I've been staring lustfully at the Generations Bruticus that's up and coming. but the ingame renders are all shiny/weathered and the toys are just... normal paint jobs. This has been bothering me about Prime toys as well. I like the scraped edges of the Bots in Prime, but their toys are uniform and clean. Hasbro, strive for better accuracy. for the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one! (Also, give us FoC Bruticus in Ruination colors, and a repaint of RTS Laser Prime as scourge to lead them...)
... who's the many in this case? Don't you mean "the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many"?
I prefer my figures to not have weathering or molded-on damage. I don't want to buy something new that looks like it's been kicked around the car park. If people want to modify their figures after purchase to look weathered and battle-worn then that's fine, but I wouldn't want it forced onto my figure purchases.
Weathering as a paint app would be very difficult to keep consistent in a large mass run. A one off custom figure its not an issue but the more copies you make and the more people you have doing the same weather effect the more the consistency goes out the window. In short Hasbro likes its each of its figures to be identical to another of the same figure with a weathering effect its hard to pull that off.
I'd rather sacrifice weathering for more accurate paint apps. If I wanted weathering, I'd do it myself.
You do realize that by comparison, the weathering hasbro puts on mass production toys is laughable next to other companies? Hasbro's "weathering" is just splotches of black paint meant to represent burn marks and poorly drawn panel lines. And that's the best they can do on 10-100 USD toys. For some real [mass production, not custom] weathering, please refer to some 1/6 Hot toys figures.
Battle damage and weathering looks terrible for some reason on pretty much every mass-release toy. That's probably because it's so hard to get the detail right on an industrial scale. If you want weathered toys, it'd probably better to learn to do it yourself than to wait for Hasbro to do it well.
Weathering with paint would be terrible. That said, the occasional black paint wash to bring out detail would not be frowned upon. A lot of figures would really benefit from that, as their sculpted detail is pretty much lost. 07 Wreckage comes to mind... that figure had so much detail that was just lost because it blurred together...
I agree, look back at hftd battle hooks leader Optimus, nothing but splotches and badly molded deformed plastic. For a weathered look it's best to attempt yourself and find someone who knows what they are doing.
Additional paint applications of any kind cost Hasbro and the consumer more money. With something as easy to apply as weathering, one is much better off learning how to do it themselves rather than have Hasbro (or anyone else, for that matter) to do it for them. This all rests upon the presupposition that the consumer wants this weathering paint application in the first place, which seems that the majority so far is saying "no" to.
Before that one came out I wanted all sorts of weathered and battle damaged TFs. When I seen how they did it, I said NO WAY. Also, it could get complicated for them because then they have to choose to weather panels and such that may either not match in both modes or cause even MORE paint problems than im already seeing. Im guessing that the painting part is a big cost on some of these anyway thats why we see less and less.. I prefer to just do it myself. Anyone who has 10 fingers and a paint brush can do it better than mass production anyway
Yeah, I mean it's either this or toss our toys under the lawn mower & hope for the best, the latter of which hasn't worked out well for me in the past.
HFTD Prime isn't that bad really. The silver scrapes look pretty good, but the black splotch on the head does suck. I fixed mine's head with some silver details and am completely satisfied with it now. However, when I got HFTD Payload I didn't know it had dirt "weathering" on the sides of the truck and thought that it was somehow stained in the factory.
I'd just break out some Testors and do the battle damage myself. Hasbro's "Battle Damage" paint apps are laughable, just look at the Leader HFTD Battle Hooks Prime.
I kind of like Hasbros Transformers approach to this idea. They do weathering in more of a Super Heroic Heavy Immediate Battle Damage way. Energon Starscream has some of the best damage concepts. Trying to look like a Half Destroyed Transformer that is in the process of regenerateing and repairing itself with a incorporable use of Energon. Granted a lot of that detail was sculpted in, and clear plastic was used for the energon ghosting idea. Takara seems to be encourageing japanese customizers to just paint up their prime toys with the model kit presentation of the Prime figures over there though blind boxes and sticker sheet anoyance. May play to their benefit when trying to hold shelf space with gundam kits. Two final points: When a toy gets beaten up even though gradual play, rather than just display. Paint wear happens. And you get Some natural and actually kind of Stoic beautiful combat markings. Also a heavy amount of paint changed from one form to another with multiple surfaces taking wear and flakeing or absorbing fingerprints do to heat and oil is not pleasant. Perhaps its just cost cutting to keep Transformers toys on budget. But when I look at it this way it makes sense in how I view the play pattern actually not being compatible with a heavy amount of paint, plastic coloration with minimal paint aps are largely effective for this style of toy.
Buy a figure, paint it with cheap paint (preferably metallic) then transform it a few hundred times. (with some specific toys, i believe transforming a few times will suffice)
