#buggernaut rambles

AIGHT SO! CONTEXT:

Animated introduces Dirt Boss as a Headmaster unit that’s fused with a futuristic forklift. He also stole Bombshell’s cerebro-shell mind-control gimmick to puppet machinery and other Transformers. He also is shown to hop on Scrapper’s shoulders and use “manual control” to drive him around. Given that the Headmaster gimmick of Transformers fascinates me for some reason and that I grew up loving the Constructicons it’s a given I’d loop back to Dirt Boss.

My initial ideas were to make this “G1 Dirt Boss” either A) A Headmaster that becomes a Titan-sized head or B) An 80s forklift that triple changes to robot and head modes. A BIG deal for me is keeping his little homunculus proportions from Animated as best as I can. Just look at him!

Animated gives the forklift mode a closed cab, which creates more mass you can hide robot bits inside of. 80s forklifts (and I’m certain modern ones, as well) only have roll cages.

That’s got me thinking, though, about how G1 also took place in the fantastical far-off sci-fi future of 2005! I can take notes from the original Headmaster figures being Cybertronian jets and vehicles and apply that to just using his Animated forklift design with some tweaks. Neat!

This idea informs my current headcanon for how I’d write Dirt Boss into the G1 continuity: Around the Season 4 era of the cartoon, Devastator loses his head and the Constructicons can’t form him anymore. The team get the idea to apply the Headmaster concept to their Titan form by building a Transformer to fill that role as Devastator’s head unit using a forklift. Dirt Boss is the result, and by being integral to forming the Constructicons’ most powerful asset he’s able to leverage becoming the new team leader. Given how G1 emphasized characters having unique powers, maybe give Dirt Boss the ability to either puppet someone by hopping on their shoulders and grabbing their head, or just outright use Bombshell’s cerebro-shells now that the poor bastard is (maybe) Cyclonus. Or both. Both is good.

It certainly helps that the team behind Animated were super fans of the franchise, makes it pretty easy to slot concepts from that show into other places. At any rate, I’m probably gonna be fixated on nailing this concept and transformation scheme. This is the first time I’m trying essentially to design a figure and it’s proving to be pretty hard lmaooooo

I fiddled around with some of my old Transformers when I moved earlier this year and I’m still impressed at the way these toys function. Having some recent experience with Gundam model kits with pretty okay transformation gimmicks, having a toy DESIGNED to transform lets you marvel at how they had to engineer and manufacture the damn thing.

(Special cameo from my cat!) Shockwave was pretty similar to his Animated toy, which was one of my favs as a kid, so that was nice to see. Megatron was a bit fiddly at first, but I really dig the tank mode. I’m one of those weirdos who doesn’t have a problem with Cybertronian modes not looking like Earth vehicles, and it kind of reminds me of Metal Slug?? Cool stuff. What’s not so cool is the jet mode, which bummed me out.

If you look at it directly from the top the shaping is fine, but the way the mass is dispersed just looks too much like a flying crab-thing. Thankfully, transforming Gundam designs have conditioned me to think of ways to flex things from wacky shapes into slightly less wacky shapes, so I took advantage of the figure’s waist swivel that no alt mode used. Not to toot my own horn, but…

That along with locking the arms with the fusion cannon instead of the finicky tabs makes this look so much better. Almost looks like a bird of prey now, which is pretty fitting. I’m no scientist, but this jet mode is now 90% more swooshable than before.

I bought these two goobers on a whim because they look cool, I’m not interested in getting back into the figure side of Transformers anytime soon (Gunpla rules my shelves now).

Up first we’ve got what I call the “forearm style,” exemplified with Mega Man and Samus Aran

This style functionally replaces the hand with the muzzle of a ranged weapon. Some characters can swap between hand and cannon like Mega Man (usually means the character is a robot or has a prosthetic) or like Samus it’s just a weapon your entire forearm slots into to operate. I see this style as making the cannon/blaster/gun/etc. as a literal extension of the user, it gives the impression of grace and control. This style is most often seen in media, I feel.

Up next we have what we’ll call the “mounted style” but it might was well be called “Megatron style” because I have yet to see another character have an arm cannon in this way.

A product of the original toy’s transformation into a gun and the scope being attached to the robot-mode arm, this style of arm cannon to me screams “brute force.” The forearm style is sort of implied to be nearly weightless, but by having Megs single-handing (single arming?) such a bug gun just looks powerful. On top of that, he can still use his hand to grab stuff while shooting at things, which has a nice utility. The live-action movies opting for in-built forearm cannons makes sense to show these Transformers, well, transforming their bodies, but you lose the visual of a strong guy lugging around a giant gun with just one arm.

As a bonus that falls between the two, one of my favorite arm cannons comes from Mega Man Megamix, specifically that manga’s version of Skull Man. See, Skull Man originally used the “forearm style” like every other Robot Master…

However, artist Hitoshi Ariga gave each Robot Master some tweaks to make them standout more in a lineup and Skull Man got an excellent update:

Along with being more skeletal, Skull Man’s arm cannon was changed to be an extension of his fake radius bone, so his hand flips down and the radius becomes a gun barrel. I don’t think he ever grabs anything while shooting but he poses his little fingies so I’ll say this is a cool cross between the forearm and mounted styles that I enjoy.

I usually see the forearm style so I appreciate designs like Megatron or Skull Man changing up how you can depict a gun built into the arm.