Date: Wednesday, November 5th 2008 1:26am CST
Categories: Toy News,
Site Articles,
People News,
Transtopia
Posted by: First Gen |
Credit(s): Jin Saotome
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Views: 68,336
Resident Kitbasher Jin Saotome has brought us yet another great way to improve your Transformers figures. In this step by step tutorial, he shows us how to create articulated hands for most figures.
Like always, the original post on this tutorial can be found
here, along with Jin's extensive archives on past tutorials and amazing kitbashes.
Date: Saturday, October 25th 2008 12:32am CDT
Categories: Toy News,
Site Articles,
Transtopia
Posted by: First Gen |
Credit(s): Geekee1
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Views: 86,290
Seibertron.com member Geekee1 has taken time to show all you Ironhide loving TransFans out there how to do a relatively simple modification to Universe 2.0 Ironhide. This fix will eliminate the "hanging head" problem. Here's what he had to share"
I will post this in both the kitbashing forum and the toy forum, as I believe more people will see it there.
Poor ole Ironhide. he just can’t catch a break with his head can he? For as long as we’ve known he’s gotten screwed when it comes to his head. First he had no head, then he had it blown off in the movie, and now with Universe the poor bastard just can’t stop looking at his boots.
If you’ve been wanting to fix this as much as I have then I have some good news for you, and I have some bad news. The good news is that it can be fixed! Yes, yes hooray, you may love me now. The bad news is, is that it is a fairly extensive (albeit overall easy) mod that takes a good deal of cutting and sanding. Booo! You suck. I know.
So if you’re still with me (and if you love Ironhide you’d better be) here’s what you need.
First tools. Not a lot really. You’ll need a small phillips head screwdriver, and X-acto knife, some sand paper, and a small flat surface like a popsicle stick to wrap the sand paper around.
There are three major culprits in Ironhides head tilt, and how this got passed engineering is beyond me. The first is his “lower spine.” This piece folds down and presses against his rear bumper in robot mode. The problem is that there is too much plastic to allow it to sit flush, so that has to go. First partially transform him and then remove the three screws that hold the roof on like so.
You will also find it easier to work with him if you remove the “lower spine” from the upper body. Just pull the pieces apart.
It may be a little tight at first but I have removed and put this piece back together at least fifty times and it still works perfectly. Now carefully cut and sand the shown areas until you can push the spine to the bumper and his head sits flush when you reattach the spine. Remember to go slowly with the cutting and the sanding. You can always take more off, but you can’t put it back on. It took me a good hour to get this how I wanted it, granted I was being supremely careful.
Now it would be nice if that was the only problem, but unfortunately it’s not. We have two other problems to deal with. The next one that we will deal with is the hinge that is between his headpiece and the roof of the car. The problem here is that when his wheels come up into his backpack the wheel wells hit the underside of this hinge. What needs to be done here is to cut out a triangular shape on both sides so that the wheels can slide into them. I marked where the pieces were hitting with a marker and went from there. After finishing I’ve found that a good place to cut is parallel with the second “line” on this hinge as shown. The other cut for this triangular piece should be at about a 45 degree angle to the first cut. Once again you will have to keep test fitting until you get it just right, and again slow and steady.
Now onto the last problem that we have that’s got ole Ironhide lookin’ down. Remember those three screws that you took out to take backpack off? You can get rid of two of them because they are part of our last problem. The two screw pegs on the outside of this piece are keeping the tire from fully coming up into his backpack. They’ve got to go. You can cut these little buggers completely flush to the larger piece of plastic and then sand them smooth.
Do you have to take them all the way off you may ask? The answer is yes you do, and I should know, I spent about two hours carefully sanding these down little by little, fitting and refitting to see if they could still be used. They can’t. Don’t worry about the roof no longer being secure either. It is still plenty sturdy with just the center screw in there, and if it bothers you that much it can be glued on too.
Now put all pieces back together and voila! No more looking down for Mr. Hide. Now a few additional notes. The head won’t be quite perfectly flush, but it’s damn close. Also if you look at the rotating pelvis area it won’t go quite the whole way back, as it’s hitting the automorph bumper. Honestly this isn’t at all noticeable unless you’re looking at him from underneath. I didn’t even notice it for a couple of hours after I finished the mod.
