Finally, he's completed! I started building this guy more than half a year ago and had been really instrumental about it, thus the delay of getting a closure.
UPDATE 16/09/2022: Video is Up!
PROLOGUE
Transformer: Animated cartoon series (TFA) was released more than 10 years ago, with wildly unique character aesthetics. Most of toys produced for the show were top notch! Sadly, it only ran for 3 seasons and despite a fourth season planned.. it was eventually cancelled.
One of the highly anticipated TFA toy arguably was Omega Supreme, after his apperance in season 2 of the show. However..... the toy never materialized officially. And there's no plan* by third party TF toy companies to produce this gentle giant either. Over the years, many custom TFA Omega Supreme were built by fans instead.
*due to how vibrant and competitive the 3P market these days, I hope I'm wrong here.
When it comes to Transformers, I am more obsessed with the reading materials and guide books, than owning the actual toys ,especially when budget is always a factor.
I own TFA:Allspark Almanac 2 , a great reference book and love to ogle over the visuals of TFA toys and arts shown inside. This is where I got to know more about Omega Supreme and his variants, and a passing thought to build him with LEGO one day. That was many, many years ago.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT (OMEGA)
I started the ball rolling around March this year by taking a good look at Omega's ship mode. The front part of this flying burrito turned into robot legs and they're pretty much figured out by me on how to build it , in my mind. The back half of the ship is where most of the complexities were located.
This project is unique to me in a sense that I always prefer humanoid proportioned robot mode. Even if they eventually ended up with backpack/kibbles. For Project Omega however... I must remove such thinking.. since TFA:Omega Supreme has a more gorilla-like proportions (big arms and upper body + small legs).
The very first item I tackled were the ship's rear that will turn into Omega's big arms. My initial concern: How can I connect those tail fins on without affecting the rounded sides on the ship?
The final components to be added into this creation were the retractable landing gears.
Within the first 3 months, I've completed 90% of this project, but failed to build a satisfactory robot head/mounted cannon. So I took additional months off from this project to clear my mind. Only last month I finally made some breakthroughs on the head design.
Being unusually instrumental towards this project, I tried to recreate every single details found in Omega Supreme. On retrospect, I think I put only half as much detailing efforts in most if not all of my earlier LEGO Transformers!
The following photos below are side by side comparison of the top and underside of the ship. This project's special challenge thrusted upon me would be building the ship's front underside to be almost symmetrical with the top. (since they will need be visible in robot mode as depicted in his official art.)
TRANSFORM!
One noteworthy design achievements is making the red blocky facade on the front of the ship. Keep viewing to see where they ended up at.
The earlier mentioned blocky ship front is folded to become part of the robot chest, with the yellow sides forming the back. Note the black hinge pointed by the white arrow. They help to lock the body in place, preventing the shoulders from sagging down.
While building the robot arms, the unintended gaps created from the elbow joints design led to an eureka moment: I can actually fill those gaps with multi-ball joints to hold the tail fins!
OMEGA SUPREME, ARISE!
Initially, he doesn't looked hunched at all. Then I padded his shoulders with yellow curves to conceal the dark-gray ball joints. Consider this move as killing two birds with one stone. :)
The hinged cannon barrel on his head has a weird behavior: It will droop when it's positioned at the EXACT center. To solve this issue, I simply shifted the cannon hinge to left or right a tiny bit (offset of 0.1mm would just do the trick) .
If I need to nitpick on something, that would be how the dark gray panels ended up on his feet. Note how I tried hard to get the red cockpit halves folded inwards to make a fuller, nicer legs, only to be foiled by those feet panels.
The small ball joints I applied on the knees served me well. Earlier in the project, I was worried about the knee joint's inability to sustain the huge bulk of the robot mode.
OMEGA SUPREME: ATTACK!
Showing off his waist swivel.
Trivia: The tip of the red arm-cannon is actually a flower-petal part in LEGO jargon!
One of his wacky attack mode: Turning his arms into cannons and blast away!
And he's able to make a quick escape by flying off in his robot mode... thanks to his arms turned ship propulsion/ engines.
PARTING THOUGHTS
Well, I'm excited to produce and upload video of this project Omega soon. In the meantime.... click here to visit (and subscribe) my youtube channel.
Thanks for dropping by!
wow, that's actually physically accurate to the animated model, you done a good job at making it as close as possible to the character model which is achievable by lego
ReplyDeleteThanks! It's a very rewarding project to me. Learned a few new techniques too.
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