crazysteve's scratchbuilt TELTRAN ONE
Back in early 2000 I was on this really intense stop motion animation kick. I was filming everything from music videos to old toy commercials to cartoon episodes all in stop motion. It was grueling work, but I loved it. I made lots of elaborate backgrounds and sets for my stop motion movies. The most ambitious project I undertook was a stop motion version of the Transformer cartoon "Transport to Oblivion". As in every episode from season one, Teletran One (the Autobots' super intelligent computer/omnisceint plot device) makes an appearance in TtO. Since the nearest Hasbro ever came to releasing a Teletran One playset was the not very similar S.T.A.R.S. base, I decided to make the Autobot computer myself.
I used the usual craptastic building materials for this project-cardboard boxes from the trash, aluminum foil, glue, and a black sharpie marker. This thing doesn't really resemble Teletran One all that much, but that's because I couldn't peg a good reference picture to model my version after. Sometimes my sources would conflict regarding the size of the monitor and the layout of the controls, so I just made up a lot of the details. I tried to make sure that the proportions were correct so that my Optimus Prime could stand in front of it and the bottom of the monitor would be even with his waist. That was about the only big consideration. Aside from that I just went crazy with the design.
I cut out a hole where the monitor would be so that I could put other Transformers behind the prop and it would look like they were "on screen". Yeah, it's cheesy special effects but this is the Transformers we're talking about. The actual cartoon was just as silly looking sometimes. Bumblebee's kind of screwed when it comes to being able to look at the monitor, but thank goodness I didn't have to film a scene with him and Teletran One. In the end I painted my Teletran One orange, cut it into pieces, and glued it into the entrance of my scratchbuilt Ark. So for a short time my Ark had Teletran One inside. Unfortunately my Ark and Teletran One got thrown away during my last move in 2003. These pictures are all that remain of my Teletran One.
