StratonRye's Wreckers: Roadbuster WIP

stratonrye · 08-17-2011, 02:44 AM

Update time 3/27/12!!!!! See page 2, post 13

Later that day...
Okay so back for the complete rundown. This is going to be extremely long because I have a horrible time condensing what I want to say in as few words as possible (hence why I have a small number of posts and few status updates on Twitter and Facebook) so I'm sorry in advance.

I really like WIP threads where the poster explains exactly what and how they did everything so you can learn from their mistakes, triumphs, and techniques and also their funny (or at least somewhat amusing) little stories along the way. Now, with that disclaimer, feel free to skip or skim the rest of this massive book of a post I'm writing but be sure to take a look at the questions at the bottom of the post cause I want some opinions (more than my own and my mom's cause she's nice and listens to me ramble about this stuff) and reply with your own opinion. It'd really help me out. Thanks!

Like many of us in the fandom, after reading Last Stand of the Wreckers I'm totally obsessed with the Wreckers and am dying to have my own crew of Wreckers sitting on my desk in my room, even if I have to 'bash them up myself. As soon as I saw people doing this Crossovers Captain America to Roadbuster idea I loved it and knew I had to try it myself. I held off cause I wanted to get the base figure at clearance price (cause I'm cheap and poor) and finally found a XOver Iron Man (same mold) for like $9 bucks at Ross and started later that night with much excitement. I think my favorite version of this Roadbuster custom has to be Autobotx23's awesome versions so I contacted him to ask him if I could basically copy his with a few variations along with a couple questions about his techniques. He gave me some painting advice and basically said to go for it but that I should try and make it my own somehow. So I thought about how I wanted to change my RB up (cause I really just think that ABx23's is perfect and wouldn't change a thing) and realized that one of my favorite things about LSOTW was Josh Burcham's coloring work being an artist myself and a huge fan of his bright and bold color pallet so I decided to emulated his coloring style somehow and that could be my twist. I chose a little brighter paint sheme than ABx23's and decided that instead of kissing the edges with a highlight color I'd drybrush them a little more heavily with the highlight color like how Josh does his highlights with that scratchy/charcoal textured/not round and smooth brush in photoshop in a lot of his stuff he posts on his deviant art page. With that in mind I went to work.

MODs to Date:
I started on him (like I said) pretty much the day I got him by taking him apart and sanding down all the molded mesh/chain mail texture on the front half of the car. It turned out to be not as hard to do as I thought it would be. I used some super rough sanding sponge blocks I found in our garage to take most of it off then used some smoother sanding sticks and sandpaper to finish the job. I'm really proud of how I got those pieces all nice and smooth with just a little bit here and there left of the mesh sculpting on the hard to reach/sand corner pieces and touching edges. Unfortunately I missed a couple spots/gate makes I could have filled in on the first couple pieces I primed

, but I did fill those types of blemishes on the other parts so that's good

. Next, on the top of the left/driver's side front wheel well in the vehicle mode of this mold there is this strange angled bump that I decided to shave down and patch back smooth. I did a pretty good job on the top of it but the bottom looks a little chunky, like I filled it in with Green Stuff (which I did) so you won't be seeing that.

Then, like most people that have done this repaint, I realized the the hands needed some help. I wanted to replace them but didn't have anything to use instead so I decided to mod them to work. I wanted them to have 5mm holes so my RB could hold any other figure's 5mm peg sized weapon as well as any mech-tech weapon. Luckily, while this mold's hands doesn't have 5mm holes drilled into it, 5mm holes are sculpted on. Totally crazy I know, BUT IT'S THE TRUTH! The designers must have decided to change the hole width for some reason cause 5mm holes are really there, they just drilled a smaller hole in the center of the 5mm sculpted indent. So, with that realized, it was as simple as finding a 5mm wide drillbit, popping it into our drill, and (with a pre-drilled hole to help keep me centered) carefully enlarging the hole. What a snap! After some test fitting with RTS Track's gun (or Wheeljack's I can't remember) and some touch sanding and smoothing of the holes RB now had some great hands. I might replace them later with some ball-jointed and articulated Gundam hands later, but for now these are great! I also carefully enlarged a couple more holes on him so he can hold more 5mm pegged weapons elsewhere on his bot and car mode, specifically that hole on the top of his roof and one of the holes that would have fit Cap's shield to his forearm (that one was just barely too small, must be 4mms).

