I’ve been on a bit of a Star Wars kick lately, sparked in part by realizing how awesome the current 1/6 scale offerings available are. There’s all sorts of cool clone troopers and bounty hunters and all the great, colorful characters for sale, but droids seem to get a bit of a raw deal. There’s a couple of protocol droid and astromech molds available, but they are either old cheapie Hasbro toys or outrageously overpriced Medicom toys. There are so many other great background droid designs that I love, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. The Gonk Droids, or Power Droids depending on who you ask, are such a classic, simple, goofy design that a Gonk was the obvious starting point. Read on after the jump to see some behind the scenes of my design process and lots of photos.
The “My Friend the Micronaut 2013” opening sounds like it was a huge success. There are a ton of pics on the Micronaut 2013 Tumblr page now, so thanks to everyone who attended and snapped some shots! The show’s webstore is now up on the Grass Hut site for your perusal. There are three Allarounds left for $150 each and the Blockman prototype for $275. I’m pleased to say that my 3D printed figures are in good company, as they are listed right alongside the incredible works of Brownnoize Productions. Sanjeev is cranking out some incredible stuff. His Shapeways-produced Powered Suit Fake Type is an multimedia tribute to the original Diaclone Powered Suit toy. What speaks to me more, however, is his home-printed Powered Bio Suit (PBS), a Diaclone Powered Suit scaled up to Microman size. I’ve been following this project behind the scenes for a while now, and I am so excited for Sanjeev to finally be debuting such a rad project. It’s funny that we both independently came to similar conclusions with what we wanted to do with our consumer-grade 3D printers. I am sure we will be seeing some Blockman and PBS crossovers in the future. There are also some other terrific Microman-centric works for sale in vinyl, PVC, canvas paintings, and more than one other 3D printed project, so make sure to check it all out on Grass Hut’s site.
Union Fighter Blockman is an obscure little Takara line that came out in 1984 as an offshoot of Diaclone and the SF Land stuff. The line featured two inch tall plastic and metal robots covered in 5mm pegs and ports. The bots were cute little pocket warriors that could combine together and with a whole range of accessories to create everything from jets to massive gestalt robots. The story behind Blockman was that the Combination Droids were built to help human space colonists explore and settle. The Blockman sets came with little one inch tall chrome pilots with sculpts reminiscent of Diaclone drivers, which were the same size. I have always enjoyed Blockman as a fun building line with neat little bot figures, but thought that the Combination Droids could be pushed further. I also love the way the different Takara SF Land lines (Henshin Cyborg, Microman, Diaclone, …) were interconnected and related even though they were different scales, so I wanted to see how a Blockman would look scaled up to Microman (1/18) scale. While I was at it, I figured I should take advantage of the added room the large size would afford to add some new live to the design. A few days and test prints later, and the Micro-scale Blockman is ready to roll.
The fully posable Blockman features ratcheting joints in the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, with additional articulation at the shoulders, biceps, wrists, waist, and hips. The extra room on this huge figure gave me the opportunity to try out a couple of new articulation tricks that worked like a charm, and I could not be happier with the results. The first CD-1-L Blockman prototype is available at the “My Friend the Micronaut 2013” show at Grasshut. It’s a huge figure that takes a bit to print, but rest assured I am working around the clock to get some more made for public consumption. The best part about this guy is that he is 100% printed ABS parts, including all of the articulation. That means no more fighting with fit to existing joint parts or worrying about running out of supplies.
“My Friend the Micronaut” is a yearly show at Grass Hut Art Market where artists from around the world display Microman/Micronaut-themed work. The show is the brainchild of Grasshut front man Bwana Spoons, who has done many Micro-themed pieces over the years. This year, I was asked to participate by show co-host Microbry, and I jumped at the opportunity. The Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries Allaround power suits are 1/18 scale, designed to look at home next to Micromen and their many robotic allies. The “Buffalo Squad” being deployed at Micronaut 2013 is the Allaround’s first release, done up in a Diaclone inspired scheme and given a proper PRS weathering treatment. These are also the first painted PRHI 3d printed figures to receive the acetone treatment, and I could not be happier with the results. Micronaut 2013 opens on August 1st, and hopefully there will be some good coverage! There are five Allaround figures, including a commander with the mag-rifle, being released at the show, and any figures not sold in person will go up on Grasshut’s online store.
