Dave's Transformers Painting Projects

Paints, Repaints and Kitbashes, Oh My!
Transformers Quickbashes - 3D Printed Stuff
Last Updated 10/27/24
Micro Superion added.

I do not design 3D printing objects, although I've commissioned a few from Octavirate Forge (Trent Troop). But the tech isn't quite to the point in 2023 that I can just get a 3D printed thing and immediately use it, at the very least I want to dye and/or paint it (pre-colored stuff is either really expensive or so fuzzy at small scales it's better to just get the clear high-def stuff and paint it). There's a few things here that also involve other categories of kitbash, such as when I repainted a Prime Master vehicle to go with the 3D-printed faceplate, but everything in this section was done because I had a 3D-printed object to work with.

Most of these projects involve stuff printed by Shapeways, with exceptions noted. Titan Master/Prime Master faceplates are all bunched together at the bottom rather than interspersed in chronological order.

Dye Pots: When dyeing plastic, you don't want to heat it so much that it warps. Before I got the hang of microwaving Just Enough, I cobbled together some crude double-boilers in 2011 to make sure the dye never got too far above the boiling point. After 2014, I shifted to careful microwaving instead.
- Prototype: Thrown together out of what I had on hand, but the bamboo skewers warped and stained, so I needed better materials.
- Production Model: Replaced the bamboo skewers with steel ones, and used an additional rubber band.
Fremble v7 as animated Rumble: TreadshotA1 has several designs of the "fit in Soundwave's chest" variety, many of which are really simplistic, but v7 is starting to get the hang of it. However, there was an error in it with the elbow joints, so I had to fix them. January 2012.
- Dyed but not painted. You can see here how "fuzzy" the default Shapeways product is.
- Painted. Despite some filing and Dremeling to remove the fuzz, it's still pitted and generally not smooth.
Eject and Rewind by TreadshotA1: Based on the Fremble v7 mold, but with the correct elbows and different details. I worked harder on smoothing the surfaces this time, but there seems to be a level of surface pitting that can't be fixed without removing a lot more of the material. January 2012.
- Eject: Parts dyed blue and then painted over. White parts left undyed.
- Rewind: Parts dyed black and painted over, and the "white" parts I dyed very slightly.
- Comparison: You can see the results of the slight dye job on Rewind.
Fremble v7 as Frenzy: Well, I found the ultimate strength of the plastic used by Shapeways, snapping an upper arm in half while trying to fix up my second Fremble. So I fabricated pounder arms out of styrene bits. January 2012.
Fakebuster's Thugger 4.0 Mold: More detailed and articulated than Fremble, I put these off a bit longer due to the complexity. I decided to make up my own pair of siblings in the style of Rumble and Frenzy, but with different colors (working largely from which dyes seemed to take well).
- Scrum: He loves sports, but things referees just slow things down too much. Neither of the dyed colors came out looking very good, so I painted over just about everything. February 2012.
- Hysteria: She loves causing panic and watching people trample each other. If Scrum's getting bored by a sporting event where fair play is happening, she can liven things up a bit with her hypno-projectors. The dyes worked much better here, so I only added some details. February 2012.
- Hysteria and Scrum side by side
Titans Return Base Ramps by Andrusi: Recognizing a need for more ramp options for the cityformers and the city-compatible Leaders in Titans Return, Andrusi made a series of ramp add-ons. Example 1, example 2. Not shown are four-way connectors, curved ramps, Lego-interface pieces, and a reverser piece to help with the fact that Fortress Maximus has mirror-flipped connectors in a few places. October 2016.
Sir Missilepants: A corgi-bot who turns into a missile launcher, like a more warlike version of the Rescue Bots Mini-Cons. Designed by Trent Troop. I dyed it and then painted it. January 2017.
