Artist David Nakayama shared insights about the package design of the latest Transformers Collaborative figure, Marvel Comics X-Men Mash-Up Ultimate X-Spanse, with Adventures in Poor Taste.
AIPT: How do you go about creating the artwork for the upcoming figure? Does Hasbro provide you with a prototype or photographs?
David: They gave me some 3-D turnarounds in this case. I had a PDF that let me see what the figure looked like from every angle. I had a very good idea of what this thing was going to look like. The only thing I didn’t have was the paint. They weren’t necessarily 100% solid on the paint. And actually, if you look at the art that I released, they even changed a couple of things since. So I may go back into my own art and get it up to speed. The next time I post it’ll be totally accurate.
AIPT: I feel like there are two ways to draw Transformers characters. There’s the Generation 1 cartoon-style: very streamlined. Then there’s the more toy-accurate approach with all the kibble. How did you approach drawing Ultimate X-Spanse?
David: What I was trying to do is be very, very accurate to the actual toy, which I try to do every time I do a toy. We are bringing the toy to life with these box illustrations. So I didn’t want to miss any detail–if it was there in the design, I was going to include it in the art. But at the same time, I knew that I was being hired to do it in a line-art style, which is what makes it look a little more like the cartoon, right? You can see those internal lines. You look at my comic book cover art, for example, I don’t do that anymore. I do like a painted thing that has some lines in it, but it’s mostly painted in this case. We wanted the lines because it was meant to evoke that retro comic book vibe, in particular. So yeah, I think between the two of those, like trying to make it look like the toy, but being careful to use lines. You get a nice mix of toy-accurate and cartoon-accurate.
Read the entire interview here, then sound off on the 2005 boards!
Mercurius
Exactly what I did, too. Saw no negative impact doing so would have on the alt-mode or transformation, and so I just glued it.
Gepard
That was my first instinct too, and I wish I'd gone with it. Oh well.
Smelt
Personally, I just superglued it into the alt mode position. Doesn't really affect robot mode that much from my experience.
Gepard
A word of warning for anyone doing the boiling water trick: the wings parts are extremely easy to deform almost beyond recovery.
I've used the boiling water trick many times and have never had an experience like this. I always remove the water from heat before I dip any parts, and I usually dip for maybe 10 seconds tops. My wings warped severely after perhaps five seconds in the water, curling inwards towards the "waffled" underside of the part. The clip area also curled inwards enough that I couldn't even fit them back on.
I ended up doing multiple quick dips to flatten and adjust each part, and finally had to force them back on which resulted in stress marks at the inside corners of the clips.
View attachment 29539048
My recommendation is that anyone attempting this dip only the end of the wings with the clips on it, and only for one to two second at a time. Submerging the entire wings almost ruined the parts.
Ejector369
Well, dang. That's a shame.
WreckAndRoam
based on how often I see him on sale and for fairly large discount… I don’t think he sold great. I’d claim this is because he doesn’t weaponize well
View attachment 29453888 View attachment 29453889
But honestly the fossilizers are marked down and they weaponize great.
mcart
Honestly, I feel it did pretty poorly. I like it (I bought 2, and foolish me, at full price !) But in hand it's a bit of a let down with some bizarre design choices and the X-Men figures themselves are of very poor quality. Made me think of novelty erasers
I know he's a retool of Bay verse Jetfire and maybe I'd be a little more forgiving of the design choices if I'd handled him prior but I don't collect Bay verse figures.
Fenrys
Fair enough
Ejector369
Thank you, but I’m not interested in 3rd Party. That concept sound really cool, though!
Fenrys
If you collect 3p at all, Maketoys Buster Stealthwing is an MCU Quinjet that turns into Jetfire.
Ejector369
I don’t mean to revive this thread, but how successful did Ultimate X-Spanse sell?
I was hoping to see another Marvel X Transformers collaboration of another team (i.e. Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy).
Grand Slam
This guy is one of GameStop’s deals of the day at $40: https://www.gamestop.com/toys-colle…e-retro-packaging-action-figure/11108741.html
Cardion
Had no interest.
But for $32, I couldn't say no.
I went onto Target's website to get a couple of the Cyberverse Tiny Turbo Changers.
I wound up getting the X-Panse to bump me up to free shipping.
Hoptimus
This guy is half off right now on the Target app and the site, $32.50. Just ordered mine, he looks pretty cool.
Hicks_Royel
Those old pocket playset figures fit in well.
UselessSoup2
Just got this fig in the mail. Anyone know if people have 3D printed his claw yet? Not digging on that unevenness of the figure. Really would have loved 2 claws.
Judgement prime
True
Smelt
imagine if he could combine and then we got a MASK RHINO retooled from the corresponding SS Prime so we could make some sort of cursed MASK-X-Men combiner
Judgement prime
Got it. Just had to ask. Was curious. Would’ve been cool if they could’ve combined.
Shepard Prime
Can't. They share the same core engineering but they're two entirely different figures. I look at X-Savior as being what a g1/movieverse Jetfire could look like.