I haven't modelled over references for so long, I kind of want to try it again (not sure what I'd do though as there's not a lot of stuff that I need that I could model over).
That looks like it's going to be a lot of parts.
How are you finding 3Speak?
Modeling something like this with 3 reference images on the ortho viewports is always a love-hate affair for me. There will always be a drawing view that won't line up well with the others, and in this case it's the front view. That's why you see me favoring the top and the side views for most of the work.
I guess having many parts is a necessity for a believable transformation. I've seen many do it with vehicles made of just a few parts, but it looked too basic. Then there were others that relied on scaling parts (to a small size) to hide them. I don't want that kind of solution. I want mine to have realistic mass distribution. No hiding, no cheating. This project could either make me, or break me. LOL!
As for my first impressions of 3speak, I'll say it was good. The only problem I had was my Internet's speed. But once my video was done uploading, the encoding took only a few minutes. So, I'll be using it as my main video hosting solution, with YT only as a backup.