One of my favorite scenes from the original Transformers cartoon was after they crash and Teletraan-1 sends a probe out to find, repair, and, uh, transform the Decepticons and Autobots from their Cybertronian alt modes to Earth vehicles.
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When BloodBrigade did a VAMP challenge on FB and I had just been looking at the Katoyobi Mexican bootleg color options, I knew exactly what to do. The SDCC set used a VAMP mold for Hound so he was the obvious choice here. Buying a War for Cybertron Hound because you can easily remove his limbs for this scene, worth it!
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I’m not usually into papercraft, but Mandingo Rex did a great printable Teletraan-1 that I was originally going to use as just the flat front computer for a background but ended up making a whole diorama scene out of what he has up.
Some other notable firsts happened here too. I’ve wanting to do a curved wall or archway out of foam board for years but the right project never came up. It is barely visible but the right side has a curved overhang to help mimic the inside of the ship better.
I couldn’t figure out how to do the glow effect for the vehicle or the figure. I was trying to find some plexiglass when my wife took out some shrinks dink sheets for the kid and her friends to make Father’s Day keychains with and she just so happened to have an extra sheet. I want to say it was skill that shrunk down to the exact dimensions for the VAMP to fit but that would be a lie.
For the figure energy bubble, I went looking for more shrinks dink paper and found acetate sheets in the scrapbooking along with translucent glow in the dark orange spray paint. The idea became doing a heated not-vaccuu-but-press-formed shell similar to internal action figure packaging. So there I was with the wife, a wax paper covered cookie sheet, a heat gun, and two spatulas trying to shape the acetate sheet around the figure like one does with a loved one for funsies. Heat, push, spread, heat, now the other side, and repeat 100 more times. It looked great and then I sprayed it. Not transparent and it glows green, not orange. Even my wife was bummed about that.
Lastly, the probe needed to be in two scales. It needed to be bigger with the figure Hound and smaller with the model VAMP. The only thing in that shape that is both readily available and cheap are fishing bobbers. The larger one is a night time red flashing bobber and the smaller one is the smallest size from a multipack. The jet exhausts are halves of two different sized barrel casks.
Ok, ok,
This is the last thing. Two tiny details I want to point out. 1) There is a picture of the probe scanned VAMP displayed on the Teletraan-1 main screen. It is an inverted color of the VAMP v1 blueprints. 2) The kid put one of her Bot Bots in the diorama because it matched the colors. When I saw that and the fact its alt mode was tape, I decided to use it as the housing for the claw that puts the transformers back together.
