TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Ancillary, non-main-line stuff. Star Wars TF, Speed Stars, Titanium Series, Robot Heroes, that sort of thing. They're kinda neat, but we all know they're not really that important. Admit it, you know it's true.
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Onslaught Six »

Hey, look! I was wrong, and so is FunPub! It's all even.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Dominic »

Shockwave wrote:Well I didn't go to Botcon, but my custom Breakdown did:

http://www.botcon.com/BotCon2013/webfil ... 0.JPG.html
That is gorgeous. I wish that I could paint that well. The only change I would make is to remove one of the sigils (likely the one on the hood of the car).


Dom
-looking for discussion about the various reveals at BotCon.
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Shockwave »

Dominic wrote:
Shockwave wrote:Well I didn't go to Botcon, but my custom Breakdown did:

http://www.botcon.com/BotCon2013/webfil ... 0.JPG.html
That is gorgeous. I wish that I could paint that well. The only change I would make is to remove one of the sigils (likely the one on the hood of the car).


Dom
-looking for discussion about the various reveals at BotCon.
Thanks! Actually, your painting is pretty good (I still have the custom PVC figures you did and they are at least as good as Breakdown). The sigils are a little close together in bot mode, but the Autobot logo that was there on Red Alert didn't cover up very well so that was the easy fix (the white paint didn't come off easily and it wound up with scratches as a result). It's less offensive in vehicle mode for obvious reasons.
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Dominic »

Dude, your paint work is factory quality. I have not been able to match that consistently for about 8 years now.
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by JediTricks »

In person, the purple rainmaker figure wasn't as garish, not as candy-colored.
Tigermegatron wrote:THREAD UPDATE: BBTS.com will be selling Titan Metroplex at Botcon on Friday for $150 each. the higher price is due to it being air shipped from China.
BBTS came through early on Saturday, a lot of satisfied people with big retail Metroplex boxes on Saturday.
BWp wrote:Okay, saw the 'Rainmakers' set, and at first was about to be all 'Fuck FunPub!!' since I'm a firm believer that Sunstorm Was Not The Yellow Rainmaker, and they seemed to have went and done that anyway.
That's where I am, Sunstorm is clearly not the yellow Rainmaker, coloring is different (you know, orange and white, not yellow and black with white), character. Plus, Hasbro said as much in Q&A. Annnnd now they've gone the wrong way with that.
But then on closer inspection, the name 'Rainmakers' seems to have been applied pretty damn arbitrarily to the set, since not only is Acid Storm (the guy who set the precedent for 'Rainmaker' toys) not amongst them, they aren't even close to the colors of the 'Rainmakers' who appeared in the show, and instead seem to just be based on random 'Generic Seeker' colors who appeared at various points in the show, Sunstorm being among them (the others being 'Bitstream' and 'Hotlink'; the latter is delicious when barbecued and topped off with mustard). So what-the-hell-ever, right?
Pretty much. Hotlink, good catch, hilarious. I'm sure they were going for the thing that's underlined and either blue or purple depending on if you visited it, but yeah... yeah.
But it doesn't match or work well for the Machine Wars versions of Skywarp and Thundercracker, is what I'm saying. If you want to do a new interpretation of that look, a mold that looks...remotely like the one you're trying to emulate you would think would be somewhat of a priority. But, as the just-discussed 'Rainmakers' set demonstrates, FunPub really didn't seem to give a shit this year, even by their pathetically lax standards.
That seems a little harsh to me, I think they care, they're just barely making this stuff work, they have limited resources and not much power or pull with Hasbro, so they're doing the best they can with not much. They're trying to keep the OTFCC and Botcon afloat by making choices that we don't necessarily agree with, but that doesn't make them lazy.

Dom wrote:I think that the blue guy is lighter in person.
Yes, in person he's teal, and Sunstorm is less yellow and more orange.
And, at this point, the mould looks too old for Hasbro to credibly use.
Agreed.
If I had the money, I would take any of those 3 guys.
This I don't understand. You could easily have painted them yourself, these are not special, the mold is 7 years old, you've had myriad of opportunities to buy extras and paint them yellow, purple, blue, teal, whatever, and you would have done it better and cheaper than these.
Uh, the yellow one is Sunstorm. What is the problem with it looking like Sunstorm?
Sunstorm is NOT a Rainmaker character, Hasbro confirmed this previously, and he doesn't look a damned thing like the on-screen character. And now that's all changed for no reason.
I agree that they could have added a stripe. I think that the lighter green was to differentiate this Mirage from the 2006 pressing of the mould.
That's ass. If you want to make an homage to Machine Wars Mirage, there's no justification for not making it at least LOOK LIKE MACHINE WARS MIRAGE. Mint green is not remotely reminiscent of the MW figure: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Mwmirage.jpg
I really want this toy.
Again, why? That figure would have been $43.50 and you'd be stuck with Thundercracker for another $43.50, neither of which are worth anything remotely approaching that. It's not a good MW Mirage imitation, it's not a different character using a nice mold. It lacks reason to exist IMO.

Shock wrote:Well I didn't go to Botcon, but my custom Breakdown did:

http://www.botcon.com/BotCon2013/webfil ... 0.JPG.html
I saw that, so it's the only entry of its type on the contest table that I took multiple photos of:
http://photos.actionfigs.com/g6740-art- ... ntest.html
(sorry about the shadows and lack of other angles, it was getting late and I was running out of creativity)

O6 wrote:Hey, look! I was wrong, and so is FunPub! It's all even.
Technically, Funpub isn't wrong. Not just Dom's statement of "everything they do is official therefore it's canon", but also there's nothing that says the original 3 Rainmakers characters are the ONLY Rainmakers. I stand by my assessment though, this Rainmakers set is not any Rainmakers at all.

That is gorgeous. I wish that I could paint that well. The only change I would make is to remove one of the sigils (likely the one on the hood of the car).
Really? You wouldn't change the "ALERT" license plate too? :lol: *Dom is obsessive joke here*
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Shockwave »

JediTricks wrote:
Shock wrote:Well I didn't go to Botcon, but my custom Breakdown did:

http://www.botcon.com/BotCon2013/webfil ... 0.JPG.html
I saw that, so it's the only entry of its type on the contest table that I took multiple photos of:
http://photos.actionfigs.com/g6740-art- ... ntest.html
(sorry about the shadows and lack of other angles, it was getting late and I was running out of creativity)
That is gorgeous. I wish that I could paint that well. The only change I would make is to remove one of the sigils (likely the one on the hood of the car).
Really? You wouldn't change the "ALERT" license plate too? :lol: *Dom is obsessive joke here*
Those are nice pics. But they do show some of the paint problems better than the TFW and Botcon.com photos. The paint thinner bled under the right headlight (which is why it's slighty darker) and you can see that the lines on the red part of the hood are off (and the paint bled slightly under the tape used for that too). It really could have used some touch ups. And how I could have forgotten the "Alert" I'll never know. At the very least I intended to make a sticker to go over that. Oh well, notes for next time. I have 5 more Red Alerts in the garage waiting to "Breakdown".
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Dominic »

That's where I am, Sunstorm is clearly not the yellow Rainmaker, coloring is different (you know, orange and white, not yellow and black with white), character. Plus, Hasbro said as much in Q&A. Annnnd now they've gone the wrong way with that.
On the other hand, somebody finally made a good G1 Sunstorm figure. (I can live with my '04 "Universe" Sunstorm. But, the lack of a good G1 Sunstorm has always been a sore spot.) I just wish I could afford one.

This I don't understand. You could easily have painted them yourself, these are not special, the mold is 7 years old, you've had myriad of opportunities to buy extras and paint them yellow, purple, blue, teal, whatever, and you would have done it better and cheaper than these.
Dude, you recall my old MySpace page? I have painted more than a few of the '06 Seeker mould. Plan on getting some pics sent tonight.

I just never got to the three in question. Sunstorm is damned near impossible to customize well. I have never, even 10 years ago when I was a much better painter, been able to get yellow paint to look good. I know better customizers than I who have had trouble getting yellow paint to look good. I actually tried to make a Sunstorm about 5 years ago. And, it came out looking like shit. I pulled the head off, buffed away the paint and used it for a package art accurate G2 Ramjet (I think). I threw the body away. (The yellow paint was so thick and rough that it would have been impossible to paint over, even with scraping/buffing.)


About a decade ago, I actually did make purple Decepticon trooper PVC figures. I made a custom batch of paint, and they came out looking perfect, almost indistinguishable from the official toys released at BotCon 2003(?). The BotCon figures were rare enough that I did not feel too bad about making customs of them.

A purple Decepticon from the 2006 mould was always high on my list of things to do. I dragged my ass on it because I wanted to recreate that custom paint in bulk. Back then, it was possible for me to use an empty paint pot for the mixing and storage of the custom paint. But, I would be lucky to be able to finish one trooper with a single pot, let along 3 troopers. My plan was to mix 3 or 4 pots (each) of the necessary white, purple and metallic paint in an empty jar, and then transfer the results back to the empty pots for storage and use. The idea would be to have consistent colouration between each trooper, to say nothing of on each trooper. (When I start customizing again, I might do this. But, I get the feeling that the 2006 mould is going to fast become too expensive to buy for idle customizing.)

Really? You wouldn't change the "ALERT" license plate too? *Dom is obsessive joke here*
I probably would have cheated and used a sticker. ;)

I have 5 more Red Alerts in the garage waiting to "Breakdown".
Save one for yourself. Red Alert is a damned good toy.

And, I have a headless Breakdown....


-Dom
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by JediTricks »

Shockwave wrote:Those are nice pics. But they do show some of the paint problems better than the TFW and Botcon.com photos. The paint thinner bled under the right headlight (which is why it's slighty darker) and you can see that the lines on the red part of the hood are off (and the paint bled slightly under the tape used for that too). It really could have used some touch ups. And how I could have forgotten the "Alert" I'll never know. At the very least I intended to make a sticker to go over that. Oh well, notes for next time. I have 5 more Red Alerts in the garage waiting to "Breakdown".
Yeah, 'cause Hasbro has never made a mistake with a prototype or a production figure before. ;) I think the hardest thing for an artist is being able to step back and see the forest for the trees. George Lucas considers Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope to be a failure and a disaster because all he sees are the flaws and compromises and pains he went through making the film, not the completed work, and that's why he eventually went back and mutilated it, making it worse trying to make it better.

Anyway, I see the stuff you mean, but keep in mind that my photography is pretty extreme detail work. Your figure is good, it looks like what it's supposed to. I have a production TFPBH Smokescreen that has 2 different color headlights, for corn's sake! The ALERT is just funny because it's on his knees in half, it's ultra-minor (a monkey version of Ultra Magnus).

I just never got to the three in question. Sunstorm is damned near impossible to customize well. I have never, even 10 years ago when I was a much better painter, been able to get yellow paint to look good. I know better customizers than I who have had trouble getting yellow paint to look good. I actually tried to make a Sunstorm about 5 years ago. And, it came out looking like shit. I pulled the head off, buffed away the paint and used it for a package art accurate G2 Ramjet (I think). I threw the body away. (The yellow paint was so thick and rough that it would have been impossible to paint over, even with scraping/buffing.)
This is probably really obvious, but anybody ever try primer first?
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

Post by Dominic »

Yup. But, the more primer you apply, the thicker the over-all paint apps, and the more detail is lost. (Remember, when customizing, it is generally considered best to completely paint a piece over in a new base colour before adding the "external" paint apps. And, you are often painting over factory paint.)

With the Sunstorm I attempted in 2008, I actually used a coloured primer. It helped, but nowhere near enough to make it look good. Most of my customs could pass for factory figures, if only grouped together on shelves. My Sunstorm would have stood out as a custom (and a poor custom at that).


-edit:

So, I just saw mention that Hasbro is not revealing the fan-made figure until SDCC? Wow, that is bad form. That is just....really bad form. (Apparently, there was booing. JT, can you confirm this?)


Okay, here it is, the annual asking of the question:

What is the point of going to BotCon.

-guests/autographs: This year's guest line-up was....lacking. No offense to the Tommy Kennedy kid or the "Rescue Bots" staff. But, I do not know if I would have sat through those panels even if BotCon had been local and I were going anyway.

-Hasbro panels: Hasbro did better this year than in previous years. But, not revealing the 30th anniversary figure (which was designed with input from the same people who were at the show) at BotCon and instead waiting for SDCC..... If somebody is going just for toy reveals, SDCC is a much better bet. To be fair, this has more to do with Hasbro than with Fun Publications. But, it is an issue with BotCon as a whole.

