IN PROGRESS So yeah this is my first serious attempt at a repaint, and I'm sure most of you kit bashers wouldn't even consider it a serious attempt as I did not use spraypaint and I didn't completely dissemble Ramjet to paint him, only partially. Anyways, I'm done all my base coats, blue, black, and gold, and a bit of other details such as some gold on the crotch and shoulder vents and turning the white to black over the clear cockpit (damn that sucked to do). I now need to touch up the spots I missed due to how I had him positioned on the first paint (mostly on his interior that's visible, a few very small slop marks like on the black on the cockpit). Then I will add a bit more color variation on his chest/frontside and some detail to the wings. I'm trying to keep him fairly G1 accurate (black thrusters, fists, chestplate, etc, I made the missile launchers gold as I think G1 dirge just had clunky black missiles without launchers), but I don't like the sticker designs for his original wings so I'm looking for some feedback on what to do to finish up with color detail and of course on him in general (be easy on me, remember, my first repaint). I myself am happy with the way the blue turned out bold and shiny like his G1 counterpart there.
pretty good for a first repaint (hope to get my first underway soon)... i can see some white spots, the black and blue are a little too shiny (personal preference), but i really like the gold.
Thanks guys...someone else already tried classics dirge out of classics ramjet? Wow I thought I was being original...anyone got the link to it? ^^^ EDIT: Oh I found it myself: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=123483&highlight=classics+dirge Dammit now I look like I'm biting Rattrap hard, we even both hand painted with pretty much the same blue and black. I swear I hadn't seen his...I swear...lol (but seriously I hadn't) Oh and Onset, I know there's some white there, I haven't done my touch up jobs yet ("I now need to touch up the spots I missed due to how I had him positioned on the first paint (mostly on his interior that's visible, a few very small slop marks like on the black on the cockpit)), which can particularly be seen there in robot mode on the inside of the main chest chamber and around the sholder missile spots. Also, if you look down at his feet in bot mode you can see I did solid black on the left foot but there's a line of blue just over the foot on the right side, a few small things like that I'll have to correct
Very nice result. Hasbro would be foolish not to release an official one. Does yours suffer from a lot of paint rubbing on the thighs during transformation?
No paint loss on the thighs yet, I've only transformed him twice though and I'm about to take him back apart to start some touch-ups, mainly getting at the white spots. RE: GLOSS, I agree generally that non-gloss looks better, but I'm REALLY liking the blue gloss on this dirge, the g1 dirge being sort of shiny compared to the other seekers too. The black here might have been better non-gloss though I suppose. One good thing about gloss (apply very lightly and let it 'slide' into balance along the surface, first time I've ever tried this on a TF as this is the first TF I've painted up) though is that it extentuates/highlights the little details in the mold through the light reflecting off of it, for example look at the vertical wing bits in the 2nd picture, on the black you can see the little tabs on the mold in a more defined way.
It looks great. I'm glad you haven't had paint rubbing yet. Since this is your first project, a word of caution for the future: wash the figure with dish detergent and dry it a day or so before you paint. This gets the mold release agent off the plastic, otherwise the paint will not stick properly. Any questions PM me.
This looks really nice so far. A bit glossy like Rattrap's, but either it's not as much as his or you really know how to take pics of your stuff. And the metallic gold is... well, gold. Since you're looking for a new wing pattern, you could try something similar to the markings on Starscream's wings, only in colors to match the paint apps on the G1 version - the sort of "Classic-ized" paint apps I mentioned in Rattrap's thread.
^ yeah I'm not sure (for the wings) whether to introduce another color or not (like the yellow on ramjet), also was thinking about some gold electricity/lightning type lines joining the gold of the two wings (over the blue leg area, where ramjet has the red and yellow designs)...if I screw that up though I'm in big trouble... And yeah my glossyness really doesn't seem as glossy in person compared to the photos (of mine or rattraps for that matter), I don't use camera flash but other light sources when taking photos so that probably helps keep the shine down in the pics a little bit anyways
I'm really surprised how well that turns into Dirge with just a repaint and no remolded wings. That is probably what they'll do for the Botcon set. Remolded wings would be nice, but I can see them doing this since they only have so many remolded parts in the set.