Ooohhh, mysterious title!
I have had this idea floating around in my head for years, but with the release of MP Blackarachnia, the desire to compete the ultimate accessory for her is now on the table.
I've never done a photo blog before, but when I started this I figured "why not?".

Work started on this quite some time ago, but I've been steadily progressing with it as time permits. There is a LOT of work done so far, with twice that much to go, both in sculpting and engineering.

To start, some general "how to" on my sculpting methods.
I prefer to use Kneadatite (green stuff) and a two part putty called ProCreate.

Mixing is done as such:
Form a rope with equal parts blue and yellow-

Roll and squish the rope into a ball, then re-roll it out and repeat-


Fully mixed-

 

My sculpting tool of choice is an ancient metal.one from Citadel. One side is a blade and the other is a round shovel. I've had this for literally 20-years and it serves me well.
To keep the tool from sticking, and to eliminate the errant fingerprint, I use Nivea hand cream.


The trick with sculpting fur, and really anything organic, is to move the tool naturally and with fluid motions-

With Nivea to kill the fingerprints:

What it looks like without the treatment:

Moral here is to use the hand cream. The final result will be worth it.


And a completed arm-

 

So at this point, I'm guessing you know this is going to be Silverbolt.
The base mold is Beast Hunters Darksteel. I know others have made it into SB before, but I wasn't satisfied with a simple repaint. I apparently hate myself too much for that ( ), so I decided to go full bore and re-do the whole dang figure.

Anyway, moving on to some engineering.
The wolf head needs to tuck into the torso, so to accomplish this I needed a sturdy joint that would also allow alt mode articulation.
What I used was a thigh joint from Siege Red Alert and a lot of styrene-

(More on the head to follow...)

 

Before I go on, you may notice that the body pieces are all sanded and detailed down. What I did was use a rough sanding drum on my Dremel, set it to a lower speed and went to town. I removed nearly all the details, and at the same time textured areas that won't be sculpted. The paint will show the texturing, which is what I was going for.

The legs are a unique challenge to sculpt and retain some screen accuracy. I didn't want to keep the bird feet, so the Wolfwire I sacrificed to the project donated the toes that are now spliced onto the floor where the claws were.

 

Back to some engineering.
The base figure didn't have waist articulation, which for this project I found unacceptable.
I killed the sliding pelvis function in the original design and installed a hefty bill socket supplied by an Evergreen Megatron. Now SB will have full waist movement as well as an ab crunch.
Yes, the pics make it look sloppy, but I haven't filled the gaps here in with epoxy yet.
Besides, nothing shown will be visible later.

 

The original Silverbolt figure had a cool loincloth piece that I wanted to somewhat replicate here.
The piece will cover the chest opening in Beast mode, and form the loincloth in bot mode.
It isn't done yet, as it will get more detailing to replicate the weird tooth/ring design on the original.

 

One thing I wanted to do was create strips of fur (stop.it...) to use as filler and to create overhang to allow for articulation around the waist and neck areas.
I rolled and flattened some putty onto a metal ruler, then sculpted the fur. When it was about half way cured, I removed it and wrapped it around a plastic cup to give it a permanent curve which would allow for easier bending.

 

Wolf head!
It's coming along, but I still have some detailing and the ears to go.
I used gray putty for the back end due.tonit being an potential rub point during transformation. The gray is more durable, and since the main paint color will be gray it makes future fixes a little easier.

 

On to the bot mode head-

Unfortunately, I have to completely re-do this. It's too small and is shrimpy next to Blackarachnia.
Once the project is done I will probably sell this one as it would perfect for a large Deluxe.

 

Here is the tail that I've started working on. I may ditch this and go with etched styrene, depending on how the wings turn out.


I have been looking for a decent set of wings for this project for a long time and have come up short. Nothing works or is big enough, so I said heck with it again and started making a set. These are just being started, so I will update as they progress.

 

Green Stuff is flexible after it cures, but not like rubber. It retains the shape of the curve of the cup I used, but the curve allows me to bend it more freely later on and won't "push back" as much.
I made some flat strips as well, and they have enough flex to be able to be wrapped around stuff, but without the cured curvature they tend to try to get back to the flat strip.

Wing update:
I had all the pieces cut for the body of the wings before I realized I was trying to over-engineer then with added sliders and joints. That is completely unnecessary, so I actually found a pair that will work: