Saturday 13 October 2012

Cameras, Skyscrapers and Rumblin'

So last week I train'd it through London and down into deepest, darkest Kent for a location shoot, wherein I'd be filming some dreadfully tedious customer testimonial vids for a client. The day of shooting went as smoothly as could be expected, everything got done and it was all cool. I even nabbed a quick Instagram of the Shard on the way there:


I was like, "Oh yeah, this is here."
Thing is, I rocked up at like 3pm on the Monday and we didn't have anything to shoot until the following morning, so I was confronted with a long evening to kill in Tonbridge, which is as drab and pointless a town as any small overspill community you care to mention. (Nice castle, mind.) After paying £5.30 for a fucking pint of Peroni and my A-Team DVD wouldn't play on my laptop, because it turns out my work laptop doesn't play DVDs, I remembered that I'd packed my newest robo just in case I got really bored. So here's my super-HD review of Prime Rumble, shot in a hotel room using my work equipment! Holy crap!



So, having achieved such deliciously crisp HD quality glory, where now? How can the webcam I normally use possibly live up to this? I mean, it's a pretty good webcam, but it's still a fucking webcam. Fortunately, it'll only be around for one more review because (a) it's my birthday and (b) my dad fucking kicks ass. Guy got me a new friggin' camera for my 29th, 'cos he's incredible. Says on the front that it's a Canon PowerShot SX220 HS, and it's pretty friggin' great. Dunno if it'll be as good as the almost-pro quality of the vid above, but believe me when I say it's a marked improvement over the webcam's frame-dropping pixellated antics. It shoots in full HD and it's got a motherfucking super-slow-motion function.



This is it, folks. TATFR has entered the HD age for real! I've one webcam-shot review to finish off, then we'll be hi-deffin' it all the way. Hold onto your fucking socks.

Monday 20 August 2012

OVERCOMPENSATRON

Yesterday I flopped a giant half-hour vlog onto the Youtubes, in which I responded to a clutch of questions from some lovely people who cared enough to ask them. Here it is, I guess.


Saturday 12 May 2012

Vid: Grimstone

Fancy some dinorobos? Of course you do:


This vid was a really long time coming. I actually started working on it as soon as Ian kindly sent me this awesome set way back in December, but I kept hitting a wall with it and for some damn reason I just couldn't get it finalised. So I left it to stew for a bit and came back to it last week, and it's like, what was the problem? It was probably the easiest one to make for, like, a year!

This was the first vid I made using my new editing software, the snappily-monickered Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11, which is a friggin' amazing tool. I mean, it came with a bunch of other stuff like Sound Forge and like a thousand sound effects, it was super cheap, and holy crap the things come out in actual HD. It's the futuuuurrrreeee

Super big props to the guys who got in on the mighty morphin' voice thing: Brent, Pat, Joe and Ian himself! They weren't the only folks who gave it a shot - I put a call out on Twitter for some voice action which about 15 people were awesome enough to answer, and it was a bit of a shitty job to pick the ones that made it. I mean, there wasn't a single bad one. Everybody really went for it! In the end, I just went for the ones that sounded the most Power Rangery. Nice job, everybody.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Super Late Vid: Dreadwind & Smokejumper

Word up, blogosphere. Look at this immediately:


Yeah, I completely forgot to do a blog about this review when I posted it last month, but whatever! I'm forgiven. Thanks. You're welcome.

Man, I had such a blast making this video. Every aspect of the Dreadwind and Smokejumper set is totally ridiculous: how much cool stuff they can do, how great they look, how much gear they come with, and most importantly how much fun you can have with them. 

I think that sense of fun translated pretty well into video form, and for me, this video serves as a reminder that making reviews is how I enjoy my toys these days. I mean, I know it's pretty weird to be a collector in the first place and I'm not quite comfortable enough with myself to actually play with my toys in the traditional sense. But it's totally fine for me to play hours and hours of Xbox. That's some double standard bullshit right there.