Catling Gun: Another of Trent's creations on the Prize Inside store. Dyeing didn't work well at all, so I ended up painting the entire thing. The goal was to make it Brainstorm's partner. January 2017.
Dispensor! I got Reprolabels to make a spare Rewind into Dispensor, the Mountain Dew Machine Decepticon, but never got around to taking pictures. I wasn't too happy with the head labels, though. But then Trent Troop created a set that replaces the head entirely and gives him a can-non. September 2017.
- Robot Mode
- Tank and Vending Machine Modes
PotP Slash with feathers: Printed in Black Acrylate, these give Slash proper feathery forelimbs. March 2018.
PotP Cindersaur with feathers: Printed in Black Professional Plastic, which isn't nearly as good as the old Black Acrylate (it's definitely a thread-based print, and it's more ragged IMO). Painted purple and yellow, the pictures are deceptive in this case...the color match isn't as good as it looks. September 2018.
AllSpark Cyber Planet Key: The AllSpark.com logo as a Cyber Key, done in their translucent detail plastic. Here it is just dyed before any paint. June 2018.
Browning "Decoy": Browning, the tiny companion Destron from Masterforce, done up by Prize Inside in the style of a Decoy. I ordered it in Gray Professional Plastic, which turns out to just be Black Professional Plastic given a surface fuzziness. Even after scraping it all off, I couldn't get all the lines to be as sharp as I'd like. In the future, Frosted Ultra Detail or nothing, I think. October 2018.
Overhaul: A Titans Return interpretation of the Cybertron character Overhaul. This almost belongs in Lesser Kitbashes instead, given how much work I did on the chest sculpting. More Prize Inside parts, specifically the Brushguard set of head and claws. I did the chest launcher using a scrapbooking pearl sticker and lots of styrene bits, and found that Tamiya clear red over silver does a decent job of looking like clear red plastic. I picked the Brushguard set because I prefer a cleaner face over the "I will be getting a beast mode later" tusks on the Overhaul toy. August 2019.
- Robot Mode
- Vehicle Mode
Rodimus Stars: Prize Inside took their Rodimus Star design and added a 3mm socket in back for use on Siege figures. I got 'em in clear detail plastic and dyed them. The goal was a golden yellow, but the orange I mixed in was wayyyyy more powerful than I expected. Doesn't Ironhide look proud of the honor bestowed upon him? I later decided to use a Krylon Gold Leafing Pen to make one of them gold (which required some moving the gold around with a pin since the marker wouldn't fit into the crannies). August 2019.
- Metal Pendant: Technically the only "kitbashing" I did here was to add a chain. It's a pendant variant available printed in metal, I went for polished "gold" and I'm quite pleased with how well it turned out. I got this probably late 2019, I just didn't take a picture of it until 2023.
Ironworks Antenna: Made by Trent Troop on Shapeways in anticipation of Earthrise Ironworks, I got and dyed mine well before Ironworks actually came out. October 2019.
- Irontread wearing the antenna: Ironworks, Irontread, close enough.
- Ironworks in Communications Bay form: More pictures to help make the not-in-the-instructions mode can be found here and here.
Cybertron Defense Hot Shot accessories: The Hasbro Selects retool of Siege Hound into an homage to Cybertron Defense Hot Shot was pretty good, all things considered, but lacking in terms of the accessories. Prize Inside stepped in and added the turret and combat knife. June 2020.
- Robot Mode
- Vehicle Mode - With and without the turret guns popped up in homage to the original toy's Cyber Planet Key gimmick.
Nightbird Buzzsaws - One of her many "ninja tools" from her one G1 appearance, designed by Prize Inside. I got them in the clear detail plastic and dyed them yellow, then painted the non-blade parts gunmetal. June 2020.
Cog with Bolster Shields - Another Prize Inside accessory, energy shields based on those seen in the collectible card game. I just freed 'em from the sprues and dyed 'em purple. After watching TF:Siege on Netflix, I figured Cog needed these more than anyone else. August 2020.