Painting:
Like I said before, I absolutely love ABx23's RB and I'm basing my version's color scheme (placement and all) heavily (really exactly) on his in addition to how the techniques he used to the best of my abilities. I've never tried to paint anything in this style so it has been a learning experience. I basically settled on painting RB in a similar style that I was confident I could do and looked good. My method is basically like how the orange pieces are: prime, base coat color, panel line, and heavily drybrushed edges. First I stripped his paint with the standard method of a rubbing alcohol soak for a while and then a soap and water scrubbing bath. I also tried to sand all the possible rub spots on this guy and rough up all the surfaces of his parts before painting and it looks like I did a pretty good job so far. Next I primed him with Krylon Fusion white. I'm hand painting everything (cause I don't have an airbrush or a place to use one at our house, which sucks) using pretty much all Testors/Testors Model Masters enamel and acrylic (they call them "Acryl" acrylics BTW) paints for this guy. I did panel-lined this guy using a small Micron drawing pen (for browns) plus a little thinned Taimya black here and there and a thin dark green I just painted on as like a wash I guess.

(Long, detailed painting breakdown edited out here because it was ridiculous.)

First Post
Hey all! I just finished putting some finishing touches on several of the parts of this guy and wanted to post up some WIP shots. I tend to take pictures and then not actually make a new thread to post them in so I'm just going to post some up tonight (well, this morning) and explain everything later tomorrow (today). Plus it's pretty late right now.... not that I ever go to sleep early.

All you other night owls and international peeps can just think of this as a teaser thread until then.

DJW107PRIME · 08-17-2011, 02:53 AM

Nice work.

stratonrye · 08-17-2011, 03:02 AM

Thanks! (haven't gone to bed yet)

Dicron · 08-17-2011, 03:06 AM

I'm eager to see this done. Roadbuster's one of my favorites.

Demonss · 08-17-2011, 06:48 AM

nice painting there!

Jaicen · 08-17-2011, 03:35 PM

Agreed, nice paintwork. However, I see you have done something I see a lot of painters doing that REALLY bugs me. That is that you haven't bothered to clean up the seams from the moulding. You can really see it on the crotch, and the thighs. For me, it's really detrimental to the overall look of the paintwork, which is a shame because I really like the highlighting you've done.

stratonrye · 08-17-2011, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaicen

Agreed, nice paintwork. However, I see you have done something I see a lot of painters doing that REALLY bugs me. That is that you haven't bothered to clean up the seams from the moulding. You can really see it on the crotch, and the thighs. For me, it's really detrimental to the overall look of the paintwork, which is a shame because I really like the highlighting you've done.

Why thank you so much for noticing. That kind of stuff really bugs me too so I made sure I did it! I've seen one of the best 'bashers on the boards do an amazing and realistic repaint of Movie Leader Prime and leave the little sculpted "CE" that is on those side gas tanks there. I was like, "Awe man, this looks so amazing! It's like Prime is a real truc..... oh wait, no he's a toy cause there is that little 'CE' thing that toys have." The custom suspended disbelief for a moment only to un-suspend it by not removing that detail. I mean if you are going to go through all the trouble you went through repainting the guy you might as well spend a few more minutes getting rid of stuff like that. Don't get me wrong though cause it was still an amazing custom and he probably spent the time he would have removing that mark with painting more little awesome details but it was a tiny bit disappointing.

Anyway, a slight update. At the end of my first post update I have some questions to ask all of all my fellow bashers and the last one I said would be here so here it is:
Should I use hand-drawn style 'bot symbols on this guy? What I mean is that I plan on making (or commissioning someone) some waterslide decals for this guy and I was thinking I would be cool to use Autobot symbols with that hand-drawn look to them like in LSOTW. I mocked up my idea in photoshop using a symbol from the fifth cover on top of my painted part in both the center of the part (like most people do on this custom) and the side (G1 style). What do you think? Should I do it or should I just use a perfectly drawn one?

Also, I was thinking that, so I don't have to try and print something that matches my red paint, could I try just printing the black lines of the symbol on clear decal paper and paint the part red underneath where it will go very carefully? That way it would be red and match the red taillights too. Would that work? Has anyone tried it? Does anyone know the exact color code for Testors Model Masters Guard Red? Does it matter? Am I being crazy and overthinking this for the sake of perfection?

autobotx23 · 08-18-2011, 11:01 PM

Now THAT's what I'm talking about. Love the orange to yellow work with the weathering, sharp wash application. Looking damn good, man.

hXcpunk23 · 08-19-2011, 02:03 AM

I do the same thing.....I write novels to share my ideas and plans on how I built something. lol

It looks GREAT so far! I love the colors used and the weathering--looks damn nice! I envy you guys who paint so well. I paint pretty good, but my skills are in building and designing--wish I could capture my work as well as you do! Keep it up, bro!

