So in all honesty the Leader class OP was not really worth the price tag before I found some mod pages and gave him some paint. I did as many before me had where you remove the pin attaching the main body of Optimus to his trailer hitch section, and that did wonders on the figure immediately. After that point, I set about touching him up with a well needed paint job to give him some weathering and to do away with that god-awful chrome training bra.

With having removed OP's giant kibble-pack, Optimus gets a much more streamlined look that looks much more like the giant robot knight who transforms into a big rig with flames that we see onscreen. The only problem is doing so also reveals just how large his feet are. I don't normally mind a little extra heel to counteract stability issues, but he has some huge stompin' boots that put metalheads around the world to shame!

Anywho, I covered up his chrome chest plate with some silver paint and added some screen accurate flame detailing (or as close as one can get with such a different looking CGI figure) to his chest and forearms. I also went over the gray plastic with shades of silver, gunmetal, and I added some gold highlights here and there, mostly on the shoulders and the chest. In keeping with his Silver Knight motif, I added plenty of silver to his head to make it more screen accurate, and I also painted over that ugly as sin yellow light piping.

As much as the vehicle mode is pretty awesome looking, and quite in scale with MP10 Prime, I am not displaying him in that form, so I added a few small details to his vehicle mode, but not much. I added the red to his Autobot symbols on his grill and hubcaps, I painted the hubcaps and his rear bumber silver, gave him some taillights, and made the Western Star logo silver as well.

As for weapons, I painted over that ever prevalant yellow sword into a color that a sword could actually be, silver. I then gave his sword some blue detailing, then did some dry brushing and washes to the sword and shield. There is no weapon storage in robot mode since I removed that backpack, although with a decent paint job, he doesn't look have bad.

Removing the backpack is quite simple, just tapping out the pin in the hinge that the backpack swings up on, then grabbing some pliers and pulling it out. My figure's hinge piece on Optimus's back was quite tight, so I routed it out a little bit to make it possible to line up the backpack and slide it right in and out without too much difficulty.

As always, feel free to leave comments and suggestions as I always could use new ideas!

 

With the backpack:

 

Vehicle mode:

 

Very Nice! great job, I love the weathered bot mode look!

 

Thanks man, I wanted to make him look like he has aged over the course of the movies while still maintaining a pretty sleek looking vehicle mode. I just haven't decided yet whether or not to paint those yellow windows silver or black. That would be the only thing I have left to change haha

 

Time for an update, I painted the windows black. Now the figure is complete!

 

much better than what is sitting on shelves right now

 

Thanks! I think someone could probably make a killing if they went ahead and made some replacement windows in a light blue translucent so that people can replace the windows, which are probably the most garrish part of the figure aside from the backpack.

 

Also, he needed a bit of blue on the eyes, but that is just me. Good job nonetheless!!!

 

Thanks! Yeah, I am probably going to go back and update the face a little bit, basically I used a slightly lighter metallic blue for the eyes, then I put I small dot of white in the center for the pupils, but the camera doesn't pick that out well enough.