Lastly I would highly recommend clear coating the backpack pieces. Mine were scarily tacky right out of the box, and I haven’t had that problem on any of my other figures. I recommend Testors Dullcote for this. I used it and it worked great, and the sheen on the figure isn’t that different either. Remember to mask of the windows though or you’ll end up with foggy ugly windows. I also painted his face silver with Games Workshop boltgun metal, followed by chainmail, but you can use whatever you want.
I would consider this mod to be of intermediate difficulty only because of how much plastic you’re actually getting rid of. It’s more time consuming than anything. I also may be a little biased having about 25 years of model building experience, but I’m sure that if you’re careful anyone can do it.
Date: Tuesday, August 12th 2008 6:43pm CDT
Categories: Toy News,
Collectables,
Transtopia
Posted by: Stormrider |
Credit(s): Nekoman, First Gen
Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 50,380
Seibertron.com's own Nekoman has created a special exclusive for Seibertronians. Using a format taken from
little cardboard boxes for GI Joe figures, he's created printable Energon Cubes that can be scaled to fit into any line of Transformers.
Click
here to download them. It is recommended that these be printed on hardstock paper with a gloss finish for the best results. Enjoy!
Do you have a creation that you'd like to share with your fellow Seibertronians? Show us in the our
Art of Transtopia Forums.
(The image below is not to scale.)
Date: Monday, July 21st 2008 8:20pm CDT
Categories: Site News,
Toy News,
Site Articles,
Transtopia
Posted by: First Gen |
Credit(s): Jin Saotome
Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 35,554
Seibertron.com resident Kitbasher Jin Saotome has posted another update in the
Transtopia Art Forums with more tips on how to fix, create and just overall improve your Transformers.
Here's what Jin had to share with us:
Hey all! People have been asking me to post a quick guide on how I made Guiltar's chest pieces so here it is. There's many other ways to parts copy and I'm in no way a skilled kitbasher who can make Transformers from scratch using just styrene sheets. So this is just a guide on how I was able to quickly make parts for my custom and may be useful to some of you. Enjoy!
Jin Saotome's How to Partscopy Instructions
Do you have any tips to help out your fellow Seibertronians? Have a piece of art or a repaint you've been wanting to share? Head on over to our
Art of Transtopia Forums and show us!
Date: Thursday, February 14th 2008 5:12pm CST
Categories: Press Releases,
Company News,
Transtopia
Posted by: Skowl |
Credit(s): Hasbro.com
Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 34,562
Hasbro.com has posted some new customizing guidelines for all the creative collectors in the G.I. Joe fandom - the announcement will also be interesting to all the fans of the Transformers fandom who dabble in "kitbashing" existing Transformers figures into unique, one-of-a-kind creations!
To see Hasbro's announcement
click here.
And for hints, tips and more information on customizing Transformers figures, or to see the works of fellow fans and customizers, visit the "Transtopia" Forums on Seibetron.com
by clicking here.
Date: Monday, December 10th 2007 9:16pm CST
Categories: Site News,
Transtopia
Posted by: Bed Bugs |
Credit(s): Seibertron
Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 53,840
Hello fellow Seibertronians!
By now, most have noticed that the forums have temporarily disappeared. Ryan is currently in the process of upgrading the forums to the new phpbb. So not only will the forums look a little bit different, we will finally have Transtopia moved into Seibertron.com as well!
So have a little patience while we continue to try to get all the bugs out and attempt to make Seibertron.com even better!
Date: Thursday, September 13th 2007 10:52am CDT
Categories: Site News,
Transtopia
Posted by: Seibertron Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 34,273
Here's a message that I posted over on
Transtopia that I thought I would share with all of you here on Seibertron.com ...