Airwave Missiles - From Prize Inside, shown on the robot mode. (Due to a printing error, they don't stay well in place in base mode, I have submitted a complaint after confirming it wasn't Trent's fault.) December 2020.
Cheetor Shoes - Annoyed by how the tiny feet on the Cheetor mold looked and how unstable the figure and its redecos/retools were, I commissioned Trent Troop (of Prize Inside) to design some shoes for it These are the original designs, although some lessons were learned (in part by breaking pieces, oops) that led to improvements made in the version that would later go on Shapeways. Done in December 2021 and January 2022.
- Screencap of the STL file
- Dyed shoes - This also shows how they look when stuck onto the beast modes. While I suppose it's possible to design shoes that work in both modes (maybe make them more like sandals so they could peg onto the hands on the underside?) I don't really plan to display them attached in beast mode anyway. I thought that perhaps the dye would be enough for black and yellow shoes, but I ended up needing to paint them anyway.
- Silver Shoes - I preferred the look of silver for Ravage and Shadow Panther. (And yes, I had Shadow Panther partially mistransformed, oops.)
- Black Shoes - A friend wanted black shoes for his Shadow Panther, so I obliged. I might go ahead and redo mine black as well, since Shadow Panther's extra silver on the lower legs calls out for contrast.
- Yellow Shoes - Yet another way in which I prefer the Netflix Cheetor...I can match that toy's yellow reasonably well, but none of the score of yellow paints I own match regular Cheetor's plastic.
Knok and Skar backpacks - Designed by Ville Oivo on Thingiverse, printed out locally on a string printer by a local TF fan. I'm not going to be switching to string printed stuff myself any time soon, but it's better than it used to be. February 2022.
Rit Dyemore Tests - A set I got in 2017 in regular white plastic didn't have enough detail for me to want to paint it, so it sat in the to do pile for a few years. When I was told that I should add acetone when using Rit Dyemore on plastic, I decided to go back and try my colors again. Results were...mixed. May 2022.
- Graphite Black without and with acetone - The acetone definitely helped.
- Multiple colors with acetone - Frost Gray seems to be cursed, although the bottle I used to dye that one might have had red contaminant small enough I didn't notice that it had escaped cleaning. The light blue is still too light, but blue is decent.
3mm Peg Fire Blasts - After War for Cybertron ended, they stopped being quite so careful about making sure gun barrels were compatible with the Fire Blasts from that series. So I decided to commission some designs that could fit into the 3mm sockets that were becoming more common, based on G1-style animation blasts.
- Undyed on sprue, plus dyed orange - I ordered them in polished clear fine detail, and while it wasn't obvious before dyeing, one side turned out to not be very polished after all and I had to scrape off the gunk and hit it with the polisher head. January 2023.
- Three more sets in other colors - I tried clearing off the less-polished side before dyeing, but had to polish after dyeing anyway. February 2023.
- Earth Planet Key - A local friend of mine hits MakerSpaces and sometimes gives me copies of 3D printed stuff he got there. This one was fine-detailed enough to be worth trying to paint up, so I dyed it blue, then chromed it with a liquid chrome marker and used Tamiya clear blue to sort of fake being clear plastic (it looks a little better in person than in this pic). I think this might be the design Matt Ignash has up on Shapeways, dunno if this was an authorized use or not (piracy kinda happens in the 3D printing culture...you can pirate a car now, if only a toy one). February 2023.
- Micro-Scale Superion - To give you some idea how long this sat partially painted before I got around to finishing it, I started painting this Trent Troop design back when Shapeways was still in business. I physically modified it but drilling out one of the 2mm sockets on the feet to become 3mm, so now it can stand on both Titan Master pegs and 3mm studs. October 2024.

