Here are some tweaks I did to the Studio series Kup and Blurr as well as Kingdom Cyclonus. In so many ways these are the figures I hoped to get back when I was a week lad in '86. So awesome to finally have them, even if a few adjustments are needed for me to be fully "content". Kup Kup. There's a couple of proportion problems with this figure that throws him off. Head is TOO big. Shoulders are too low. Hands are too big (switching those out later). Lastly the clear windshield is too distracting and takes away from the line flow of the figure. I switched out his head; cut longer connecting slots so shoulder mounting piece could be raised; removed windshield, painted back side with silver, blue,light grey mixture. Once I replace the hands I'll be pretty happy. Gap from shoulder connectors to chest are still too wide and feel Hasbro could have engineered this tighter but overall like this figure better with these changes Cyclonus Cyclonus is really a beautiful figure but between the head and missing a few paint apps it drops the figure down for me. Did a little trimming, detailing, and painting and I'm much happier with him now. The powerful warrior...Cyclonus Blurr A little trim to the chin, some shading, some paint to the face, neck, and hands (light grey) and I guess the sculpt was in there! Also popped his eyes with paint, allowed me to shape them more Ave but rely on the light piping for the shape.
wow your Cyclonus looks rad as hell, didn't think such a great figure could get any better. How are you planning on switching out Kup's hands since the whole forearm is one piece?
...How hard was the head swap? That's the Generations Kup head, right - the one that I think I misplaced when I put that 3P IDW "cy-gar" version on the mold?
The chest window is the very first thing I change once I get started customizing mine. I did digi mockups when the toy was first leaked and this looks as good, if not better. DavAnthony, what paint did you use? I'm still wavering on altering the face and I would love to swap out the hands, but I may chicken out on that (it will require cutting them completely off.)
Thanks Actually his head is closer to scale with Hot Rod, Blurr, Arcee, the issue is his hands are too big. It's as if they realized they made his head too big and decided to follow suit with his hands as well. I'll be replacing those hands soon. Thanks I'm a lot happier with Cyclonus. He's still a bit too purple pink for me. I'm tempted to go for that light grey/blue/purple look he had in most of the episodes but think I'm probably going to leave as is Thank you Right, it's the Gen Kup head. Most of the challenges came from thinking that the ball peg came from. From Gen kup the peg was attached to the body and the head fitted onto it. For SS Kup the peg wa attached to the head down into the body. I ended up snapping the SS peg and stem so I just kept it where it was and used hot glue to fix it to the Gen Kup head which means he has double ball joint ability now in his head and in the neck area connecting to the chest. Thanks yeah it just kept bothering me, felt like Kup was missing his chest and made the figure look vacant to me. I used both Citadel and Testors model masters acrylic. I had thought of cutting out a piece of vinyl and fitting it to give me options but it was getting far too complicated and getting that piece out can be a bit challenging. Thanks , Cyclonus is one of my favorites. Really great figure overall.
Augh, too bad. I really don't like permanently decapitating a fig that way. On the other hand, I *do* have some gunpla ball joints sitting around.... I can speak to that! Working with adhesive vinyl isn't THAT hard if you're covering large surfaces with obvious shapes - you can basically make a paper template for an altmode's windshield and trim from that, for instance, and it's also relatively straightforward for small areas that you can cut to shape, test fit, cut again, and then apply. Making it fit around curved pieces is a bit trickier, and I haven't tried any sort of die-cut detail work although I have a vague plan. I've got something in the pipeline soon that was my first attempt at doing vinyl windscreens and I think it turned out okay.
Yeah it wasn't my first choice I had tried to "pry" it off gently but it just snapped right off. Those ball joints will probably work if you run into a problem doing yours. I had used vinyl sticker sheets for an Ironhide and Ratchet I did and I was pretty happy with how that turned out but they have lots of nubs and nobs with Kup's piece that looked like it was going to be more trouble than it was worth so I decided to just go with the painted route. I didn't want any streaks though so it took some time but I was pretty happy with how it ended up looking. Here are Ironhide and Ratchet with the painted vinyl sticker sheet. Ironhide's sticker got the painted treatment since his windshield was clear. Ratchet had a blue tint and worked out pretty nicely with just the white behind it. They also got some paint work done to them to bring them closer to model.
Except that Henry Kane was a fictional, and somewhat forgettable character, and we all know Kup is a legend.
Cyclonus' shade of purple was just not working for me. I kept feeling like it was too pink/purple as opposed to blue/purple. I'm much happier now. Unfortunately had to re-detail the panel lines, not the worst thing to have to do . Next up will be to seal the robot mode and then work on the jet mode