****************************************
// URGENT REQUEST
****************************************
If you have an account on Transtopia AND you have an account on Seibertron.com, it would help me out immensely if your usernames and email addresses are the same on both websites. Please update your accounts to make sure that your username and email address is the same. If you are unable to make your username the same, then your username on Seibertron.com will take precendence over your username here. You will be able to edit your information as necessary on Seibertron.com once everything has been imported. If you DO NOT have an account on Seibertron, please DO NOT register at this time on Seibertron. I will be importing all of the user accounts from Transtopia over to Seibertron.com within the next week and it will be easier just to import the accounts that do not have username or email address conflicts than to try to accommodate those instances.
Your account on Seibertron.com will take precedence and your information on Transtopia will be updated to match your information on Seibertron.com (such as your user IDs, for example). I will write a script that will look to see which account is older and use that date as the registration date so that if you recently signed up on one of the two websites, your older account's registration date will be used as your member date.
****************************************
// WHAT'S NEXT???
****************************************
Once I have sorted out all of your user accounts, I will update all of the posts and topics with your new user IDs. After that has been completed, I will import all of the user data, forums, topics and posts into the Seibertron.com Energon Pub forums. All of the existing forums will continue on Seibertron. Devastator and I will then work together to figure out which ones need to be merged with existing Seibertron.com forums (such as the General Discussion forum).
Bill (TFmaster) didn't originally want me to import all of the users and posts to Seibertron. However, after his untimely passing earlier this year, I felt that it was very important to maintain as much of Transtopia's forum content as possible so that we will always have a permanent record of Bill's contributions on the forums. That's one of the things that is important to me to honor my buddy Bill.
Once all of the forum content has been imported to Seibertron, I will write some scripts that will redirect people from tfmaster.com to the appropriate forum, topic, post or user on Seibertron. That way, we will continue to catch the people that are referred from the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN.
The next phase of this move will be to give Devastator access to some of the tools that I've been building quietly behind the scenes that will allow him to move over a lot of the existing content here on Transtopia over to Transtopia's new home at /transtopia/index.php. After Devastator has been setup so that he can start helping with the move, I will turn my attention to the next phase which is too upgrade the Seibertron.com forums from phpBB2 to phpBB3. There are a ton of new features on the new phpBB that I think all of you will really enjoy. One of the things that slowed this whole moving process down was waiting for the phpBB crew to release a stable version of phpBB3 that I can use on the site. phpBB3 will enable the Transtopia forums to continue to exist as needed on their own so that you guys don't have to scroll to the bottom of the page in the Seibertron.com forums just to get to the ones that are important to you guys. You will be able to easily and directly access the forums important to the Transtopia community at Seibertron.com. I think you guys will really be happy with this key part of the move.
****************************************
// THE NEW TRANSTOPIA
****************************************
After the Transtopia forums and existing content has been integrated into Seibertron, then comes the fun part ... building new tools that will allow all of the Transtopians to add their own galleries of the kitbashes they have breathed life into, the artwork which they worked so hard on and a new feature that is currently not part of Transtopia: fiction contributions. The new Transtopia will be structured something like this on Seibertron:
Main Transtopia Page (conglomeration of all 3 Transtopia sections)
/transtopia/index.php
Transtopia Kitbashes
/transtopia/kitbashes/index.php
Transtopia Artwork (2D Art Gallery)
/transtopia/artwork/index.php
Transtopia Fiction (Fan-Fiction Contributions)
/transtopia/fiction/index.php
****************************************
// IN CLOSING
****************************************
Whew. That's a lot of typing up there. :) And I'm not done yet. I know it's a lot to process. This is a HUGE ordeal and a lot of work. I want it to be done right. I want to preserve as much of Transtopia as possible. I want to promote all of your work as much as possible. There's a lot of great things that are about ready to come down the pipes for all of you. I ask for your patience during this crazy time and your understanding as WE collectively come across difficulties, unforeseen circumstances and other issues that may be out of our control.
Let's do this right for Bill. Let's make him proud up there in Kitbasher Heaven.
Ryan
Date: Thursday, August 30th 2007 4:21pm CDT
Categories: Site News,
Transtopia
Posted by: Seibertron Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 35,234
The hosting company for Seibertron.com,
ThePlanet.com (appropriate, huh?), can't seem to figure out why the Database server and the Web server have been experiencing extreme difficulties communicating to one another for the past few weeks. After dealing with these difficult server issues that I feel are on their end and not on my end based on several tests that I ran, I moved the databases for
GiCobra.com,
Transtopia and
Seibertron.com back to the Web server until I can get a reliable database server back up and running.