12bulkhead · 08-19-2011, 02:05 AM

Description's too short...

08-17-2011, 02:44 AM	#1
stratonrye Maximal Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 571 Location: Montevallo, AL for school Collection Count: 30+	StratonRye's Wreckers: Roadbuster WIP Update time 3/27/12!!!!! See page 2, post 13 Later that day... Okay so back for the complete rundown. This is going to be extremely long because I have a horrible time condensing what I want to say in as few words as possible (hence why I have a small number of posts and few status updates on Twitter and Facebook) so I'm sorry in advance. I really like WIP threads where the poster explains exactly what and how they did everything so you can learn from their mistakes, triumphs, and techniques and also their funny (or at least somewhat amusing) little stories along the way. Now, with that disclaimer, feel free to skip or skim the rest of this massive book of a post I'm writing but be sure to take a look at the questions at the bottom of the post cause I want some opinions (more than my own and my mom's cause she's nice and listens to me ramble about this stuff) and reply with your own opinion. It'd really help me out. Thanks! Like many of us in the fandom, after reading Last Stand of the Wreckers I'm totally obsessed with the Wreckers and am dying to have my own crew of Wreckers sitting on my desk in my room, even if I have to 'bash them up myself. As soon as I saw people doing this Crossovers Captain America to Roadbuster idea I loved it and knew I had to try it myself. I held off cause I wanted to get the base figure at clearance price (cause I'm cheap and poor) and finally found a XOver Iron Man (same mold) for like $9 bucks at Ross and started later that night with much excitement. I think my favorite version of this Roadbuster custom has to be Autobotx23's awesome versions so I contacted him to ask him if I could basically copy his with a few variations along with a couple questions about his techniques. He gave me some painting advice and basically said to go for it but that I should try and make it my own somehow. So I thought about how I wanted to change my RB up (cause I really just think that ABx23's is perfect and wouldn't change a thing) and realized that one of my favorite things about LSOTW was Josh Burcham's coloring work being an artist myself and a huge fan of his bright and bold color pallet so I decided to emulated his coloring style somehow and that could be my twist. I chose a little brighter paint sheme than ABx23's and decided that instead of kissing the edges with a highlight color I'd drybrush them a little more heavily with the highlight color like how Josh does his highlights with that scratchy/charcoal textured/not round and smooth brush in photoshop in a lot of his stuff he posts on his deviant art page. With that in mind I went to work. MODs to Date: I started on him (like I said) pretty much the day I got him by taking him apart and sanding down all the molded mesh/chain mail texture on the front half of the car. It turned out to be not as hard to do as I thought it would be. I used some super rough sanding sponge blocks I found in our garage to take most of it off then used some smoother sanding sticks and sandpaper to finish the job. I'm really proud of how I got those pieces all nice and smooth with just a little bit here and there left of the mesh sculpting on the hard to reach/sand corner pieces and touching edges. Unfortunately I missed a couple spots/gate makes I could have filled in on the first couple pieces I primed , but I did fill those types of blemishes on the other parts so that's good . Next, on the top of the left/driver's side front wheel well in the vehicle mode of this mold there is this strange angled bump that I decided to shave down and patch back smooth. I did a pretty good job on the top of it but the bottom looks a little chunky, like I filled it in with Green Stuff (which I did) so you won't be seeing that. Then, like most people that have done this repaint, I realized the the hands needed some help. I wanted to replace them but didn't have anything to use instead so I decided to mod them to work. I wanted them to have 5mm holes so my RB could hold any other figure's 5mm peg sized weapon as well as any mech-tech weapon. Luckily, while this mold's hands doesn't have 5mm holes drilled into it, 5mm holes are sculpted on. Totally crazy I know, BUT IT'S THE TRUTH! The designers must have decided to change the hole width for some reason cause 5mm holes are really there, they just drilled a smaller hole in the center of the 5mm sculpted indent. So, with that realized, it was as simple as finding a 5mm wide drillbit, popping it into our drill, and (with a pre-drilled hole to help keep me centered) carefully enlarging the hole. What a snap! After some test fitting with RTS Track's gun (or Wheeljack's I can't remember) and some touch sanding and smoothing of the holes RB now had some great hands. I might replace them later with some ball-jointed and articulated Gundam hands later, but for now these are great! I also carefully enlarged a couple more holes on him so he can hold more 5mm pegged weapons elsewhere on his bot and car mode, specifically that hole on the top of his roof and one of the holes that would have fit Cap's shield to his forearm (that one was just barely too small, must be 4mms). Painting: Like I said before, I absolutely love ABx23's RB and I'm basing my version's color scheme (placement and all) heavily (really exactly) on his in addition to how the techniques he used to the best of my abilities. I've never tried to paint anything in this style so it has been a learning experience. I basically settled on painting RB in a similar style that I was confident I could do and looked good. My method is basically like how the orange pieces are: prime, base coat color, panel line, and heavily drybrushed edges. First I stripped his paint with the standard method of a rubbing alcohol soak for a while and then a soap and water scrubbing bath. I also tried to sand all the possible rub spots on this guy and rough up all the surfaces of his parts before painting and it looks like I did a pretty good job so far. Next I primed him with Krylon Fusion white. I'm hand painting everything (cause I don't have an airbrush or a place to use one at our house, which sucks) using pretty much all Testors/Testors Model Masters enamel and acrylic (they call them "Acryl" acrylics BTW) paints for this guy. I did panel-lined this guy using a small Micron drawing pen (for browns) plus a little thinned Taimya black here and there and a thin dark green I just painted on as like a wash I guess. (Long, detailed painting breakdown edited out here because it was ridiculous.) First Post Hey all! I just finished putting some finishing touches on several of the parts of this guy and wanted to post up some WIP shots. I tend to take pictures and then not actually make a new thread to post them in so I'm just going to post some up tonight (well, this morning) and explain everything later tomorrow (today). Plus it's pretty late right now.... not that I ever go to sleep early. All you other night owls and international peeps can just think of this as a teaser thread until then. Attached Thumbnails Please help me on my wants list. I'll do my best to help you back. Feedback Thread

