It started with my Camera-bot that I included in that Mystery Case auction, a little AllSpark-created robot like the cellphone one in the movie. Some other people picked up on that and created their own as well. But I wanted to do something more than just stick legs on a tiny camera. I wanted head, hands, feet, and I wanted them to move! Introducing the 'RealGearlings', the smallest articulated figures I've ever done. One was a PSP-looking device, a laptop, and a cellphone. Obviously I worked the cellphone into that weird cannon/machine gun-toting critter they created in the movie and then promptly fried. The laptop and PSP became other robots kinda what the Real Gear figures look like. Only these are TINY, see the nickle in comparison.
I scored some small accessories from some vinyl-pop-looking figures on clearance at Wal Mart and chopped them up into sections. Also used was an assortment of import mini-gundam figures (they were the blind-box trading minis) a WarStar mini fig, a few minicon parts, along with whatever bizzare stuff I had in the bottom of my tubs. The moving parts are done thanks to twisty-wire that I carefully drilled holes in the side for and glued in. Now they're like mini bendy figures and can achieve basic poses. The hardest part was painting the circle, square, etc on the PSP buttons and detailing the Windows XP logo/desktop icons on the laptop screen. Whew!