustbucket.

Here's one that I'm very proud of.

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Remember Mother, Cybertronian Matron? She gave birth to her son. The son, uppon birth, had only one idea in head. To grow more powerful by eating some sparks. So, he turn on his closest victim, his mom. Alien 4 style. Fortunately for Mother, Apetimus Supreme managed to chase the newborn away, but not before some serious damage occured. Mother survived, but man, is she pissed! She got out of her body armor and she plan to fix her horrible mistake.


Thank you SKYWARPED_128 for this amazing picture!

The son manage to kill and eat many unfortunate transformers on Cybertron. He grew, and grew, and became extremely powerful... Until he was beaten by Megatron. Megatron, seeing a stupid but dangerously strong monster, decided to use him as a living weapon against the Autobots. Using some sweet talk, he convinced the easely impressionable "baby" to work for the Decepticons. Megatron even gave him his name:

SPARKEATER

Sparkeater did many missions and ate many sparks. Once he reached his maximum size, about as big as Omega Supreme or Trypticon, his growth stopped... However, the many sparks Sparkeater ate are still within him, alive, and they want to return to the All-Spark. This, combined with Sparkeater's unusual body could unleash something far more dangerous and horrible than mere size and stregnth.
...
Starscream noticed it and he'll be sure to use that to his adventage.

(Expect some "Akira" finale to that story!)

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Okay, enough bad fanfics and on to the custom!

First of all, here's the MASSIVE vehicle mode. A cybertronian "Monster Tank":







Here's how he scale with G1 Optimus Prime:


And now, a simple, almost Gobots-like transformation:




Finally, Sparkeater in all his robot mode glory!






Once again, how he scale with G1 Optimus Prime:

Some close-ups:





The very expensive blue paint peeled off in many places when I removed the masking tape after painting the final tan color. Instead of raging, I was happy it gave an awesome battle-damaged look.

Sparkeater's eyes light with a switch under the back of his head:


By the way...



Sparkeater eat the sparks of his ennemies...



And the sparks are his...



...FOREVER!



So, what did you guys think? Personally, I find this my best creation to date. I'll come up with another crazy custom next time some idea come by.

this is honestly extremely cool and very impressive! You sure know how to customize!!

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:this is honestly extremely cool and very impressive! You sure know how to customize!!

Thanks! I've spent countless hours on it. I just love to creat original characters from the ground-up with a unique transformation.

Definitely the best custome to date. I love the transformation! ANd that thing is HUGE

william-james88 wrote:Definitely the best custome to date. I love the transformation! ANd that thing is HUGE

Thanks!
Many will recognise Supreme Beast Hunter Optimus Prime's legs. The ones who own this figure know it have very hollow feet. So, I filled the holes with tiny pebbles and glue to add weight for better balance.

By the way, anyone wanna see the making-of with some progress shots?

Progress shots? Yes please!

And I recognized that beast hunter frame right off the bat. good way to make this guy huge!

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:Progress shots? Yes please!

And I recognized that beast hunter frame right off the bat. good way to make this guy huge!

And of course, when one say "huge custom TF", one answer "UNICRON ARMS!".

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So, here's how it was made. Of course, the main part is Supreme BH OP legs. Other parts of his were used as well, notably the upper arms. That was the only unbroken bot used. All other toys used were already completely scrap.



The arms are done here. So much exacto knife shaving had to be done for the parts to fit together and allow rotation.



The other main part used was Armada's Megatron's body.



The vehicle mode is mostly done, but some panels to hide huge gaps are needed.





The head is done and the torso start to fill up.



The torso is done. Only the... victims are left to be added.



WARGALAGALAGALAG!



The vehicle mode now have all his panels and is complete. The rear "neck" panel had to be partly build with megablocks. A customer's sin but, heh, it was the only thing I could think up.



DONE! Only painting remain.



I didnt take pictures of the painting, but here's the roundup:

--- Gloss black basecoat.
--- Dissasembling the legs and masking some parts for the silver coat.
--- Had to go on some epic quest to find a can sparkly blue paint in a very remote location (by foot and bus anyway).
--- Masquing everything else for the final tan coats.
--- Removing the tape from blue parts, some paint flaked away. A bummer, but the silver coat underneat turn that unfortunate situation into a great battle damage effect!
--- Finally, applying some leftover Reprolabels.

There you go, the whole process! I don't know if the Armada Megatron's electronics still work. I'll have to replace the old dead batteries to find out.

Dude, sweet. Nice work patching together scrap into something so utterly unique

COOL

weird

cool

Nice work! I've been trying to work out which tfs were his victims, I spotted movie brawl off the bat and what looks like wheeljack, or downshift.

