I have to confess being swept up into the Transformer madness that's been going around.  I'm actually a little too old to be a Transformer fan (ie, a fan of the original cartoon).  My brother is a MAJOR fan.  When I was back in the US a couple months ago, I saw the first four seasons available in a box set so I bought it.  I also played Transformers War For Cybertron (basically because my brother loved it so much).

Well anyway, my interest in Transformers was rekindled some.  I had a couple day fit of interest back when the first Michael Bay movie came out but it faded for a variety of reasons but it came back (who figured).

I naturally wanted to do Optimus Prime but EVERYBODY does him I thought and I was always partial to Soundwave's voice so I thought paying homage to him would be a little more fun.

I've certainly learned a lot about the Transformers in my research for this work.  I wanted to keep it old school as much as  practical.  There really is no super defined canon for Transformers which gives me a huge wide berth for creativity.  I'm pretty sure that this representation does respect to the G1 version of him.  I scuffed him up just to give him some more reality.

I have plans to build a scene for him.  I bought Architools for my birthday (haven't even used it yet and it's been over six months!).  Now's a really good time to break that out and build a couple of buildings for Soundwave to be fighting in the street.  I've set him all up to be poseable so he needs to be rendered doing something interesting.

This was a really fun project.  I didn't know if I could pull it off in a fashion where I would be satisfied but I'm pretty close.  I learned a few things (ratios for parts when building robots, etc.).  You will be seeing more of this character in my gallery (that's the plan anyway).

This guy is built of about 360 parts (200 of those are in his hands alone).

Later,

That is awesome, now I think he needs a couple of his companions.

Ravage, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Ratbat, Rumble, Frenzy, Slugfest and Overkill :)

As much as I like the new Transfomers look, I do prefer the original look.

This definitely pays homage to the original look.  I've tried to preserve it but I've had to make several concessions because I want his parts to have some semblance of function (still it's not really setup well).

Other concessions were taken just to get more depth into the model.  For example, the detail on the front of his shoulders wasn't in the show at all.  I added it based on other renditions of Soundwave I found during research and it gives the model a little more spice.

I think Laserbeak will definitely be involved in my final image.  I also really liked Ratbat too.  Ravage was pretty awesome but he could be trickier to model (but still very cool).

Bottom line for me personally, the G1 version of the show is my personal favorite and so I've focused on that.

Cool. Nice modeling work! A true homage to the original.

But can yours bust a move? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCYLEO9sIVQ

Well when I'm all done, I'm assuming he could do so.  To be honest, I'm having a lot more fun just building him than rendering him.  I wanted to render a cool scene with him but I'm having a hard time coming up with something I like.