Introducing: Supreme class Smokescreen

A couple of years ago, I created my own version of my favourite Transformers character Smokescreen, building from an Alternator figure and replacing the Subaru body of it with a 1/24 scale Datsun 280Z model. With my limited skills and experience, I made it non-transforming, so it’s basically a statue. Still, I was very happy with my ”ultimate” Smokescreen figure. After all, it was much bigger than the original and looked a lot more like the original car, even if I had to make some modifications to make the front similar to the racer.

Why Smokescreen, you ask? Well, he was my very first Transformer back in april 1988 and even though he rarely appeared in the comics after his 1987 introduction (I didn’t have access to the cartoon back then), he remained a favourite. I’ve built up quite a collection of his various releases.

Then in early 2010 I discovered a new RC body kit by Tamiya, which was in a huge 1/10 scale made to fit largish RC cars. Images told me very little of what to expect, but a crazy idea took hold. What if I could make this into a transforming figure? It would be absolutely massive! I bought it and some tires to go with it, expecting to find a suitable robot body for it. For a while I considered a Gundam kit, but at those sizes they cost ridiculous prices. Eventually I realized that my Unicron was roughly the right size. I bought a loose Energon Unicron and stripped it of most of the kibble. I shoved him into a vague car shaped form… and yes. He would fit. The project could begin.

Smokescreen: Origins
But first, let me tell you a little about the origin of this character. First released in the second season of Transformers, Smokescreen was a repainted and modified version of the earlier characters Prowl and Bluestreak. Like them, he transformed into a Datsun 280ZX, but instead of a police car or generic silvery car he took on the distinct design of the racing deco of Don Devendorf’s successful Electramotive racer. Actually, all three designs were originally created in the Diaclone line and then imported to Transformers. Devendorf and his team won quite a few championships around 1979 and the following years, which explains why a random American racing deco ended up copied by a Japanese toy maker. Either way, copyright law being somewhat more lax at the point, Smokescreen was released with a minimum of fuss.

While the toy did keep the actual color of the car and the eye-catching numbers, using the less used 38 designation instead of the 83 Electramotive standard, it was very simplified and obviously all actual sponsor labels were removed. Interestingly, the ”Sun” and ”Moon” decals did creep up in the cover art for the 2002 reissue, and not many know that these are the names of two Datsun dealers in California.

First work done
The car model was a bit of a surprise. Rather than a solid plastic kit (like the 1/24 one I had used before), this Tamiya kit was a transparent shell. Looking through the instructions, I realized I was supposed to paint it from the inside. As a RC car, the paint would be vulnerable to scratches so I guess it’s a good solution. So I taped off the inside windows and did some spraying. Since I can’t spray in my house (at least not a lot), I had to wait until the summer to bring it outside. With a lot of touching up, the car shell was ready to go. At this time I also did some drawings of the basic transformation functions. More about this later.

Getting a head
Around this time I started realizing just how much work would go into this project. Trying to get a good start and make some progress, I sat down to create the head. Originally I was going to build on the Unicron head to save the light mechanisms, but I realized it would be impossible to keep it the same size. I tried to salvage just the lights and eventually just the neck, until I scrapped it all and went for a straight scratch build. The entire head is made from 1,5 mm polystyrene cut into size and super glued. Instead of pulling wires (something that had failed with my ”Masterpiece” Blaster project), I bought a tiny keyring LED light and made it fit inside his head. It’s removable so I can replace batteries and turn it on and off. Aside from a huge lot of grunt work, it was a fairly easy build and once I had given him a cool smirk and shifted his forehead a bit, I was happy with him.

Engineering
It would be nice if you could just glue random car pieces to a transformer and be done with it, but that’s obviously not how it goes. I needed to replicate the original transformation on this scale. The biggest issue was getting the car hood to flip down over his chest from the upright car position, and getting the rear end of the car to end up on his lower legs. Having figured out roughly what parts I needed, I went out and bought a Technic Lego kit with some suitable pieces. Using these, I could design the mechanisms. Later on I would order replacement parts in black so I wouldn’t have to paint them all. Other Lego pieces involved a little idea borrowed from Alternator Grimlock to secure the roof to the back windows, the hinge for the opening in the hood, and the Alternator inspired door opening/turning setup. One small but important detail to design was how to fit the tires onto the robot pieces. Since I was already using a bunch of Lego, I screwed the tires onto a standard Technic peg which I could then fit as wanted.

Unicron modification
However, I lost focus at this time and left the project sitting for over half a year. Eventually, in late June, I returned. Being on vacation, I had plenty of time to work on this and after four days I was seeing results. Most of this time was spent taking Unicron to pieces. I had already soldered off most of his heavy duty engineering and now I cut him open. I sawed him off above the stomach door, then divided the shoulders and threw away the center piece, as this would be replaced by my Lego anyway. I intended to make new upper arms too, so I took those off. The waist was unchanged, as were the arms, except for removing his spikes, but I changed the legs a lot. First I had planned to simply balance him on the ends of the legs somehow but it proved rather stupid. So I took away most of the original feet, leaving only the central piece, and cut it down to size. Then, after trimming off what had been the front hatches on his legs, I could fold the foot into this space, using the original hinge. Seriously, it’s like it was supposed to go there. Turning the lower legs around, I mounted a Lego piece to where his planet halves originally sat, to make a connection point to the car body.

Scratch building
Obviously, Lego doesn’t work everywhere. I had a rough Lego spine which also held the neck joints to fold the head down into the now open center of the torso, and a piece to hold the car roof, but I needed to connect this to the remains of Unicron’s shoulders, and to the waist. I eventually built shoulders out of double thick styrene and screwed this entire section together. Finally, I was making some real progress! I then built replacement parts for his waist and lower arms to cover up some Unicron detailing. I was supposed to make the shoulders fold into the torso with the rest of the arms and I had cut the torso open for this. However, I hadn’t taken the spine parts into consideration and shoulders large enough to hold the wheels would be too large to fold inside. Eventually I just took back the Unicron upper arms, since I would have to remove them for transformation anyway. I cleaned them up (they’re filled with glue to hold the soft covers) and made new fronts for them.

