 |
| my THIRD favourite bot! |
What does one do when you’ve got your 2 favorite characters
standing proudly on your shelf…and looking lonely? Why of course you get your THIRD favourite
character to fill in the void! So with
that reasoning, slowly but surely, my alternators collection started growing.
My reasons for buying the next robot were always logical of course! From why am
I displaying my 3 robots on a shelf OBVIOUSLY meant for 4 robots? Or “let’s see, I’ve got a yellow one, a white
one, a silver & a blue…..yup, I DEFINITELY need a RED one!” Or “this robot ALWAYS hung around with this
other robot in the cartoon….so…” and of course, my favourite…”OOOOOO….PRETTY
(with accompanying drool….ha ha)”.
 |
| Yup! Definitely need a RED one! |
Seriously though, at this point, I had begun another
“hobby”. Around 2004, I made an attempt
to switch into the field of 3D animation.
I enrolled in a school brought in from Canada that offered a complete 11
month 2D & 3D animation course. I
have to admit, it was a very good experience, unfortunately though…through
mismanagement and so on, the school closed down halfway through my course….I
know what you’re thinking, no it wasn’t a scam, in the 5 months that I was
there, they REALLY taught me stuff…and we were refunded whatever advance
payments we made….the school management really were just a bunch of morons.
Anyway, in those 5 months, I learned enough to make a decent
Transformer in 3D….and over time, quite honestly, I got REALLY GOOD at it, I
was making all my childhood heroes come alive, looking good and actually
tranforming! Soon this 3D Transformer stuff became an obsession. I made my own
website and was churning out new Transformers
every week! Not to toot my own horn, but
I gained a modest following in the Transformers fan community. For a time when you googled “3D
Transformers”, my website would be the #1 result (right now, it still shows up
on the first results page). Type the
same keywords on YouTube and you get video compilations of my work put together
by other people. My work was also featured in an actual Transformers
comic by Dreamwave
(ok so it was featured fan art on a letters page….scroll down to the “Items of
interest” section at the bottome of the page) and even up to this day, YEARS
after my last update, I still occasionally get email from random people saying
how they just discovered my website and how much they enjoyed it and when I
will update again…
 |
| my LITTLE claim to fame... |
So why am I writing about all this? Aside from reliving past
glories :P It was this mini hobby of mine that really re-fueled my passion into
collecting Transformers again. I would
tell myslef that I would need to get all these new Transformers to serve
as reference materials for my latest 3D
project….which was only partially true. Although I have to say, my 3D
renditions of the couple Alternators toys I actually made are some of my
favorites and ones I’m most proud of :)
Within a couple
year’s time the Alternators line was winding down and I had a shelf of roughly
20+ robots. At this point, I had
accepted the fact that I was a full fledged Transformers collector, well sort
of….By 2007, the first live action Transformers movie came out…and with it, new
toys. A few months before the actual
release of the movie, I found myself making the trek to SM Megamall on a
Saturday morning for my first ever “toy launch event”….and weeding my way
through the throngs of other Transformers fanatics….there I was….casually
thinking to myself…”Yeah these Transformers look too weird, nothing like the
originals….I don’t think I’ll collect these ones….ok, maybe I’ll just get
myself a Jazz….”
Just a few more cool shots taken by my girlfriend Caren :)
