Star Convoy is a post G1 Japanese exclusive transformers design. To my knowledge, he has never appeared in any cartoons though he has popped up in comics here or there. I’ve always found the design neat, the stylization of the traditional Optimus prime robot design appeals to me. As a break from larger projects, I decided to see if I could rush out a star convoy over the course of a week or two. Here the focus was on the action figure element, he would still transform but I wanted to maximise the articulation and playability

As the focus was on the robot mode and articulation I started by sculpting the legs followed by the torso. In transformation I expected these to be covered up by trailer panels meaning few accommodations for engineering would be necessary. I had an idea of how the arms were going to work, but otherwise for now the aim was just sculpt. After completing the torso I put some rough placeholder arms in in order to work on the proportions. If articulation and robot mode were to be the focus then getting the humanoid proportions right would be highly important. At this point the joints still needed adding

Once the torso proportions were nailed down I worked on the arms. They featured a few off-axis joints in order to facilitate a mild shape change for vehicle mode where they would form a truck cab. Balancing this alternate mode while maintaining robot mode cleanliness was a challenge, and in the end I resolved to make a slightly too wide truck for the sake of the robot. Once all the parts were sculpted and placed appropriately I went through and added articulation to all of the limbs, ensuring the maximum range from all the joints. This means greater than 90 degrees of motion in the elbows and knees and an abdominal joint for more natural bending. Once this was pinned down, I used the inherent articulation design to reduce the profile of the torso and legs as much as possible and designed a trailer cover to make a cohesive vehicle mode. This then folds up into a fairly slim backpack

Finally, I sculpted the head and added in a few additional joints in order to allow it to fold away. The fists were re-used designs from a previous project as I find hands to be time-consuming with little return on time invested. All that was left to do was print and assemble him. Like my previous projects I divided the model up so that every coloured part could be printed as a component and either snapped or glued together. Additionally, a few weeks later I decided to produce a scaled-up version. As a Takara exclusive a voyager class Super Megatron was to be released. Super Megatron was a design intended to go with the original post G1 Star Convoy but he never got a toy until now. As such, I felt a version of this design scaled to match this new toy would be well received