Also: Dreadwind and Smokejumper can combine with Armada Megatron! How awesome is that?

Friday 24 February 2012

Vid: Prime Cliffjumper


Yeeeaaahhh boooyyyyy!! This is a new vid of a brand new toy. I know, right, can you believe it? I found this feller and his wavemates at Toy Planet, the bitchingest toy shop in town. I'm glad that place exists.

The Prime line has already caused its share of controversy after the First Edition wave was cancelled in the States. I don't mean to sound like a dickhole, but I just can't bring myself to give a shit about that. The End.

Thursday 16 February 2012

The 5 Most Insane Transformer Accessories

Of all the toy-centric Saturday morning cartoons spawned from that strangest of decades, the 1980s, Transformers has proven to be probably the most imaginitive and enduring of the lot. Standing head and shoulders above the glut of muscle-bound, neon-clad archetypes, this is a franchise with its own world - a world huger than I ever imagined. With all that creativity shooting back and forth in red and purple laser beams for 25+ years, you can bet Hasbro's terrifyingly huge mechanical brain has dreamed up some pretty insane shit in its time. Here are a few bits and bobs that accompanied the actual toys and filled countless kids' worlds with crazy.

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Let Me Set Some Shit Straight Right Here

It's a funny old time to be alive, right? I mean, look at us all, gawping into our magical space-age typewriters and our giant skin-operated photo frames, screeching at all our mates in garbled moron code about our every single stupid bloody activity every single stupid bloody day. With such magnificent communication equipment at our constant disposal and incessant encouragement to tell everybody else exactly what we're thinking about absolutely everything, it's extremely easy for any ordinary human being to shit a giant cretinous clanger out of our brains from time to time. Speaking as an ordinary human being, I can comfortably say that the information superhighway is strewn with the reeking roadkill of what a colossal fucking idiot I can be. Let's look at some videos I made about my favourite luxury consumer products in which I got some extremely minor details a little bit wrong!

#1. The Ultimate Destructor's Defiantly Non-Static Head

Let's start with a very, very small error I made about a very, very big toy. This one isn't even a big deal, but I got it wrong and it bugs the shit out of me.


Ha ha ha! Look at me, prattling on about that thing like I know what I'm talking about. Armada Unicron is a breathtaking piece of hot plastic action, bristling with neat features and planet-shattering attitude (shattitude?) and I seriously wish I hadn't made this teeny tiny error. Skip the vid to about 3:25 and gaze in horror as I boldly claim that because of his blazing electronic eyes of hatred, he can't move his head.

Correction:

His head totally does move. Christ, you have no idea how much better that feels.


#2. Turns Out WWII Enthusiasts Dislike Poorly-Researched Throwaway Gags

When HFTD Highbrow showed up early last year, I thought it was the butt-ugliest robot I'd ever seen. It's a skinny, freakish, baby blue shambles of a thing, so it's a good job that it turns into a frigging amazing WWII fighter that's very nearly a P-38 Lightning and all the way a total babe.


Watch and snigger as my entire world collapses at the 3:30 mark.

Correction:

What I didn't know when I made that lame joke about the plane shooting itself down was that people who build military aircraft don't fuck about. The whole thing with the guns sitting behind the propeller was a thing that got figured out pretty quickly, and my ignorance to this fact coupled with my enthusiasm to parrot an old joke about a military Concorde scored me more bollockings from spitfire-savvy viewers than any other fuckup ever.  

Look, I'm not very good at knowing things about real-world technology.


#3. That Bloody Clip

Masterpiece Skywarp encompasses everything that is lovely about being a Transformers collector. Big toys are ace, fighter jets are ace, things that are black and purple are ace, Skywarp is ace, and high-quality figures that are huge and stunning and beautiful... are ace.


Mm-mm. That's the good stuff. Except at 2:40, when I'm all "I don't know what this tiny black clip is for".