Faceplates: Some of these are actually modified official ones that I had leftover from other projects, but I want to keep all the Titan Master/Prime Master modifications in one place, even the stuff that might count as "Lesser Kitbashes". The Shapeways faces come from Trent Troop's Prize Inside store.

Pharma: Part of an IDW grab bag quartet I bought early on, I chose this for my initial experiments. It turned out to be too thin, so the screw started to come out the nose. At this point, I can no longer find it, oops. July 2016.
- Unpainted test: Just seeing if it would fit at all.
- Painted: The level of detail was kinda low, even ignoring the nose issue. I may eventually order another one in ultra-detail.
Headmaster: I got the two-pack with both G1-style and TF:Animated style, with the goal of replacing Sentinel Prime's head. I ordered it in Frosted Ultra Detail, so it looks better in details. Less good-looking is the dye job I tried on the figure itself. August and September 2015.
- G1 faceplate
- G1 faceplate on dyed body
- Attached to TR Sentinel Prime (Because of the TF: Animated episode where Headmaster took over that show's Sentinel Prime.)
- TF:Animated Faceplate
Titan Master Tarn: A spare Apeface body, with a Tarn faceplate. Tarn is the leader of the Decepticon Justice Division in the IDW comics. I tried panel lining things a bit, more detail than I usually put into the faceplates. July 2017.
Titan Master Aileron: A character from the IDW comics, a fresh-faced young lass from Victorion's homeworld of Caminus. I used a spare Overboard for this, not just doing the Titan Master, but also painting up the "transtector" in Aileron's colors. July 2017.
- Titan Master
- With Vehicle
Titan Master Nemesis Leo: Sawback but with the leftover Sentinel Prime faceplate. I wanted to just simplify this by dyeing stuff, but the yellow plastic didn't take dye at all. Sigh. Based on the various Nemesis decos. August 2017.
Titan Master Rung: Last of the IDW pack of faceplates (Pharma, Aileron, Tarn being the others), on a Ptero body that I tried dyeing a more appropriate color scheme. I got a weird "gold swirl" effect that I kinda liked once it stopped being sticky. August 2017.
Titans Return Brachio: A Shuffler significantly remolded with putty to be a brachiosaur rather than an elephant, and I made the face look a little more like Sludge (who I was unaware would get a Power of the Primes toy). I used Molotow chrome on some parts. September 2017.
Power of the Primes Cloudburst: The first wave of Prime Masters used pins rather than screws, presenting a challenge to my plans to replace the Prime plates with faceplates that go with the Decoy Armor's character. But I managed it. Unfortunately, I didn't check for fit before painting, and the Prime Master no longer fits inside the Decoy Armor. January 2018.
Prime Masters Metalhawk and Skullgrin: Removing the pins was easier the second time around, although I did put off this project for a while as other stuff occupied my crafting table. Vector Prime and Liege Maximo with replacement faceplates, and this time I made sure I could fit them into the Decoy Armors (no photos of that, there's nothing really visible of the faceplates when the figure is inside the armor). I deliberately kept it simple for these. April 2018.
Prime Master Submarauder: Last of the four-pack of faceplates I got for PotP from Prize Inside. Submarauder's inner robot Alchemist Prime is a very poor fit color-wise, due to how the G1 Pretender shell and inner robot had radically different colors (also a problem with Alpha Trion/Landmine). Despite a lot of paint mixing, I didn't quite manage to match the blue color, but I got close. June 2018.
Titan/Prime Master display idea: Lego works surprisingly well for this. April 2018.
- Version 2: A bigger version based on a 16x16 stud plate (obtained at Dollar Tree), using 16x4 plates and 16x2 plates (obtained on Bricklink), plus an 8x4 plate for a Titan Master with vehicle. There's room for a third row, but I don't have enough to require that yet. A 2-stack of 1x1 square stud pieces under each front corner to let it stand on its own. May 2018.
Titan Master Override: The character from Cybertron, as a faceplate. I painted this up more than usual, since there was no real way to get a car for her. April 2018.
Titans Return Rescue Bots "Graduates": More "grown up" versions of the Rescue Bots main four, with varying levels of vehicle modding and Special Edition color jobs. April 2018.
- Stealth Boulder: Another Shuffler spare. I couldn't dye the purple parts green, but I figured I could make them black and make the tan parts green. Unfortunately, the green came out pretty dark, so I decided to go with a tongue in cheek stealth concept. And yes, more hazard stripes.
- Shiny Chase: Rather than try to tone down the metallic look of the Nightbeat figure I used as a base, I went for Shiny Chase. No mods to the vehicle.
- Heatwave: Used my last Ptero for this, but decided to not try to give him a vehicle.
- Blades: Sawback body, and I tried dyeing a Ptero vehicle more orange for him, but it didn't take.
Studio Series Thundercracker: I like the Studio Series Thundercracker well enough, but I don't like the insectile movie head, and I wasn't keen on the odd gray parts in the wings. So I ordered a G1 cartoon Thundercracker faceplate and dyed a spare Fangry body black. May 2018.
Paradron Medic: G1 Arcee face on Teslor, for a friend's project to make a spare Brainstorm into Paradron Medic. While the animation model for Paradron Medic has a pink face (and is therefore nearly the same as Arcee), we went with a pale teal face. I decided to add glowing eyes. September 2018.
Titan Master Cheetor: A Prize Inside Cheetor faceplate on Nightbeat's body, with a repainted Razorback lion body. He got a slight species change along the way. July 2019.
Prime Master Bludgeon: Another Prize Inside faceplate, turning Quintus Prime into a proper Bludgeon. July 2019.
Prime Master Bomb-Burst: Trent didn't have this face or the next one, so I got Steam Shield's Bomb-Burst face to convert Prime Master Megatronus. Steam Shield wasn't as careful about making sure the Prime Masters with the new faces would fit inside the Decoy Armors, but fortunately I was paranoid enough about the matter to check before painting, so I could file it down. July 2019.
Prime Master Landmine: Another Steam Shield faceplate, turning Prime Master Alpha Trion into Landmine. Also needed filing. July 2019.

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