Fitting it all together
A week with the parents later, I was back working on the project again. The entire thing was coming together. I had cut the model into pieces some time before, some rather tough work since the plastic is rather thin and vulnerable. On the plus side, it doesn’t easily shatter like regular plastic models would. Making some touch-ups to the paint from the year before, I could start fitting everything together. Doing this, I found some additional designs that needed to be done, like a magnet to hold the door to the rear end of the car, since it’s too floppy to stay together properly. At this point I also built some additions to the shoulders to hold the front tires in car mode. When I was reasonably sure everything would work, I put the robot pieces into car configuration and glued everything in place. Finally, I had a car with a robot inside of it!

Detailing worthy of Devendorf
Just when I thought I was done, I realized that the front looked very plain, with just a single air intake that I had planned to paint black. Some versions of the car have this, but the Smokescreen design is based on a later model with a wide intake and two smaller ones. So I sat down to cut this open. This was on Friday the 22th of July and after the events in Norway I was rather shaken. Distracted, I managed to cut into my finger. While it wasn’t a bad cut, I was afraid that the entire weekend would be ruined in terms of building. But I went straight back to it on Saturday. Having cut the holes, I built the interior out of styrene. The mesh is a coarse fabric that I spray painted and stretched over the opening, finally sealing it up with black styrene. This improved the look a lot so it was worth the extra work and bloodshed.

Then, decals. Obviously there are loads of decals on a race car. I worked in 600 dpi, trying to find all logos that I could spot from my reference pictures. Some were available in vector format, some I had to manually redraw into higher resolution and some I had to touch up. Using the decals that came with the model kit, I could make an extended rear light section and draw the center piece, and make the correct curvature of the Electramotive logo. Some of the smaller logos I couldn’t make out and I didn’t want a Camel logo on my Smokescreen, so I made a few fitting ”sponsors” with the help of friends at NTFA.net and TFW2005.com.

And then, the car mode was complete! This is fully transformable but since I don’t want to do it too much, I brought the entire thing outside for car mode pictures in the sunlight, and took studio pictures and video of it. Only after that did I make the final attachments and got the head and car front glued on.

Weaponry
With that, I could finally turn to the weapons. His disruptor rifle had to be completely scratch built, while the shoulder rocket launchers were based on a reversed form of Classic Jetfire’s backpack (which was left over after I made him into Dreadwind). With some styrene rods, a couple of ballpoint pens and some glue nozzles, I got to work. The shoulder launchers were scratch built to point the Jetfire pieces slightly up, and they can be posed a bit. I used the air intakes on the hood as mounts, putting magnets underneath them and some more inside the launchers. They clip over the back of the hood and are held in place by the magnets.

The gun was going to be a complete build, and I made the barrel out of all kinds of round parts. Then I realized I could screw the barrel onto a Lego piece and again the Danish bricks came to my rescue. The entire inside of the gun was built with Lego, and from there it was simple to cover it up with styrene and spend time on detailing instead of just filling the insides.

And… that’s it! It’s done, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this figure standing in front of me. He’s huge, almost as tall as Unicron which makes him one of the largest Transformers ever (not counting, of course, some other massive custom builds). He’s rather stable but without Unicron’s huge feet he needs a bit more attention. If this ever falls over it will be a mess so I’m hoping the joints will hold up. Now I’ll probably take a break from customizing for a while since it’s hard to top this. On the other hand I’ve learned plenty of valuable skills while doing this, so whatever I make next could be even better (but hardly anywhere near as big).

For the finished result, head on to the Supreme Smokescreen Gallery or watch this video.

Parts list
So you’ve watched all the pictures closely and you want to make your own Supreme Smokescreen (or Prowl or Bluestreak for that matter)? Here’s everything I’ve used to make this:

1 x Energon Unicron without wings
1 x Tamiya Datsun 280 ZX Sports Version mode kit, 1/10th scale, item# 92214
2 x Tamiya Drift Spec 10-spoke tires, 2 pcs, item# 54022**1400
1 x Technic Lego red bigfoot truck for various parts
Loads of black Technic pieces and hinges
Black and white sheet styrene
4 mm and 6 mm styrene tubing
Special plastic super glue
Screws
Ballpoint pens
Decal print paper
Spray primers, paint and metallic paint
Acrylic paints
12 x rare-earth magnets, 5 * 1,5 mm
Games Workshop ”Green Stuff” modelling epoxy
LED keychain light
Thin fabric
Glue nozzles

Tools:
Hand saw
Box cutter
Soldering iron
Hammer
Screwdrivers
Paintbrushes
Powered hand drill

2 tankar kring ”Introducing: Supreme class Smokescreen

  1. Cybertronian

    A beautiful piece of work.
    After all these years, Smokescreen is still one of my favorite pre-movie Transformers.
    I noticed that you mentioned him debuting in 1987. In North America (even Mexico), he debuted in 1985. (The Mexican version makes use of Bluestreak parts, painted and molded in the appropriate colors.)

    My personal Smokescreen is a second-hand (and later broken) 1985 version that was restored using Takara re-issue parts, including the spring-loaded launchers. I decided to place his hood insignia on the front of the hood bump (behind his head). It also makes up for the loss of the dark blue framed sponsor logo on the #83 Electramotive (and its Diaclone counterpart).

  2. Pingback: Supreme class Smokescreen gallery | The Bearded Nerd

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