All of this techno-mumbo-jumbo just means that all 3 of these sites should appear to be running normal to all of you. I'll continue dealing with the database server issue once I get settled into my new apartment here in Chicago this weekend. The good news is that you guys should be able to enjoy the Seibertron.com websites over the weekend without too much interuption and I should be able to move without having to worry too much about the status of these websites.
If you experience any further lengthy connection issues between now and next Monday, please contact one of the staff members via the
Energon Pub forums. Thank you to everyone for your patience during these very trying times over the past few weeks.
Date: Wednesday, May 2nd 2007 8:43pm CDT
Categories: Site News,
Toy News,
Site Articles,
Transtopia
Posted by: Seibertron Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 188,523
I imagine after you look at the McDonald's Beast Wars galleries, many of you will be asking: "Why in the world are there almost 400 photos of the McDonald's Beast Wars figures?" Let me take a moment to explain why these figures are such a key piece to my history with the Transformers brand, why they mean so much to me and how these little guys ultimately tie into part of the origin behind Seibertron.com.
| Manta Ray | Panther | Beetle | Rhino | Under-3 |
 |  |  |  |  |
The McDonald's Beast Wars figures represent a very distinct moment in the history of the Transformers brand. I had discovered my last Generation 2 figure about 10 months earlier in May 1995. On the back of an upper shelf at a KB Toy store at the Genesee Valley mall near Flint, MI, I had discovered Laser Rod Optimus Prime stashed behind several other toys. I had never seen this figure before and was truly elated at this very incredible incarnation of the most iconic Transformer ever. For many months, I thought Laser Rod Optimus Prime was THE last Transformer. I scoured the local Kmarts in the Flint suburbs where I grew up as well as a several Targets for many months but never found any new Transformers. Not only was this before the Internet would drastically change our lives, it was also before I had ever discovered a little store chain called "Wal-Mart."
Big Kmart in Fenton, MI
Photo by Kevin Yzquierdo
Fast forward 8 months later to January 1996. There was a brand spanking new "Big K" (a Kmart store variant that was comparable to many of Wal-Mart's stores) that had recently opened near the McDonald's that I worked at as a teenager on Owen Rd. in Fenton, MI. Shortly after that stores grand opening (which was a HUGE deal to this town back then after the old school Kmart store had closed on the other side of town), I discovered a new series of "Beast Wars Transformers" figures. I didn't discover these in the fall of 1995 like many other Transformers fans have claimed to have found these figures.
This new line of transforming animals was apparently a product of one of Hasbro's competitors, Kenner. I had thought that Hasbro must've sold the Transformers brand to the highest bidder due to the obvious decline in sales toward the end of the Generation 2 line. Little did I know at that time that Hasbro had actually purchased Kenner recently (which was most famous for its Star Wars line) and had decided to move all of their action figure lines to that "brand".
The first set of figures that I purchased was the Optimus "Primal" and Megatron 2 pack that came with a mini-comic book that reminded me of the mini-comics that used to accompany Mattel's Masters of the Universe line during the 1980s. It was a no-brainer since those were the only names that I had recognized amongst toys such as Cheetor, Waspinator, Rattrap and Razorbeast.
I thought it was very odd that Kenner would make two of the most powerful Transformers not much bigger than the Generation 2 Cyberjets. It also struck me as odd that they were not using the Autobot and Decepticon factions. What the heck were these "Maximals" and "Predacons"? Did Hasbro not sell Kenner the rights to some of their copyrights? And why did "Optimus Primal" turn into a bat and Megatron turn into an alligator? What happened to the Transformers?
After I opened the package and read the mini-comic book, I realized that these new Transformers didn't appear to have any relation to the Transformers I had grown up with. The comic pretty much made sure that I knew that these weren't Hasbro's Transformers. "Bio-Genetic Engineering?" Animals? No Energon? Seriously -- c'mon Kenner! Regardless, this was a test of my loyalty to the "transforming" from one thing into a robot concept under the "Transformers" product banner. I knew I didn't like other transforming robot toy lines such as the failed Gobots line from Tonka so I bought a few of the other figures that I could afford at that time.
