Optimus Prime resin kit (RX conversion)

    Have you guys ever wondered why no one has ever thought of making a G1 Optimus Prime (the cartoon version) in gundam proportions? A Prime as we would like to imagine him, full-out mecha dynamism, without the boxy cartoony design, and not looking like Michael Bay's wet dream.

The only one that ever came close was Revoltech's Optimus Prime. But that wasn't a model kit, merely a small action figure. Why can't someone just make it happen???? It's probably due to licensing issues, and the fact that it's more worthwhile for companies to have TF toys be able to transform, so they need to be engineered accordingly, hence sacrificing aesthetics. Well...they are called Transformers.

So all the Optimus Primes we see are either clunky, boxy versions in toy stores, or insectoid robotic automatons like the movie version.

                   

What I wanna see, is this:

That's right. Pretty gundam-looking, wouldn't you say? So what happened was I spotted a resin conversion kit in HK last year, which had Optimus Prime parts that utlised the MG RX's frame for a conversion. The end result out-of-box, as you shall see later, is pretty crude-looking, but what the heck, this was probably as good a chance as ever I'm gonna get at modding a resin kit into an Optimus Prime with proportions I would like to see.

The kit itself costs slightly over $100. The resin quality was mediocre. But at least the assembly manual came fully coloured with a pic of what your converted Optimus Prime would look like!:

You gotta be ready to give up a complete MG RX-78 for this conversion, as the inner frame of the gundam is needed. So after sanding down irregularities and washing the resin, everything was hung out to dry with the sacrificial RX ready for his major makeover:

Then comes the easy part - smacking those bits and pieces onto the RX frame. The final product looks like this:

I know what you're thinking. WTF rite?!?? Lol. This is butt-ugly, what with the blocky head, and stiff crotch with headlights and all. C'mon Optimus deserves better than that!! So I decided some mods were in order. This fella needed a cosmetic change. Bear with me for the next slew of WIP pics as I've never published everything before in forums, so I thought it might be a good avenue to showcase the steps.

I cut out the circular earpiece and replaced with an RX part for more depth and form, then shaved down the antenna ear-wings for a more dynamic look.

Leg extension was done by cutting up the leg frame and glueing on spare parts for added length.

Once all that is done, I primed the piece to check for irregularities and an overall feel of the shape. Then comes the toughest bit....Modding and streamling the top of the head into something more sleek. A lot of putty, an RX visor and a Koto option part were used for the forehead crest. Next up, I sculpted the face into the armour using a mix of putty and a spare gundam mouthpiece. This is very crude work folks, and the pro's are probably frowing, but it's my first attempt at a mod on this scale. Voila! Here's a comparison:

BEFORE

AFTER

I moved on to the body, which is a hell lot easier. Details were added with some minor pla-plating and carving of panel lines.

The crotch-work is also an important part. Weird-shaped crotches just look....weird on your mecha, so I sanded down unnecessary details on the original kit, and added pla plates to look more like the G1 version of Prime:

With everything in place now, it's just left with the fun part - painting. And so I present to you my humble version of Optimus Prime. Autobots, rrrrroll out!