the gears are perfect, no issues cuz i went real light on them and they still came out nice, the key is just letting it fully dry in between coats so it took hooours but it was worth it

 

And still no info for international buyers. I hope they won't cancel my order or ask for outrageous shipping fees.

 

I masked them off so I could do the rest first then i reversed it and masked the rest when it was dry and just did the gears alone open and closed

 

I would suggest priming the surface with white or light grey before applying the top coat. That will certainly help balance out the final color.

 

I wasn't gonna say anything about the orange since you seemed happy. That said, your second attempt is several orders of magnitude better and it looks really sharp. Nice work.

 

For the most part, they're all super snug on my copy. I did glue the ones at the tips of the horns though, since they'd fall out whenever I rotated the horns. But other people I know haven't had that same issue with their Unicrons and were fine with no glue.

 

I just took those off. They're not really needed.

I think their purpose is keep the hanging spike strips in place. The ring on the spike strips can slide along the wing connector sticking out of his shoulder, you push them down flush against the shoulder in planet mode and pull them out in robot mode so they can spin freely and hang down no matter the position of the shoulder. The gray pieces stop the rings from coming all the way off as they slide along the connectors. So since I took the spike strips off, they had no real purpose anymore.

 

Wow! My mind is blown. We don’t even need that piece? Thanks for dropping the knowledge brother.

 

I mean, they're kind of useful in robot mode too for creating friction so the hanging piece doesn't just flop around. It's not just to provide a stopping point.

 

My Unicron arrived around 11am. The box is HUGE. I didn't have much time dive into it but I did open it up, inspect all the bags and put together the stand. Going to use the box as a display stand and place it underneath my framed Decepticon symbol poster in my living room.

 

Yep, their only purpose is to make the spike strips work right, so if you're taking those off you can do without those little gray retainer pieces too. I actually tried it both ways, with and without, and preferred without.

Yeah, if the hanging spike strips are left on, I'd leave the little retainer pieces on too since the rings would be super loose and floppy without them. Plus, the rings on the spike strips are gray too so there's no visual benefit for taking the retainers off if the spike strips stay on.

 

Is anyone planning on painting on more grey to the poles of Unicron in planet mode? It looks weirdly plain to me as-is.

 

Hm, actually looking again I guess it's pretty accurate as-is. The pattern is there, it just makes me think of a receding hairline compared to the animation.

 

Im wondering if anyone painting the maw is going to paint the yellow dots on the front of the planet. They are yellow in the above pic.. and some are yellow on him... but not the ones on the front of the planet like in the cartoon.

 

You can see some of that here

 

A. Not my photo. Just grabbed one to edit as a proof on concept. B. I don't have photoshop on this machine. so it is what it is. C. I just realized I should have grabbed a pic with the maw already painted.

 

I painted the one directly above the maw, I might do the 2 below it

my last paint mod is probably going to be to make the poles gray instead of silver

 

how many people here haven't got any shipping notices yet?

 

Me.

 

Good news. I got my shipping notice from haslab. Bad news it is shipping from Alpha Centauri. Good news it is shipping using Lightspeed GPS. Bad news it will still take over 4 years to get here.