I only remember receiving a few of my original Transformer toys from back in the 1980s, but Jazz was one of them. I distinctly remember him arriving by mail and being the most complicated figure to transform I had come across at the time... I spent a frustrated hour trying to work out the instruction booklet before finally mastering what has now become a fairly common set of twists and turns for a figure. As you can see in the Jazz Ensemble photo, the original toy (on the left) has yellowed over the years and is fairly loose in the joints. I have a more recent re-release from the "Generation Two" series beside him. I wanted to make a Cuboyd version of this guy because I hold some good memories of him as a kid, and because I always liked the "car-front-end-as-a-chest" design in the Transformers line.

The largest amount of work on this figure was done to the head. I had to create the shape in several stages of epoxy application. First, the "headphones" on the sides of the head were sculpted and sanded. Then, the front visor was added and similarly cut to shape. Once that was done the "Mohawk" was added along the top of the head. Finally, the two "ears" were sculpted on an entirely separate Cuboyd head, shaped and sanded, removed and finally glued onto the sides of my Jazz head... quite a bit of work for one piece, but I really think I managed to get the look of the toy down great in the process.

The front of the chest, sides of the waist, wheels (arms and feet) and fenders on the lower legs were all more epoxy work. After everything was dry the painting began. There's a lot of detail in the Jazz toy that I wanted to represent in the Cuboyd, so you will notice a lot of fine line work and color additions. I even have the "4" painted on both of the doors (styrene sheets), behind the upper arms. The final piece was to cut down another Alpha Military gun and glue on a new barrel to make Jazz's original weapon. Some chrome paint finished it off like the original toy.