So purple, so refinded.
For the past few years, Botcon has offered the elusive Custom Class. I have been lucky enough to attend the class over the past two years and have reaped some incredibly benefits, like selling my Animated Minerva for an insane bag of cash. I won’t be selling this year’s figure though, oh no. I was able to create the very cool and clever Shattered Glass Longarm, which is a sort of bizarro classic-ized animated Shockwave.
So dark, so scary... so awesome!
I collect Shockwave figures, and indicated by the comically similar custom Shockblast I bought earlier this year. I cannot wait to photograph the two figures together.
The bag of plastic parts that all attendees of the class start with. There is a long road ahead of us!
Shawn Tessman and his crew outdid themselves this year with two custom parts – a resin Shockwave head and an arm gun. The parts came in white and purple versions with most people preferring the white, which was a little easier to paint.
These were the two possible custom parts that came with your custom figure. Both are resin piece, one a white set and the other a purple. The Purple gun arm was somewhat transluscent, but very rough.
When I first heard of Shattered Glass Longarm during my hungover stupor enroute to the hotel, I thought “WTF IS THIS CRAP!?” But then I realized the catch that it was just a roundabout way to make a Classics Shockwave, and I was very very pleased. Not only does Shockwave have a history with Jazz molds, this was a way to bring some canon from Animated back into the forefront. Longarm was the alternate persona for Animated Shockwave, the Decepticon spy. Now in the shattered Glass Universe, the tables have turned. Longarm is the evil Autobot posing as Shockwave, the benevolent Decepticon. He is also in the alternate persona’s colorscheme instead of his own, which would’ve been a sort of black, teal and gray. I love it.
This puts the arm in Shattered Glass Longarm
This figure was incredibly difficult to put together due to somewhat confusing instructions, and some last-minute changes at the factory in regard to the screws used to assemble the chest and hood to the body. Screws were replaced with pins, causing some headaches for everyone involved. I personally messed up about five times and had to disassemble the same parts over and over again. I broke for lunch to get a breather.
These are the official samples we were supposed to work from. Of course, it's your figure so you can paint it however you choose, but this example was quite good and I stuck to it as best as I could.
Problems aside, the figures turned out awesome. Everyone’s is a little different, and you get lots of choices in regards to how you want to display it. Gun arm? Longarm head? Shockwave head? Vehicle mode?
Time to put his foot down
I expect these figures to reach an inflated value of around $1500-$2000 based on the popularity of Shockwave. Do not forget that the number of figures is doubled this year to 120 versus last year’s 60. My friend’s was already up to $900 24 hours after completing the toy. Yikes!
They upped the attendance from 30 to 60 this year. Too bad the mold was unexpectedly difficult to assemble.
Grape ape has got some legs
Gettin' the paint on, instead of waiting in line to assemble everything for 2 hours
It's coming to life!!! Just needs da head!
In closing, the custom class is still one of the best events at Botcon. Some suggestions for next year would be perhaps 3 cyberverse-sized figures that are easier to assemble so that time can be focused on painting. I want to extend my thanks to the staff that put on this event and hope to see you again next year!!!
See Collecticon’s feature on the custom class from Botcon 2011 featuring Animated Minerva.
The finished product is logically awesome.