Correction:

Well, not really correction, because technically I didn't get it wrong. I just didn't know. But now I do. Oh God, do I know now. It's for attaching the Megatron gun that came with MP Optimus to the underside of the jet mode. After the video went live, I must have received fifty comments explaining in detail what a useless bellend I am for not figuring it out. I still get them to this day, at a rate of about three a month. Two years later.

Shoulda done my homework!


#4. Watashi Wa A Fucking Idiot Desu

This one turned into a bit of an epic, so I mercifully put it at the end. You're welcome. Honestly, feel free to duck out at any point.

Some people like things that are Japanese. That's fine. I like some things that are Japanese. Some people, however, insist on liking all of the things that are Japanese, and that is fucking bonkers. That's like saying that you like everything that's yellow, or everything that's on Channel 4, or everything that's longer than it is tall.

What I'm saying is that I enjoy the Transformers universe for what it is. It's as rich and varied as any fictional universe whose entire reason for being is to sell toys is likely to get. I recently picked up the entire All Hail Megatron comic series and managed to enjoy it, despite all the narky critiques I'd heard about it. I mean, I didn't know that the story ended in volume 2, with volume 3 being a sub-standard Spotlight collection and volume 4 entirely dedicated to cleaning up the massive, prodigiously stinking shit that McCarthy had left in the sobbing mouth and eyes of the established IDW canon.

 Yeeeaahhh! Fuck you, Furman!

Anyway, one of the things that wound a lot of people up was this one guy Drift. Basically, McCarthy thought he could improve the TF universe a bit by sticking in a katana-wielding, seldom-speaking, morally-torn character laden with heavily Japanese design cues to pander to the Otakus. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I actually didn't find Drift anything like as unbearable as I expected to. Sure, the whole thing with Perceptor was a bit fucking mawkish, but Drift was by no means the Jar-Jar I'd braced myself for.

ANYWAY. Holy shit. It's obviously not Drift himself that's the problem. It's the ham-fisted insertion of a shitty version of an unnecessary external influence by some douchebag newbie writer with big ideas. I mean, there are several entire Japanese versions of Transformers, and Transformers fans know about them. If we want to know what it's like when Japan does Transformers, we'll fucking well do it properly and get into the version that already exists.

Phew! This could have been its own post!


Ah, there I am as a younger man who still knew where his Murderface t-shirt was saying basically the same thing I just twatted on about for four paragraphs! Anyway, I drop the ball about 3:15 when I foolishly claim the slightest knowledge of something outside of Transformers. Y'know, something that actually might be useful in the real world. A language.

Correction:

That douchey decal actually translates to "Samurai". The reason I thought it said "Drift" was because I think I heard somebody say that the original concept art for the guy had the "Drift" kanji on it. I was pretty blown away by the level of arrogance this imbued in the character and revealed in its creator, and I was too enthused by the prospect of bitching about this on camera to even notice when they changed it. Yes, I am that much of a prick.

Vid: Sky Shadow

 

So, review #110 went live last night! Its subject is one fierce retool, Generations Sky Shadow. And yeah, we are carrying on as normal even though this is the first video for two months and the first blog entry in infinity, thanks for asking.

Be warned that the video contains a graphic first-person reconstruction of that time I fell down the stairs last summer after buying the original Thunderwing figure. I smashed my back in a bit, bruised a toe, and felt like a total muppet for the remainder of the day. It was horseshit.


Obviously it wasn't really Thunderwing's fault - it could equally have been the WFC Soundwave I picked up that day, but I've a feeling it was mainly down to my exuberant clumsiness and the quart of whisky. Still, the echo of embarrassment and lumbar discomfort that I experience whenever I catch a glimpse of his pallid, moderately disappointing chassis and gimpish Tygra face is real enough. 


FUN FACT: This is the first donated figure I've reviewed where I forgot to flash the guy's name up at the end. So big ups to knucklesfan08, for he is a ledge!