08-17-2011, 03:02 AM	#3
stratonrye Maximal Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 571 Location: Montevallo, AL for school Collection Count: 30+	Thanks! (haven't gone to bed yet) Please help me on my wants list. I'll do my best to help you back. Feedback Thread

08-17-2011, 03:06 AM	#4
Dicron Decepticon Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 102 Collection Count: A freakin' bunch.	I'm eager to see this done. Roadbuster's one of my favorites. That's right, not one but TWO crons. Makes me twice as badass as the other guy, right? Right?!? Anyone...? Some things I need. Feedback

08-17-2011, 06:48 AM	#5
Demonss Herald of Unicron Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 4,194 News Credits: 1	nice painting there! My Feedback Thread! The Cybertronian Side!! Check out my Youtube reviews

08-17-2011, 03:35 PM	#6
Jaicen Combaticon Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 1,394 Collection Count: 100+ (for my son...so I tell the missus!) News Credits: 1	Agreed, nice paintwork. However, I see you have done something I see a lot of painters doing that REALLY bugs me. That is that you haven't bothered to clean up the seams from the moulding. You can really see it on the crotch, and the thighs. For me, it's really detrimental to the overall look of the paintwork, which is a shame because I really like the highlighting you've done. Sort it, America! Wanted: UK TF Comics, Issues 301 to 332. I love Geoff Senior's work, deal with it.

08-17-2011, 02:53 AM	#2
DJW107PRIME Autobot Warrior Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 4,325 Location: IL USA Collection Count: Not enough News Credits: 1	Nice work.

08-18-2011, 11:01 PM	#8
autobotx23 Banned Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 5,327 Location: Phoenix, AZ Collection Count: 500 and counting.....	Now THAT's what I'm talking about. Love the orange to yellow work with the weathering, sharp wash application. Looking damn good, man.

08-19-2011, 02:03 AM	#9
hXcpunk23 The Chaos Bringer Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 2,863 Location: GA Collection Count: TONS (from G1 up to Prime	I do the same thing.....I write novels to share my ideas and plans on how I built something. lol It looks GREAT so far! I love the colors used and the weathering--looks damn nice! I envy you guys who paint so well. I paint pretty good, but my skills are in building and designing--wish I could capture my work as well as you do! Keep it up, bro! *Commissions* ll *Sector70* ll *Facebook Customs Page* ll *Tumblr.* ll *eBay*

08-19-2011, 02:05 AM	#10
12bulkhead Artist Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 320 Location: Should be Cybertron. Collection Count: 59 1/2	Description's too short...