Post-Great War Channel, vehicle mode

[dvandom]

There's two main approaches to creating pre-Beastmode Maximals and Predacons. One is to head-mod a mold from the Unicron Trilogy, but this is mainly done to get a pre-Beast version of a canonical character. The other is to make a vehicle mode that vaguely looks like some sort of animal, like a jet with avian characteristics or a toadlike tank. Of course, that requires picking a Beastmode first.

I decided that Channel's role in communications and quartermastering made a burro a good beastmode for him to eventually take should it be necessary. So, his vehicle mode after the Great Reformatting would be a squat all-terrain sort of vehicle intended to let him go into ruined sectors of Cybertron and help re-establish communications links. He also has a repair suite...more of the equivalent of first aid than anything else, but a lot of those ruined sectors had no real medical presence for a while after the Reformatting. I initially wanted big balloon tires, but I couldn't make them work in a way that wouldn't look totally stupid in robot mode, so I went to treads.

Vehicle mode came first, so I could be sure everything would fit properly. The cockpit folds down to make the chest, and his back and butt are the top of the vehicle mode. A lot of the details of how the elbows and knees fold double for this are concealed by the angle. The weird thing on his back is a stowed comm antenna, and the sliding panels on his back end conceal cranes and winches and other basic rescue and repair gear. His hands can come out of the front, or other tools. He has powerful searchlights, which can be cranked up to stun and dazzle. He's otherwise not really armed in this mode, but he has a few tools that can be used in a fight if pressed.