Picture Gallery 3-Finished!
late June 2005
I would have gotten this project done quicker were it not for Star Wars. Episode III had me going all over town doing Star Wars stuff here in Turkey. Darn that Obi-Wan! Well I finally did get it all done and the following are a bunch of pictures I took before I sent all the Jazzes off to Washington. I hope everyone who got one likes them, and I hope everyone who didn't get one likes these pictures.
I thought it would be cool to donate the molds I used to make the Jazzes for use as auction items at Cybcon 2005. At the time I'm writing this I don't know how much the molds went for. I wanted to make it clear that the molds were so badly degraded by the time I was finished with them that it would be impossible for someone to buy them and make new Jazzes. To prevent this I didn't donate the complete set, and they're supposed to have been auctioned seperately. I just wanted people who liked these things to have a piece of the process. I also gave Richard and Greg two of the early production units-the testshot I used to get the legs working and the second resin/clay prototype to auction off. Unfortunately they broke during shipping so it was decided not to auction them off. I would have liked to know how much someone else would have paid for those!
When deciding which one to keep for myself, I picked the one that came out the most retarded. I figure it's better to keep the sucky one so nobody else gets stuck with it. I kept the one with the crooked spoiler and really stiff joints that's really hard to transform. So remember, if you think your Jazz sucks, imagine how I feel! But seriously, I am well aware of every little flaw and imperfection in my work and it drives me crazy thinking that something I made will be subjected to the scrutiny of other fans. This is a very critical fandom and I cringe whenever I read someone's bad review of officially made Transformers. I have an understanding of how hard it is to make things like these and every one of Takara's Transformer designs impresses me. In the end all I can hope is that the people who get one of my creations feel they got their money's worth.
Near the completion of the first 15 units I decided to use the leftover parts to make eight more Jazzes for the other convention organizers and myself. This way I hoped we could get as many as possible out to the attendees and still have Jazzes for Greg, Richard, myself, and the others who helped make Cybcon happen. By the time I finished them it was too late to get the last seven units mailed out to the other guys in time so they had to wait until after Cybcon to get their Jazzes.
I couldn't resist doing my own fanwanky version of Stepper. After I counted the the 15 convention attendee units and the eight extra units for the convention organizers I still had enough good parts for two more units. I made one more Jazz and a Stepper. Stepper was fun and I felt like maybe we should have made him the Cybcon toy instead of regular Jazz. But considering how much of a pain it was to paint those big gay flames on the hood and doors I'm glad we didn't. For the Autobot insignia on my personal Jazz and Stepper, I took the decals off the Bumblebee and Cliffjumper keychains I destroyed over the past two years. It was a nice touch to use them because it signified a rebirth of sorts. In a way the toys I molested to death will have a part of themselves living on through the chests of my Jazz and Stepper.
Picture Gallery 1-Developing the Idea-Here's the wacky behind the scenes look at how I originally envisioned the Jazzes and how that developed into the prototype from which the molds were made.
Picture Gallery 2-Production-Resin casting, dyeing, parts fitting, priming, painting, and decal applying in style!