Protofriday - Plans

With Megatron taking over the blog here, I think it's a good time to reestablish what exactly the Prototytan Project, and specifically what I'm going to do with it.  The Prototytans are a new faction of Transformer created solely by me.  At first, I was just planning to make a comic featuring them with our regular Autobots and Decepticons, but as their designs became more technical and their numbers grew, I thought how I'd like to see more of these guys.  I put an awful lot of work into them (or at least I will), and I wanted to make something of it.  So I planned to model out the Prototytans alt modes as detailed as possible and sell those models on Renderosity or Turbosquid, and hopefully be able to sell them from my own site.  I thought it was a pretty ambitious plan that would hopefully get me some decent returns.

And then I found Shapeways.  I had originally hoped to do some kitbashes of my characters, but having tried one, I gave up.  Not totally!  But after seeing some of the stuff created on Shapeways, like Venksta's WSTs and his Skyfall upgrade kit.  I had no idea you could make anything so intricate from 3D models.  I know it's pretty cost prohibited, but I feel pretty strongly about the viability of my Prototytan designs, so I think it's worth trying.

Now I'm not a total fool here and I'm not going to spend a ton of money on a model without some small-scale trials.  That's what the Legends scale is for, right?  Something I'm a huge collector of already.  So before I try doing any full-scale Deluxes or Voyagers, or whatever size they'll end up, I'm going to make some simplifications and pump out some Legends.

Crap, now it's Saturday.  Anyway, as I was saying I'll be making some Legends to go along with my collection.  I'm not sure now if I'd try to mass-produce these Legends figures, but I'm pretty sure the bigger ones will never be made for distribution.  Those things are going to be expensive!  I'd be lucky if the sale of 3D models would cover the cost of just making the originals. 

Everything's still a while away, and the comic itself is still my top priority.  One day though, I intend to hold my Prototytans in my hand and hopefully not break them somehow.

I'm not made out for kitbashing

I recently went to Michaels and saw a few models there that would perfectly fit in with some of the Prototytans, so I picked them up, along with a few other supplies.  I picked up a couple of packs of Legos for the joints and set out working on them.

I didn't get very far though.  I believe my designs will work as good toys, but the model itself may be too small for what I want to do with it.  I'm not used to using the tools and it certainly showed today.

As I was working with my Dremel to shave off some excess Lego bits, the blade broke and cut me in the forehead.  On top of that, I can't even find the piece I was working on.  I looked over the place for about 20 minutes, and it's nowhere to be seen.  So I'm definitely not made to kitbash.  I didn't even get very far either.

As you can see, I removed the wings and cut them in half so I can glue hinges to them to let them fold up.  I did the same with the tail.  I glued one wing together, but the hinge is so tight now, I don't think I can get it to fold if I wanted to.  The engines on the side would split in half and fold down to become the legs, but the wings would only interfere with it.  And I have no idea how to mod the plane's nose to make it a head.  And just so you know, it was supposed to end up being a wolf.  

So anyway, I think I'm giving up on this.  Or at least until I can find that piece that shot into my noggin.  At least the models were cheap.  Maybe I should just stick with 3D models.