Legacy Inferno is a great figure with a ton of detail on its ant mode parts, unfortunately the shade and type of red plastic Hasbro used for him doesn't do it justice, it seemed oversaturated and washed out the detail, and the finish of the plastic doesn't reflect ants at all

I found a way to fix that though, when I saw a gloss paint called Tamiya Smoke, it seemed like the perfect solution, and the end result looks great to me







Ant mode looks great now, and much closer to the look of an actual ants exoskeleton

It also made me realize that that was what the OG BW toy was trying to do as well, by making the original figure clear plastic

I have a before paint pic as well posted here first for comparison

Before:


After:




Ant for comparison



Paint used

 

Very nice! Inferno really pops with those colors now

 

Tamiya Smoke is a wonderful enhancement paint. I used it (and nothing else) on my Giger-inspired mask, and it really heightened the xenomorph look without making it too dark and indistinct like a solid colour would.

 

So fitting that the paint has a Warning: Flammable label on it for Inferno.  

 

Lol nice

Great and simple repaint. a world of difference! Was planning to do the same with mine. Think I will do this to Terrorsaur as well since it suffers from the same bright red issue.

Did you just hand paint the smoke on top of the red?

 

It was hand painted yes, I used a few different types of brushes to try and get enough coverage, needed extra care and coats on the legs though because the plastic is smoother there, the textured parts took the gloss better

 

Wow, that really improved this figure a lot! Looks like I will be buying some

 

What an improvement. Looks fantastic!

 

Bet this would work great for TM2 Megatron too. Terrosaur is a given.

 

This addition really evokes the transparent red the original toy was cast in, itself presumably also to make it look more like a real ant's coloration. Great idea! It looks amazing. Tamiya transparent glosses have such an incredible finish.

 

Very nicely done!

 

Oh that’s nice.

 

May I ask if you just painted all the originally red portion of the figure? Was the paint diluted before painting?

 

Straight from the jar, no dilution, and I just painted over the red areas, I didn't want to darken the other areas, just the red

 

It looks very slick, I like it a lot. How does it affect transformation and posing?

 

Still transforms and poses fine, haven't noticed any rubbing or chipping of any kind

If anything the gloss may have tightened some joints, like the abdomen flaps

 

I tried the method, it come out like a black wash effect and I couldn't achieve the transparent red glow effect that you did with yours... I'm not sure what went wrong  

 

This was such a great idea you came up with. Had to do this to mine too. Thank you for the idea! 

 

Due to lack of skill in painting mine seemed like got burned