I consider myself a Botcon Veteran. This will be my 12th year (counting the OTFCCs. 14th Transformers convention counting Cybercon in NYC and TFCon in Canada). My first convention was Botcon 1997 in Rochester NY. I was about 14. Though I find Botcon exclusives absolutely awesome, I typically no longer really find them especially desirable compared to the money they're worth on the secondary market. With a growing family I've simply lost the ability to justify most of my expensive figures, especially recolors. So, it was with heavy heart that I sold my very first Botcon exclusives: 1997's Packrat and Fractyl. But not one to be kept from having something I want enough, I decided to do something about missing those two. I bought a Rattrap and a Terrorsaur, got my paints ready, and got to work. I took some liberties (such as making them metallic rather than flat), but I think they turned out rather nicely. Fractyl Fractyl was always my favorite of the two. He was my favorite on sight because he was A) Green (a favorite color of mine), B) a pterodactyl (I've always been partial to winged creatures), C) he was a repaint of Terrorsaur (my very first BW figure, bought at Walmart so many years ago), and finally D) he was a geologist. He was an "evil" Predacon non-violent geologist. I think I may be partial to TFs with more out-there functions (my favorite Autobot car is Skids, a theoretician). So, to bring Fractyl to life I first sprayed Terrorsaur with a coat of grey. I then went over that with chrome silver and metal flake green. Then I added some small details with gold and red (for the beast eyes and mouth). Finally, I topped it off with some Predacon stickers from Reprolabels. Packrat Packrat I could probably have lived without, but why break up the set? He was basically Rattrap but with less morality and thus less likable. For Packrat, I started with a base of grey (notice a pattern? Base of grey = good idea). Then I covered him with the ever awesome chrome silver and some blue metal flake (all paints were Testor brand by the way). Details added in gold and red, and topped with some Maximal stickers. And the Beast Wars continued! Comments, crits, leave em here.
