The base figure I used was a S.T.A.R. Corps action figure, a knockoff (well, licensed) GIJoe space figure sold in blister packs at places like Wal-Mart and K-Mart. This time it was Electro, who I previously used on Roadgunner.

    This one started with the decision to do a starship of some sort, then rooting through my Legos and spare parts. For a while I tried to use a big A-10-like engine pair I have, but I finally decided it wouldn't work with a 8cm figure. After settling on the Lego pieces I used for the thrusters and modifyign the head so it would spin all the way around (and inadvertantly making it so it pops out easily), I addressed the problem of the feet. I wanted this ship to fly feet first, but that gave me the usual problem of what to do about the feet poking up and ruining the look of the ship.

    The solution I came up with was radical, but only marginally successful, sadly. I cut off Electro's feet at mid-shin, then removed the upper arms from a really cheap knockoff action figure. I glued the upper arm to the lower shin, making the shoulder hinge joint into an ankle joint. I used putty to fill in the gaps and stabilize things, and cut out sheet plastic to glue on as feet, fleshing them out with more putty.

    For the head, I used the cutting wheel on my Dremel to slice a slot into the skull, then glued in a fin made of sheet plastic. A little putty went into smoothing out the top and making the face details. None of the original faceplate is visible. I seriously chopped down the Lego thrusters, then used the cutting wheel to make grooves in the forearms and glued them into place with superglue. After a bit I decided to make winglets and attach them to the thrusters. The last bit of shaping was to build a cockpit onto the abdomen with putty.

    From there it was just a paint job. I was originally going to use just white, black, silver and a little red, but I decided to use gold as well to liven up the design a bit. For this project, I just painted on the Spark crystal, rather than messing with the googly eyes, which don't quite work for me anymore. Too cylindrical.

When Megatron built Obsidian and Strika to lead his new armies, he also created a number of lesser, special-purpose units. One such unit was Outrider, built to scour Cybertron's near space environs and look out for any other returning Maximals. Considering the trouble Botanica was making for Megatron, he didn't want any more Maximals showing up. Outrider is a solitary and obsessed Vehicon, seeing it as his sacred duty to keep Cybertron free of foreign contamination. In the near vacuum of space, his powerful lasers can strike with full effectiveness out to nearly a million kilometers. He is assisted by several dozen drones, which are less powerful copies of himself. Each engages in a solitary patrol of some part of Cybertron's starsystem. Only a direct order from Megatron will get him to give up this lonely vigil...which could prove to be a problem in coming years. With highly efficient solar converters running his stardrives, he'll be combat ready for millennia to come....

STR 6  INT 7  SPD 9  END 10   RNK 6  COUR 8  FRP 8  SKL 8   Avg 7.75