Fast forward a month later to February 1996. As I mentioned above, I was working at McDonald's as a "swing manager" (basically a "shift manager") at that time while I was unsuccessfully attending the University of Michigan's community college in Flint. Imagine my surprise one day when we were received some
paperwork about an upcoming Happy Meal promotion that we would be receiving: "Transformers Beast Wars" for the boys alongside "The Littlest Pet Shop" for the girls.
McDonald's on Owen Road in Fenton, MI
Photo by Kevin Yzquierdo
I'm sure a smile gleaned across my face as I noticed the classic
Generation 2 "Transformers" logo next to the Generation 2 Autobot symbol above the words "Beast Wars". This wasn't "
Beast Wars Transformers" ... this was "
Transformers Beast Wars" with the word "Transformers" positioned dominantly over the words "Beast Wars" instead of the other way around. Imagine how thrilled I was to see the use of the G2 font and Autobot logo after a couple of months of wondering what the heck Kenner had done to the Transformers line I thought they had bought from Hasbro.
As the weeks went by, we received more promotional materials for the McDonald's Beast Wars Happy Meal toys. My hopes were quickly dashed that there would be a continuation of Generation 1 or 2 styled Transformers to accompany the Beast Wars figures I had purchased at Kmart. Instead, they were these lame little beast figures with extremely generic names:
Manta Ray,
Beetle,
Panther and
Rhino. I'll let you use your imagination to figure out what each figure transformed into. There was even an unnamed toy designed for children under three that was a head of a
lion that turned into an Optimus Prime looking character.
Once we received the
Happy Meal display piece for our restaurant, I gladly volunteered to set it up. I thought it was pretty cool to have loved the Transformers for so long that I was able to set these up first hand. Looking back at this experience, it wasn't really that big of a deal but I sure thought it was at the time. And to think that my parents had wanted me to work at VG's, a local grocery store chain on the east side of Michigan!
The induction of the McDonald's Beast Wars figures led to a stream of creativity on my behalf. The new Happy Meal boxes, which featured a lot of new artwork for the Beast Wars figures as well as the McDonald's figures, really helped me accept these figures as official Transformers figures. I had even gone so far as to draw
character sheets for all of the Beast Wars Transformers that I owned after I had come up with an idea to incorporate these new Transformers into the Generation One stories I had grown up with (thanks to McDonald's use of the
Generation 2 Transformers font and Autobot logo). I even have the artwork still to show you guys my cartoon-styled take on these "Beast Wars" guys. Optimus and Megatron were who they always were, Terrorsaur was the new Starscream type character (most likely due to his alternate mode and wings in robot mode), Tarantulas was my new Soundwave type character (most likely due to the visor on his face) and Cheetor was my new Prowl type character (most likely due to me thinking that a cheetah would "prowl" and because I thought his face kind of looked like Prowl's at the time). This was months before the Beast Wars cartoon's pilot episodes aired on television and about 6 months prior to Cheetor's dream sequence which cameoed the Decepticon Starscream in "The Web".
Within a couple of months, my excitement about the Beast Wars Transformers really started to heat up. I was very excited about my beliefs that these could be new incarnations of the characters that I had grown up with (even thought some of my character associations didn't really make at the time looking back on all of this). As I continued to purchase more and more of these Beast Wars figures, I had grown to accept them. Sure it was a new take on the Transformers, but I was enjoying these new incarnations just the same (much to my own surprise).
After buying a toy magazine sometime in the spring of 1996, I saw an advertisement for a Transformers convention called "Botcon" that would was going to be held in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend run by a local group of guys from Ypsilanti, MI who went by "The Men-In-Black". After so many years of thinking I was the only person around into Transformers, I was very excited about the prospect of meeting other Transformers fans at this "Botcon" convention, I had begun working on a fan newsletter I called "Trans-Forum". Fortunately I had ended my employment at McDonald's by this time at 19 to start working as a car salesman for the Al Serra dealership organization after dropping out of college 3 times. To start a reader base for Trans-Forum, I grabbed all of the names and addresses I could find from the letter pages in the Marvel's "Transformers" and "Transformers: Generation 2" comic books. The first issue of Trans-Forum went out to almost 100 people in May 1996. I even made a special "Botcon" edition which I gave away to people at Botcon 1996 in Chicago. The fanbase for Trans-Forum continued to grow year after year which led to the next phase of my involvement with the Transformers community.
