I think Air Raid and Silverbolt would argue that sometimes the most profound work of art is the blank canvas.
Here's another combiner team: the Technobots. Afterburner I think the yellow-orange color mis-match is more obvious on these Technobot pics compared to Slingshot. It's less noticeable in person, but it's still there. Color-matching has been the hardest part for me in this project so far. Lightspeed Nosecone Scattershot Ain't nothin' wrong with a plain white helmet. Strafe Since Strafe's helmet has a built-in visor, I wanted it to have a bit of shine, so I used gloss red paint.
And now for the Constructicons! Only 4 of them get custom helmets since Hook and Bonecrusher look close enough with their stock flat-top helmets. Scrapper Scavenger Mixmaster Mixie is missing his head-missile. It was a mess up in my order by Shapeways, and I'll be getting a replacement in my next order. I'm not entirely happy with how the light green came out. I may try it again in the future. Long Haul And here's a group shot of all 6:
Thanks! How about a few non-combiners for a change of pace: Hot Rod Springer Kup Blurr Obviously the chest tampo is hardly ideal. Eventually, I'd like to experiment with decals to make unreleased characters like this match better. For now, if I squint really hard, I can pretend it's some kind of new "Cybertronian" mode for him.
Omega Supreme Omega is actually one of my earlier attempts using spray paints. I think it came out pretty well, but there is some noticeable bleed-across where I masked off the shins. Shapeways model courtesy of WoLongTi. and of course, his nemesis... Devastator Hands and hat and mixing drum are likewise from WuLongTi's store. I printed model for the hands and drum using the Shapeways purple material. In retrospect, it probably would have looked nicer if I'd just gone with white and painted it.
Thanks! And now for my personal favorite combiner team: the Combaticons! Onslaught Swindle The reason that I slightly angle all of my pics is to reduce the glare of the camera flash from the shiny plastic pieces. It's interesting how obvious the unpainted white areas inside the helmet look in these pics. In person they're so small and in normal lighting and looking straight on, you'd probably never notice it. I normally don't paint the inside of the helmets to reduce the potential for paint rub, but I've started to paint in those inside areas around the cheeks to make the pics look better. Brawl Vortex I decided to go with his G1 blue-green-gray helmet color even though the figure seemed to be substituting that with purely light gray. Since it's not a regular Kre-o plastic color, I just tried to get close to G1 color. Blast Off The camera flash seems to saturate the painted pieces a lot. The color-match looks closer in person.
Okay, you need to start posting those paint recipes; these colors are spot on. Great job, again! It makes my day to see these come to life!
Thanks! As always, I think the greater congratulations go to you for the consistently amazing models! It really is fun looking across a sea of Kreons all with visually distinct and recognizable helmets. As for paint recipes, I've found a few easy ones and then mostly just trail-and-error. I don't know if there's any kind of established terminology for the Kreon plastic colors, but I've invented my own mainly consisting of light, medium, and dark <color>. Hopefully it'll be mostly apparent what I'm talking about. As I've said on several occasions, I'm working entirely with acrylics (more forgiving and easier to clean up) and mostly in flat paints (either out of the bottle, or with Tamiya X-21 flat base additive). For the easy recipes (plastic -> paint): black -> Model Master flat black (any brand should do) white -> Tamiya XF-2 flat white (mostly for mixing with other colors since I try to leave white areas unpainted) light gray -> Tamiya XF-19 sky gray dark gray -> Tamiya XF-24 dark gray dark blue (Thundercracker) -> Tamiya X-3 royal blue light yellow (Drag Strip) -> Tamiya XF-3 flat yellow dark yellow (Punch) -> Model Master chrome yellow medium red (Cliffjumper) -> Tamiya XF-7 flat red pink (Arcee) -> Tamiya X-17 pink For everything else, I've had to mix colors. Mainly I just start with a base color that is pretty close to what I want, and I eyeball it to try to color-match. Besides Tamiya and Model Master, I've used a 24-color Palmer Prism acrylic set. That paint needs to be thinned and it's not as nice and smooth as Tamiya, but it was comparatively cheap (around $20) and it included a lot of paint. I've also tried tube paints from a craft store. This stuff is designed for canvas painting and is way too thick, but there are a few colors like hot magenta that I couldn't find elsewhere in acrylics. Trying to get the paint consistency right and finding the right amount of flat base to get it matte enough has been a challenge. I just start mixing things I think will result in my desired color. Occasionally I run into a dead end where a batch just won't go to the color I want, so I have to start over. Also, sometimes the colors dry a bit differently than they look in the bottle. It's an imperfect process and it takes a lot of trial and error. At this point, I have a bunch of small paint pots of the various colors I've mixed and I hope I don't run out of anything till I'm finished with this project. I've got a bunch more pieces on the way, and I'm excited to color them up too!
Here's a few more: Alpha Trion I left the horn and under-brim of the helmet white on purpose to mimic Alpha Trion's zany eyebrow things in the G1 toon. Beachcomber I really love the way Tresob designed the "pompadour" well back on Beachcomber's head. Unfortunately, this didn't allow the peg hole to grip far enough around the peg for it to hold on, causing the helmet to fall backwards off the head with gravity. I solved this by adding a little "inner peg" to grip the inside of the head-peg (since it's a hollow peg). I believe Tresob redesigned the pompadour to come further forward and fully surround the head-peg for future printings. Dreadwind When I requested Tresob make this helmet, he was worried that the "lip bar" would be too hard to align perfectly, so he made it a separate piece, which I then glued at the proper height. I think it worked out great, because I love that unique feature on Dreadwind! Runabout I'm just using the Jarugar minifig as a base for this one. I like interpreting the goofy mounting point of the gun on the G1 toy to be a shoulder-mounted weapon.
And now for the Terrorcons! This was an interesting team because their colors seem more based on the Prime than the G1 figures. However, the only one that has a dramatically different color palette is Rippersnapper. So, I decided to stick with the G1 scheme when coloring their helmets since that is the direction my collection is aimed at. Hun Gurrr Blot Rippersnapper Sinnertwin Cutthroat