-other panels: Most of the information from these panels finds its way around online after a day or so. All the fandom really needs is one or two people from a few boards to go and take copious notes.

-toys (dealer room and exclusives): Even with the costs of buying on the after market, it is still cheaper to order toys on-line than to go to the actual show. (The only exception to this in previous years would have been the custom class figure.)


At this point, the only reason to go would be "to have fun". And, Fun Publications (ironically enough) seems to be draining the fun out of the convention. (This is based on what I have been hearing. But, the complaints are consistent from year to year.)


-Dom
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Re: TimeLines (BotCon) 2013 discussion

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Dominic wrote:So, I just saw mention that Hasbro is not revealing the fan-made figure until SDCC? Wow, that is bad form. That is just....really bad form. (Apparently, there was booing. JT, can you confirm this?)
I can confirm that. However, Hasbro knew it was coming and set it up to be exactly what it was, they were playing the room, it wasn't unexpected, even the slide was set up to elicit that response, I think.
Okay, here it is, the annual asking of the question:

What is the point of going to BotCon.
-guests/autographs: This year's guest line-up was....lacking. No offense to the Tommy Kennedy kid or the "Rescue Bots" staff. But, I do not know if I would have sat through those panels even if BotCon had been local and I were going anyway.
Offense should not be taken, the biggest draw for celebs was the Rescue Bots people, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?!? The dais for the G1 throwback panel was Jason "Tommy Kennedy" Jansen and Wally Burr and NOBODY ELSE, no moderator to prompt them with questions, no G1 voice actors despite being a 2 hour drive or a 3 hour train ride from LA, nobody else. Wally Burr got every single question and Jason Jansen sat there being good-natured about it. The TF Prime voice over actors were Shockwave and Wheeljack, good actors but lonely on a dais that holds 8 people, and a mostly-empty room; their autograph booths were empty the majority of Saturday. Working actors on a current show, and they were sitting there less active than the guy selling T-shirts and hats in a booth across from them. Botcon '09 and '11 were 180 from that, lots of actors and writers and people who wanted to see them.


-Hasbro panels: Hasbro did better this year than in previous years. But, not revealing the 30th anniversary figure (which was designed with input from the same people who were at the show) at BotCon and instead waiting for SDCC..... If somebody is going just for toy reveals, SDCC is a much better bet. To be fair, this has more to do with Hasbro than with Fun Publications. But, it is an issue with BotCon as a whole.
I cannot speak to Hasbro's first panel, but it didn't sound interesting in what I saw. The toy panel was ok. They revealed HOF winners here, saved something for SDCC which is a big event for them too. Seeing the toys is kind of the fucking point though, and Botcon gets different reveals than SDCC, sometimes better ones.
-toys (dealer room and exclusives): Even with the costs of buying on the after market, it is still cheaper to order toys on-line than to go to the actual show. (The only exception to this in previous years would have been the custom class figure.)
Generally, what I saw is that is false and you are wrong, even before the Sunday closeouts.
At this point, the only reason to go would be "to have fun". And, Fun Publications (ironically enough) seems to be draining the fun out of the convention. (This is based on what I have been hearing. But, the complaints are consistent from year to year.)
You haven't been, I don't think you can say that. The fun is about the fans, the convention gives reason to bring the fans together. Yes, Funpub could work harder to bring in more exhibitors instead of filling the room with crappy dealers, art people, a smattering of autographs, and Hasbro booth. But the fun is there, I met a new friend I had known from online and we hung out with his friends in his hotel room for a little while all talking the same Transformers language, hung out with another friend I don't get to see often, had a couple meals with these folks, and got invited to 2 different after-parties as well as hanging out after the Botcon dinner and casino night ended.

What else is there supposed to be at conventions besides panels, toys, exhibit hall/dealer room, fun, meeting celebrities in the hallways the way my friend Paul and I did (Jason Jansen seems really nice and charismatic in person too, he should consider getting into acting again, I think he could make a go of it, he was quick on the dais with Wally and good one-on-one with me and Paul), going to afterparties, and buying things???
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