Some time during 1998, I began working on a new Generation One comic book that took place after Marvel's run of the original Transformers comic book. I was fascinated with the Japanese terminology which I had only begun to learn about back in 1995 after purchasing a bootleg Masterforce video. The Internet had exposed me to a new word that I really liked which the Japanese used for the name of the Transformers homeplanet Cybertron: "Seibertron". This word would be the title of the comic book idea that I had because I wanted to implement key elements from the American continuity as well as the Japanese continuity which I had recently discovered. The "Seibertron" comic book gained mention in one of the issues of the Trans-Forum fanzine during that year.
Trans-Forum eventually evolved into Seibertron.com during the summer of 2000 as I had become more and more fascinated with the prospect of making my own website on the Internet to showcase my interests in the Transformers. That's a whole other story in itself that I might go into another time.
I attribute my interests in contributing to the Transformers community to the McDonald's Beast Wars figures. Maybe the Beast Wars cartoon would have prompted me to get involved with the community. Maybe not. It was the McDonald's Beast Wars Transformers that got me to imagine that these new characters were somehow tied into the original Transformers. While the McDonald's Beast Wars figures might not be that exciting individually, I attribute the start of Trans-Forum to this Happy Meal promotion which eventually led to the creation of Seibertron.com.
If you were wondering at the start of this article why the McDonald's Beast Wars Transformers have almost 400 images amongst their galleries, I hope you now understand how special these figures are to me. I wanted to treat these figures just like I would any other Transformer toy since I consider these 5 toys to be a part of the official Transformers toy line. Each gallery is complete with comparison pictures of the other figures from this set, comparison pictures with the other Beast Wars characters who were pictured on the Happy Meal boxes, detailed photographs of the Happy Meal boxes, scans and photographs of my artwork of these figures and even a couple of special items that I had retained from my tenure as a McDonald employee such as the reference card as well as the instructions for putting together the store's display for this Happy Meal promotion.
| Waspinator |
|  |  | |
I hope all of you enjoyed this flashback in time and that maybe you learned something new about the origin of Seibertron.com. I wouldn't do all of this endless work if it wasn't for such an amazing audience of people that I get to entertain. I hope that all of you are enjoying the hard work that myself and the entire staff puts into this website every day. Isn't it interesting to think that you might just owe your enjoyment of this site to the McDonald's Beast Wars Transformers? Thank you for supporting Seibertron.com ... it's been a wild ride for me personally during the past 10 years. I can't wait to see what happens in the next 10 years.
Ryan Yzquierdo
Seibertron.com
Date: Wednesday, March 14th 2007 3:01am CDT
Categories: Site News,
Event News,
People News,
Transtopia
Posted by: Seibertron Discuss This Topic · Permanent Link
Views: 47,790
I received an email from Bill's wife Lauren that his funeral will be tomorrow on Thursday, March 15th, 2007. The Services will be held at Uht Funeral Home in Westland, Michigan. Visitation is from 11:00AM to 6:00PM Eastern. The service will be held at 6:00PM Eastern. Please pass this information along to the other Transformers websites or other people that knew Bill.
Uht Funeral Home
35400 Glenwood Rd
Westland, MI 48186
734-721-8555
http://www.uhtfuneralhome.com
Visitation: 11am to 6pm
Service: 6:00pm
Donations are still being accepted for Bill's wife and son.
Please click here for information about how to donate funds.
If you wish to mail your donation instead, you may send your donation to the following address:
Lauren Koshorek
8485 Woodcrest Dr. Apt. #6
Westland, MI 48185
This is her current address which she has verified for me. I wouldn't normally post someone's address online but the address is already publicly available at Bill's Transtopia website at
tfmaster.com.
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