I’ll be sure to put up a link to the show when it goes live. Microbry has set up a Tumblr page with details on the participating artists, and the lineup is great. Pay special attention to Brownnoize Productions. I’ve seen some of the 3D printed mecha goodness that Sanjeev is sending to the show and it is not to be missed. Also at the show will be the first completed test figure of the next Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries toy, which should blow up more than a few skirts when the photos start rolling in 😉
On Saturday, June 22 I took a trek out to the brand new Monster Kolor shop in Middleboro, Mass for one heck of a good time. I attended the ‘Paint your own TriPus’ event, hosted by Monster Kolor with blank TriPus figures supplied by Max Toy Co. The attendees ranged in skill from the talented and always fun Todd Robertson and Will Long to people who had never used an airbrush before. The weather was perfect for a bunch of toy heads to hang out in a back alley and shoot paint. Benny Kline of Tenacious Toys was nice enough to photograph the whole even and post a huge gallery of photos from the day.
I spent the drive to Massachusetts planning the paint job for my TriPus. I wanted to something with deep blue tones and a fade on the bottom to give the appearance of a monster emerging from the ocean, all realistically colored and detailed up top. Walker had a few special paints and surprises out for people to try, so I was able to stick to my plan while trying out a few sharp new colors. Click through for nice big, tasty photos of some shiny green TriPus action! The whole figure was painted on Saturday with whatever tools and colors were on hand, and served as a great warm up refresher piece while I work on unpacking my studio into my new apartment.
While there are a million other things I should be working on right now, I received the second wave of Hasbro’s Iron Man 3 Marvel Legends figures today. With the comic Iron Monger Build-A-Figure complete, I could not help but dig into the archives and take some comparison photos of Hasbro’s efforts to recreate the classic match up. All that’s missing are the Hot Toys figures, but that would not really be comparing apples to apples. I do wish Diamond Toys had been on the Iron Man train for the first movie, because I would really be curious to see what horribly flawed but gorgeously detained renditions they could have come up with. I’ll probably end up reviewing the entire Marvel Legends wave for CollectionDX because it is a weird wave split between some mediocre repaints and some incredible new molds, but I’m moving soon so that will have to wait. For now, enjoy some family photos.
After the most recent Paul Kaiju show at FOE, I got a chance to stand outside in the cold of frosty Northampton and talk shop with Sanjeev Teh Jerk, master of all things 3D design. While I have been going headlong into home-grown ABS printing, Sanjeev has been working on some face-meltingly cool multimedia affairs for production through Shapeways. Production method aside, we are both always looking to existing toys for inspiration. Sanjeev mentioned to me how he had recently cracked open a vintage Gokin and found a joint design that we both were pretty sure would work in 3D printed ABS. We talked, froze our asses off, and then I went home, and the gears were in motion.
As soon as I posted the first Bounce Tortoise to come out of the acetone vapor treatment I have been experimenting with, I started getting requests for some kind video of my process and equipment. I spent the weekend working on a couple of Allarounds, so it seemed like the perfect time to shoot some video. Spend fifteen minutes with me and watch some Allaround parts go from the print bed to finished smooth, shiny acetone slicked parts ready for assembly.
The thing that has been slowing down Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries so far has been the post-processing and sanding of printed parts. Even though I was happy to leave some print texture on some parts of my figures, there was still plenty of cleanup that went into each figure. I have been hesitant to start a big production batch because the thought of all the sanding that would be needed was pretty intimidating. A couple weeks ago, an interesting post on the RepRap Blog for homebrew 3D printing made the Twitter rounds and kept being sent to me by different people that knew I was big on home printing.
When I redesigned the Bounce Tortoise, I made the leg bosters and backpack separate parts, allowing me to design other loadout modules for different Tortoise variants. After doing the highly mobile Bounce Tortoise, I knew I wanted to do something heavier. The Striking Tortoise was designed around a shoulder weapon mount backpack and shock-absorbing outriggers for the legs. The first heavy weapon I designed was the Saber Missile Pod. I have plenty of ideas for other artillery type weapons and a couple crazy things, but the clean geometry of a missile pod seemed like a great place to start. I kept the colors simple on this guy to keep the focus on the new accessories, but I could see some variation of these colors becoming a production scheme down the line.
Prometheus Rising Studios 