Super Ginrai is a character from the Japanese exclusive sequel to the 1980’s transformers cartoon. The design and his toys were released in the west as Powermaster Optimus Prime, a design I absolutely love. However, all figures based on this design thus far had leant towards the chunky aesthetic of the original toy, and I wanted to see if I could make a functional version of the design in the anime style of his original cartoon. This project is as of yet incomplete. It was the first proper project I got stuck into after completing cosmos, and I will admit it became a monument to overstretching oneself. After well over 100 hours of CAD work and a full printed prototype I finally shelved the project, but I will return to it one day once I feel I have the skills to both deliver on the design and do so in a timely manner

Super Ginrai is a character design consisting of a truck cab very similar to Optimus Prime with a trailer which turns into a suit of power armour. To begin with I started with the core robot. Initially I designed the torso and arms with the intent to have them fold away and be covered with a series of panels. I then moved onto the legs waist and legs. I presumed getting the parts fo cleanly fold away would be easy as the transformation needed would be fairly basic, but I quickly found that getting the anime-esque curves and proportions to collapse well would be a challenge. Eventually I produced this initial version of the core robot, partly to test it in physical form and partly so I could mess with the components in hand to see if I could find better ways for them to fit together. I found this first prototype disheartening, the proportions felt off and due to an oversight in the shoulder transformation joints he could not form the truck mode. As such, I revised a lot before printing a second time

After the disappointing first prototype I reworked the shoulder articulation, transformation and proportions in order to allow for both more range of motion and proper transformation. The hips and legs were also reworked in relatively minor ways for clearance and design. To directly compare the revised designs to the original I produces a halfway prototype with the original parts in colour and the new parts in white. While I felt I was on the right lines, the new arms seemed a little long. I scaled them back down to a midpoint side between the new and old design and found a size that seemed to work a lot better. I then produced a full V2 prototype. This could transform, had functional articulation and could fold up as needed for the combination with the trailer. While I feel there is a lot of room for improvement, I was and still am happy with how this V2 shaped up. The head sculpt was not perfect, it was recycled from an Optimus Prime design I dabbled with but didn’t finish, however for the time being it was good enough

Having reached essential completion on the core robot I moved to the trailer/power armour. Again, I started with the chest and torso. Given the design, most of the robot was inevitably going to crumple up and be covered in trailer panels, so my focus was the sculpt. Initially, I was very pleased with it, my first draft of the torso and thighs felt really promising and I am still very proud of how they look, however as I begun to populate the rest of the design something felt a little off. I had hoped things would feel better when it was printed, so ploughed on.  I wanted the head for the combined mode to capture the exaggerated lines of the anime design. While I felt at the time I was successful, I have since felt like it could be significantly improved upon. Once the rough robot mode was laid out and the cavity for the folded up core robot was designed I worked on engineering compression for the legs and a series of foldable panels to form the trailer mode

Once I had approximately functional transformation mechanics down I decided to go ahead and print him in full. At this point I had been working on Super Ginrai for months and wanted a physical item to show for it and to help motivate me through the final stages of the design process. Once printed, I sadly found the transformation did not work in real space. Also, while I was proud of elements of the sculpt, over time I accepted the proportions were off and the whole thing needed a chunk of reworking. I still plan to do this reworking one day, but after all the time invested in I wanted a break and to work on some smaller projects to build up the skills I would need to deliver on it properly