Beast Machines Whisper

    Turns out that, unlike the 10" Marvel figures, the 12" WildCATs toys are hollow, designed to snap together like those infant toy plastic bead things (although not designed to snap apart). All joints were swivels, and I couldn't cut too deeply into the figure without striking empty air. That meant, among other things, that I had to incorporate the weird jodphur-like projections on the hips into my final design. After some fiddling around, I settled on a design, including modular forearms. Click here for a drawing of this initial design. I'm not too happy with the way tht drawing turned out, but it should give you an idea of the vehicle mode that this would have if it could transform. Of course, it can barely move, much less transform.

    The first step, as usual, was removing bits. I pulled the forearms off the figure so I could trim the pegs down and make them modular. However, one had thin plastic around the peg base, and it broke off inside the upper arm. I also removed the handlebars from the front parts of the two bicycles, cut away much of Spartan's hair and carved his nose and chin into more robotic shapes.

    Next, it was time to add bits with plastic. I used a bicycle helmet from one of the Barbie-ish bikes to make the top of Whisper's head, gluing it into place. Buying some 3/8" plastic rod, I fashioned a new peg for the forearm that lost its original one, filling the whole forearm with hot glue for strength. The chest I constructed from the bottom of a plastic scoop (from the set I originally used for my Cyberjet Cowl). I cut out pieces of 3/16" thick plastic sheet for the canards, but did not mount them on his lower legs until very late in the game. The sword forearm was actually a sword that came with one of the knockoffs I bought a few years ago (ContainerBot, I think) and which had lost part of its handle. I glued it to a Mega Blok 2x2x1 brick and inserted a piece of the 3/8" rod snugly into the base of the brick. The rest of the sword I did with putty. The other weapon, the forearm cannon, was made from a length of 3/8" rod as the main barrel, some 3/16" rod for the secondary barrel, and an empty film canister for the body of it. Hot glue and putty added shape and stability, plus some details. Finally, the hoverpack was made from the bicycle front ends crossed inside an empty floss container.

    With the rough work out of the way, it was time for putty. LOTS of putty. about three quarters of a $10 package of putty, in fact. I built up the forearms to hide the muscles, covered the thighs for the same reason, smoothed out the chest and helmet, added facial features and a pelvic "block," and created anchor points for the canards and flight pack. Once the putty had hardened and been shaped, I glued on the canards and flight pack and then added more putty to fill in the cracks and stabilize things. At this point I also added a dab of putty for the Spark Crystal. Up close, the figure's kind of lumpy. I wasn't able to properly shape all the putty, and I simply don't have the right tools for smoothing out a large curved surface like this. Of course, when you're working with a figure a foot tall, smaller details aren't as obvious.

    Finally, the painting. I really lucked out this time...after years of searching, I found a good metallic red paint! Folk Art's Metallic Regal Red, available at craft stores like Hobby Lobby or Michael's (although you may need to custom-order the color). While not perfectly chrome (so touching up Transmetals would probably not quite work), it's as close as the metallic silver or blue colors I've used successfully. It's almost as good as the real thing. Anyway, for the most part I stuck to three colors. Folk Art's Metallic Regal Red and Metallic Gunmetal, plus Plaid's (same root company, different brand names) Aquamarine. I used Pactra dark gull grey on the face and flat black for a few details.

    The figure's too big to put on the scanner plate, so I took some photos. Unfortunately, my camera is focus-free, which means you can't focus it on small things, and the pictures are a little small. I took some pictures with the hoverfans rotated for robot mode flight, but they came out washed out and blurry.

Unpainted Whisper. Yeah, the original figure's left fist is pink, supposed to be energized.	Fully painted and assembled. Tends to lean forward a bit, so I propped up the base. Visor is bigger, but the angle obscures it.	Side view. For scale, that's a Hot Wheels track propping up the base.
Rear view. Note the floss box shape. Also, I decided to make the underside of the canards a more rectangular vent, rather than the round shape of the fan ducting into the vent.	With sword and cannon, from front.	With sword and cannon, from an angle so you can see the sword better.

TECH SPECS

After many embarrassing encounters, Megatron finally realized that the Maximals were well-equipped to deal with energy attacks, and were equally well-equipped to hear approaching drones and scatter. In one Vehicon Lieutenant, Megatron sought to find a solution to both problems. Enter Whisper. His hovercar mode moves in almost total silence at speeds up to 150 meters per second on the surface. He can attain true flight of about 50 meters per second, but this makes some noise and he prefers to avoid it. In robot mode, he can use his fans to fly at 25 meters per second, or focus a blast of air to bowl over opponents. Both of his arms can be exchanged via subspace swap for weapons. His right arm can become an energon sword, confined in a tight beam so that Optimus Primal's powers cannot absorb its power. He has as much skill with his sword as Megatron's servitor was able to draw from the planetary databanks, and can give Cheetor a hard fight with just that weapon. Additionally, his left arm becomes a variable-setting cannon. At infrared setting, the beams are invisible and therefore unblockable. In the visible spectrum, he prefers to use a wide-dispersal attack to blind foes, rather than just giving them more energy to absorb and fire back. The cannon can also fire explosive plasma balls, but Whisper finds these inelegant and noisy. Finally, rather than seek some irony or other amusement in the choice of sparks for Whisper, Megatron picked one with no previous strong personality. If ever the personality Megatron crafted for Whisper should break down, there would be nothing underneath. This makes Whisper a perfect servitor, if a somewhat uninspired one. He follows orders, makes his reports, and seeks no glory or fame or personal power. Jetstorm calls him a real "wet rag."