Optimus Prime!

Many great ideas have been born over a few quiet pints at many pubs throughout the world, but only a small fraction of these great ideas go full term and mature into true greatness. Below is a story of one such idea, and the journey it took. It all begins on Thursday 22nd February, an innocent enough day to be sure (aside from the folks celebrating Saint Lucia's Independence Day). It was on this day that I first met Sandra Dillon, a psuedo-couch surfer who was to become the central character in this adventure.

After work I met Sandra and we made our way to Barfly for a few quiet ales. It was here I invited Sandra to our party (Saturday March 10th, 288b Bealey Ave, be there or be square). From here things got interesting... I had decided to make invitation using the least amount of paper I could which meant certain details had to be omitted from the mini-invites, the biggest of the small details being that the party is in fact not just for me, but is also for Dave's birthday. Dave dutifully pointed this out, making for quite an awkward moment, one which could only be saved by me semi-token offering to get him ANYTHING he wanted for his birthday. Now Dave has always had a dream, a dream greater and more noble than any other. A dream so seemingly impossible that he had only spoken of it once before. This dream was of a life sized replica of Optimus Prime. If you are not sure who Optimus Prime is, stop reading right now and go learn up on him and don't come back till you can truly appreciate his awesome-ness.

Once Dave had laid out what he wanted I knew immediately I was unworthy of such a task, so I turned to Sandra and asked if she would be interested in taking on the job of designing and building a 7ft tall Robot in exchange for 10 nights accommodation. She immediately agreed and we proceeded to get ridiculously excited. Every second word for the rest of the evening was either 'Massive!' or 'Awesome!'.

From here we took a few days to collect our thoughts, and we began sourcing materials. The folks at Carton Pack were super helpful and hooked us up with the cardboard we needed at a reasonable price, and Bunnings were more than happy for us to purchase all the tools and paints we needed. So we got the tools, we got the materials, "we got the touch, we got the power!". Sandra then got to work on scaling up the small model we had and after some interesting metric/imperial conversions we got to it.

Things went very smoothly and less than a week later (half of which was spent watching Lawrence of Arabia, boy that's a long movie) we had an Optimus Prime. It could not have been done without the help of Talia an Israeli couch surfer, she was awesome. I also took a sneaky day off work to help, we all had to make sacrifices.

Quite possibly the first line being drawn. Notice the small scale model at the bottom and the plan. This was done very professionally... and Pop's worked out it cost us about $72,000 in labour, lucky for us Sandra agreed to be paid in nights on our couch.

Here is Sandra (top) and Talia during the final stages of production on the Friday cutting shapes.

And here he is, our very own Oprimus Prime. The Robot himself is massive and awesome. He can transform into a truck and back again. He can stand up and he can dance. Well, he can do most of those things...

Maxin and Relaxin..



I think I am in love. Optimus is going to be the distinguished guest at the "Tony's Leaving, Dave's Birthday and Pops' Awesome" Party we are having this Saturday night. So come to our party for the giant robot, but stay for the beer, little pies and good looking people.