Finished: Project III/21

Optimus prime

So, the high difficulty rating stamped brightly onto the packaging had raised my concern-o-meter, but no one told how the difficulty had been calibrated. Of the individual pieces the most difficult were the exhaust pipes, because I didn't have anything to roll them into cylinders, so they ended up being something weird instead. Or maybe they were expected to be like that, and I was just mentally locked to the smokestacks of the G1 toy.

All in all this was a very pleasant build, the subject was exciting and the model itself was decently straightforward. I even managed to keep my foul fingerprints nicely off the shiny external surfaces.

Basic photos

Below I left the usual set of photos around the model. Optimus' pose was surprisingly backwards-leaning, perhaps he was admiring the Underbase rising in the horizon?

Comparison shots

Of course I rushed to take photos of Optimus Prime next to the Bumblebee I had built the last time. Clearly these two models were not made to the same scale in any sense of the word.

The leader of the Autobots was pretty shiny and as if he had just taken a shower in a car (truck?) wash, especially when compared to lord Megatron who had a couple of years on the shelf. I imagined that Megatron's surface had suffered over time, but no, he had come here with a duller armour plating to begin with.

Stomping ahead

Final components

Before the head itself the backpack was to be done, and to be left waiting. I was almost optimizing by installing it already, but a quick "hey, let's check what's coming up still, just in case" check saved me and this build.

The face here looked otherwise familiar, just a bit too tall. I expected that to be straightened during the next steps.

Oh yes, the ninja mask repaired the long face immediately. The most difficult thing in this face building operation was to get the pieces folded into correct angles without accidentally splitting the pieces apart.

Apparently the unusual height of the head was to cover up the extra step that ended up being in front of his jaw. This had obviously absolutely nothing to do with the good old G1 toy, but as I think I pondered on that in the first post, this model was depicting a more modern version of Optimus Prime than the one I grew up with.

The helmet with the ears/antennas was one of the worst subassemblies so far, thanks to the round shapes. Luckily I got it done in one piece without getting bothered.

Combining the head's two parts was about to give me grey hairs. Again it got done succesfully without smashing or bending the components into a mess. This was one of the details in addition to some random weird corner shapes that increased this model's difficulty rating.

Putting the backpack complex into Optimus' torso was almost scaringly easy. At this point I noticed that I had left a couple of few-corner edges open from the small of his back / corresponding sides, either because I had just ignored those in the instructions or didn't understand to do it as told (as you could see in the first photo below, I had also misread the image for attaching the left arm and got him almost keeping his free hand against his hip instead of down-front).

The robotic mittens

Building and installing the upper limbs

The shoulder with its pretty awful exhaust pipes was a bit of a weird setup to build. That still unclosed shiny, pointy bit in the first photo was the piece where the lower arm was attached later on. While working on this left arm, I didn't manage to attach all the four points, but it stayed tightly enough as it was.

Ion Blaster

Much more often than swinging his Energon Axe around like a mechanic viking, Optimus punctured his enemies full of holes with his ion gun. I would be lying at all if I said that I would have immensely enjoyed the axe as the weapon for this model. The Blaster was a surprisingly complicated thing, due to its shape and one of the barrel pieces remained looser than I wanted it to be, thanks to some very tight spacing to close the connectors properly. It was recognizeable and that was great.

As soon as the gun was built it was attached onto Optimus' right fist. This installation was tight and proper, and didn't shake loosely.

Now I knew to be extra careful when attaching the forearm to the upper arm. The image in the instructions was pretty foul, and it wasn't that clear (to me at least) if the key piece was supposed to go this, that or some other way. Adding to my state of concern was that if I installed the gun-arm rotated 180°, it'd look like the poor robot had his elbow uglily broken, pointing behind him.

Attaching the appendages

The right arm sat into its place just nicely, even though again the space to tighten the attachment pieces had become somewhat challenging. I managed to avoid making ugly scratches to the outer surfaces, which was also a positive thing, considering how much they would've shown.

Torso

Mid-body building

Hips

Now that I got the legs done, I attached them to the hip block. With these the guy'd stay standing firm, unless the rest of his body wasn't too heavily off-balance.

At this point the lower body got tightened into the baseplate, as in every other Transformer model so far. The pose was a bit more open than I expected, from the straight as arrow like in the toys it turned more into a ski-jumper's V style.

More recognizeable bits

The truck's radiator grille - sixpack of Optimus Prime was one of the key pieces that screamed who this character was, as soon as I had attached the piece to the model-in-progress. Just like the cockpit's windows just made the effect stronger. Building was a joyride at this point.