I Look Forward To Your Next work.

ZeroWolf wrote:Nice work! I've been trying to work out which tfs were his victims, I spotted movie brawl off the bat and what looks like wheeljack, or downshift.

I Look Forward To Your Next work.

I just added a on both front wheel's wings of the vehicle mode. Now I'm truly satisfied... unless I find some nice sticker details for the black belly of the bot mode.

Also, here's the "ingredients" list, by order of importance:

-- Supreme Beast Hunters Optimus Prime (the only true victim because he was complete and unbroken) for the legs, butt, upper arms, and part of the chest plate.

-- Armada Megatron for the torso, tank turret, and part of the head.

-- Armada Unicron for the forearms, hands, head, and the transforming waist joint.

-- Power Battler Brawl for the opening chestplate.

-- Leader Movie Brawl for some pannelings and to fill up the torso.

-- And so many, many tiny bits and tiny parts of countless many bots for all the other bits and parts.

BTW, the light-up eyes gimminck was not made with Unicron's original electronics. It was actually made using a light-up sword from a non-TF transforming toy. The whole back of the head was buildt from scratch.

See I assumed you had kept the electronics from unicron really good work. I didn't even spot megatrons body till the work in progress shots. How did you decide on his colour scheme?

ZeroWolf wrote:See I assumed you had kept the electronics from unicron really good work. I didn't even spot megatrons body till the work in progress shots. How did you decide on his colour scheme?

From the start, I didnt want him to be a "rusty" bot like Mother. He's "brand new" afterall. I planned to give him the tan upper arms, tighs, and crotch from the start. But for the main body, I planned a bright, non-metalic, gloss purple.

At work, many are into RC cars. One of my coworker painted in the paintshop a RC car frame. It was an amazing shiny metalic purple color. I then asked him where he got that amazing color. He said he bought it ar a hobby shop and he gave me the color and address.

Being on foot and by bus, it was a very long journey for me. When I managed to find the shop, it was a tiny shop specialised in RC stuff and they just had a few cans of paint. All 17$CAN tiny cans... With the clerk's help, I found out that the infamous purple was not metalic at all. It was just transparent paint, painted on a silver coat. So i decided against it. I dint go that far for nothing so I looked for another metalic paint. I found that blue and bought it.

Time to paint! A great while ago, I already customised Optimus by painting the truck's grill and wheel rims in a nice greenish gold color. So I kept them as is. The grill and wheels easely pop off so I set them aside.

Black is the best basecoat to paint something. It hide the original plastic and you can leave some joints and hollow parts black without ruining the look if you use dark colors. I left some part black, of course. I tested a bit of blue on the black and found out that it made the blue too dark.

Only then did I had the brilliant idea of dissasembling the legs for easier painting. The tiny ratchet thingies are a pain to deal; with.

Masking the parts I either did not want to paint with tape and Play-Doh, I put on the silver coat. Before doing the blue, I masqued the parts I wanted to be tan and the ones I wanted to remain silver. That earlier blue test resulted in the can going completely empty on me for the left leg! A real bummer but no way I'm going at that place again and spend 17$ for just a small part. I knew I could work around it.

Once the blue coat was applied and dry, I masqued everything I didnt want to be tan with tape. Once that final coat was dry, I removed the tape only to find out that parts of the blue flaked away! for one second, I raged. I quickly found that the silver shown at the flaked parts, giving an awesome "battle damage" look. So, I purposely reaplied some tapes on parts that were not really touched to do the maximum flaking. Kinda like when a women use wax tape to remove the hair from her legs.

Using a brush and some specialised metalic "Nemesis Prime blue-green" (I forgot the name of the color) to highlight as much details as possible. Too much silver remained on the left leg so that's why both legs have that big green spot. I really like the result.

Finally, I used reprolabels leftovers for sticker details.

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I'm really proud of that Sparkeater because not only the robot mode have relatively human proportion, the vehicle mode look like it's own thing. A solid blockof death. It dont look like distinct parts stuck together. It look like it's own thing. Creating Sparkeater was done without any plan. I just played by ear. Figuring out the transformation and features as I build him. It's like customising improv! That's how I roll for all my customs.

This is great looking, love the head on him. You even have a cool back story going. Nice work.

Absolutley epic I love the heads in his stomach and the creative use of parts well done.

Megatronformayor wrote:Absolutley epic I love the heads in his stomach and the creative use of parts well done.

Thanks! When I make a custom, I can't just repaint or slightly mod. I have to create something new from scratch... and make it TRANSFORMABLE!