I'm new to customizing transformers, any tips you can give me so that i don't compleatly destroy my toys and/or paint them to death?
First decide what you want to do and that will make answering a question like this a lot easier. Do you want to just do straight up repaints? Dye figures? Complete scratchbuilts? Kitbashes? Reshells? Tutorials are a good place to start. We could direct you in the right direction if we had a better idea of what you want to do. Mathius