Dirge is actually a simple concept. I've always affectionately thought of the Toys R Us exclusive repaint of Starscream as our Cybertron Thrust, so between that, the Supreme(or Galaxy Force) Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp, that gave us 4 of the 6 original Seekers. Naturally, being the Seeker nut that I am, I wanted the other 2! Dirge is the first of the two. Dirge is a repainted Thundercracker, and he was actually one of my first customs larger than a LOC. I did the majority of the work back at the end of summer, 2006. I finally broke him back out just a few days ago, after seeing him on my "to-do" list, and realizing he was just a couple days shy of 20 months old. He now sports the final touch: a desert-style digital camouflage paint job for the jet-mode. I found a really cool reference picture of a real jet employing this new style of camouflage.
I wanted Dirge to look like an earth jet, same as Thundercracker, but at the same time, I didn't want him to simply look like a Thundercracker clone, seeing as Dirge is hardly that. That's why I decided to employ a camouflage paint scheme. The robot mode's paint is heavily original cartoon influenced. I also liked how the jet that Thundercracker turned into had Canards (the tiny wings in front of the main wings), and that added yet another nod to the original Dirge. I also cut off the silly rubber missles hanging from the wings and replaced them with 1:100 model fighter missles. The camo took me about 6 hours of non-stop work. I used a combination of a #0 brush and a shaved-down toothpick to get the tiny details done. Headache well deserved, and worth it in the end, I think.
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