You know, I'm surprised there aren't more customs of this figure. I've seen some around here (a couple of good ones, too!) but not as many as I thought I would. Well, here's one more, at least. Knew this guy was going to get painted up when I first saw pics of him, and I'm happy with how he turned out. I decided to go with a thematic that was mostly movie, but a paint scheme that kept closer to G1 since that was where the toy was originally going. So no flames (bleh), standard red upper half, blue lower half look, nothing to mess with the truck mode if it could be helped. Complete with Faith Leader rifle: You can see in the lower legs that there's very little "steel" coloring on the outside, as I wanted to keep that G1 feel on him. I did paint a lot of the inside cavities of the lower legs to give a bit of that 'inner workings' feel similar to the Leader toy (the way all the blue panels are all folded up around the leg with the steel underneath). Same with the feet--while they would work well in all silver or steel, I wanted to keep that blue look. Sort of went half and half as a compromise between the G1 look and the movie style, so there's some steel painted in the middle and around the ankle tilt. All gray plastic got the Rustoleum hammered steel application, with a dry-brushed application of Tamiya's murky transparent "smoke" paint for darkening and details: Also a boring helmet, so had to fix it (Tamiya silver leaf): Comparison shots for a before/after feel. Blandimus is missing an arm because the one I was first working on for the custom wrenched off. The hat/disk inside basically locked up when I was turning the arm around, and it just twisted off. Plastics in these toys have me a bit worried. His thigh disks were showing stress marks as well, to the degree I had to take the legs off and put RC motor grease in them so they wouldn't be so tight (which worked great). And just for proof of concept, truck mode pics so you can see what shows and what doesn't. For the most part, the "G1" scheme is well preserved. And pair-up shots. Suddenly the deluxe version fits right in. Hope you enjoyed!
I was wondering if anyone had a recommendation for a paint that would match the red around the faux smokestacks on each side of Optimus's head? I painted the stacks gray and they came out wonderfully. Somehow as part of the process, however, I chipped the red paint in two spots along the base of the stacks. I would like to do a quick touch up job. Any recommendations for what type and color of red paint to use would be greatly appreciated. Ideally, I would like to be able to match up the original red color as much as possible. I am fairly new to doing any paint work on a figure. Thanks in advance for any help that comes my way!
Totally forgot to respond to this: I used Guard Red from Testor's acrylic bottle paint for some of the red on my Prime. It's actually a touch darker, but I think with a touch of white mixed in you can match it perfectly. The red isn't a drastically different shade, so I'm sure working with it can get you the results you would like.
Looks good! I like that you kept the g1 look while adding the intricate details from the live action movies.
You paint by hand brushing or air brushing the tamiya acrylic paint ? How do you avoid the paint scratching and coming off ?
The red was hand-painted. Most of the silver and metal paint is spray painted from the cans after taking the figure apart, with some exceptions where I spray out samples and paint areas by hand (like around the helmet, or crevices in the arms and legs). For scratching--the best thing to do is sand down some of the parts that you determine will scrape other parts during transformation. That way they don't rub off so much. I use Pledge Future to try and seal the paint when I'm done. It can still wear down depending how much handling he gets, but two or three coats on the figure really help keep it from fading.
