Finally get to finish my Leader Megatron. Took a lot more work, time & paint to bring it up to this OK looking level (still very playable and a bit rough, but better looking than stock), when both Prime and Brawl just need a weathering wash & some silver highlight touch up. Megatron need quite a few more layers of paint. And the silver paint just smear all over your hand without a good layer of clear coat. I used (Model Master Laquer Overcoat # 1959) semi-gloss to better match the 'not so shiny look' on the other two. Turned out pretty good with no bubbling. Pretty happy with the results. Not the greatest touch-up as some parts are done pretty rough, but enough to make them look better, while still pretty playable. Toy-wise, I would rank them as follow: Leader Prime - 9/10 Hands down a great toy, aside the slightly off proportion and chunkiness. Great construction, very nice spring ratchet joints and weight balance, fun transformation, nice truck mode, with nice gimmick and clever automorph. Other than a slightly nicer sculpt and joints on the wrists & waist, I can't really ask for more at this $40 price. Leader Brawl - 8.5/10 Brawl is very nice. Almost as good as Prime, but feel a bit more fiddly due to all the smaller parts and weapons hanging all over. And some of his ratchets(arms) are not as nicely built as Prime's. But articulation is just about as good as Prime's, minus the nice ankle ball joints. Brawl also got the best light & sound gimmick, with multiple ways to trigger/change the sound effects. His robot mode might look a bit funky, but sure he packed a lot of firing power LOL (with at least one weapon on every limb), and a awesome tank mode. Leader Megatron - 7/10 (6/10 if stock) Hands down the sucky guy among the three. Articulation is low with either small movement range joints or with stuff getting in the way. Flimpsy toes that can't support weight due to the legs automorph design, making Megatron often off balance and hard to do action pose without falling. Jet mode is not too bad. Nice wing span and wing folding automorph too. But how the head rested is pretty odd. Really ugly paint job with funny pink parts too. Arm gimmicks are fun, but only if you swap the springs in the arms. So Megatron can be kind of nice, but it needs a lot of work and fixing to get there. Attached is a comparison pic just for kicks.
Whoa, very nice repaint of all three Leaders. I also like how they were photographed in a revolving manner.
I'm always amazed at how well fans can paint these figures. Megatron looked awful at retail, but with proper paint he's a kick ass figure. Also I think the metal paint job on Optimus bringss a lot to the figure.
Those are awesome. Nice work. Definite improvement on Megs and makes Brawl and Prime look even better.
If the movie figures were all released with that kind of look/detail I'd buy them in a second. Too bad they weren't. Steve.
"Minimal effort, maximum results" is the phrase that came to my mind when I saw these repaints. They look amazing even if you only added simple washes and stuff. Great work!
