Toy update, dinosaur mode
It's been a while since I worked on this, but here's a stab at the dinosaur mode. I know why I'm taking longer and longer, too - it's partly that I've modelled all the vehicle parts and am now onto the trickier organic shapes, and it's partly that this is mode is #10 of 12. Every time I model something now, I have to sit down and think about how it's going to interfere with all of the previous modes and how to work around that.
As an example, about the only new thing I had to model for this mode was the dinosaur head. And the central section doesn't count - it's the accessory, and I had that bit modelled months ago. However, the dino head - or, to be more accurate, the green panels above where the sides of the dino head will eventually be sculpted - has to fold up into the same space as the robot hands. The volume is already constricted by the front pair of insect feet, the arcwelding spikes for the robot mode, a section of tank tread for the tank mode, the wyvern tail, and the helicopter tailfins (which I still haven't thought about, and which may have to end up being made of second-hand kibble). Plus there's all the rods and joints which have to be inserted in there, and the plastic has to remain thick enough so it won't snap during transformation.
As you can imagine - tricky.
On the plus side, it means that I've gotten the damn robot hands out of the way finally. They're fully articulated in all fingers and the wrist, and the thumb has almost as many degrees of freedom as a human one. Theoretically, this toy could touch each of its fingertips to its thumb.
The hands were particularly difficult because in order to fit in around all the other stuff jammed in that space, they had to transform to fold away into the forearm. I've spent literally months juggling all the pieces about in my head to fit them all in. Finally, I settled on folding the palms lengthwise and having the thumbs transform separately - they actually stick out and form part of the rectilinear shape of the forearm, now. You can see them in the picture above - they're the grey-blue wedges just above and behind the green dino head.
The dino head itself seems a little odd without the future sculpting. The black set of wedges sticking out the front was originally envisioned to be a Trypticon-style headmounted weapon - I've included the full shot of it in the bottom right of the large picture above. However, because the green panels are pretty much featureless at the moment, it looks a little like a bird bill instead of a fearsome blaster. This is simultaneously mortifying and hilarious.
Play value: The hips move back and forth as you can see in the large running shot. The neck and tail are articulated (the smaller shot on the right), although the neck/head joint is nowhere near as mobile as I would like. The AA guns swivel. The ankle joints move. The middle toe on the feet is actually separately articulated from the sides. In these images, I've tried to set it to vaguely resemble the feet of assorted bipedal dinosaurs, with a larger toe forward (see bottom left of image for a close-up).
The other leg joints can be swivelled, but only by moving one of the leg segments sideways first. Otherwise, they're 'locked' at 90 degrees - if the ankle and hip joints are stiff enough, it should be able to stand unaided.
I could drape the orange pad down over the sides as an alternative. It would be the upside-down form of the wyvern corset from my last toy post. Interestingly, I think it would look more like a horse-blanket here than a corset. Partially because of the faux-drape effect, but also because there's a lot more visual bulk (including the hind legs) outside it.
On the plus side, I think there's only one more major piece (the combination robot head and cat head) to model. I do have to go back and clean up a bunch of things, including getting proper transformations for the rotor blades, fixing the large symbols, adding colour and detail, retransforming everything with the finalised pieces to see how it looks, finding ways to add a trigger connection and maybe landing wheels for the jet mode, modelling the insect ankle joints and AA platform connection properly instead of just fudging them, you name it.
Oh, and as a bonus, today is the one-year anniversary of when I started modelling this toy in Sketchup. How about that. :)