Hooligan repainted as Thundercracker

Unlike the Starscream kitbash, instead of filing Hooligan's head down to approximate the seeker-style head, I used Sculpey III modeling compound to build up a helmet, thus eliminating the microcephalic look of the typical Cyberjet. I found that hanging the built-up head really close to a lightbulb for half an hour hardened the Sculpey nicely...I would not recommend putting a soft vinyl toy part in the oven at the temperatures Sculpey's instructions recommend. The result was somewhat lumpy, and next time I'll work on the head with a file to shape it better, but it looks okay from the front. I did have to file away at the shoulder pieces that bracket the head in robot mode in order to fit the new head in.

The other main departure from the methods used for Starscream was to use structural acrylic paint (see the NeoKnight repaints for more on this substance) to fix the wings in position instead of glue, as the glue had started pulling away from the wings as it dried on Starscream. Unfortunately, something about the structural paint causes the paint over it to crack slowly, requiring a great many coats before you're done. Maybe I'll try Sculpey on Skywarp.

Helpful Hint: If you take an X-Acto or other knife and drill out the openings of the holes in the shoulder area that you put metal bars through, it's a LOT easier to line things up and get the bars re-inserted once you're done painting. Don't drill out the entire hole, though, or the bar will slide out...just sort of spin the X-Acto to give beveled edges to the holes.

Finally, you'll notice that the color scheme doesn't quite resemble any version of Thundercracker. Certainly not the original toy, which is much darker blue. It's close to the cartoon version, but is basically the color scheme I used on my Thundercracker decoy, if a little lighter in hue due to the fact I used store-bought light blue paint rather than mixing my own. Oh, and I've recently found that clear topcoat nail polish makes for a good protectant on areas likely to get dinged up, like wingtips and the sides of the head.

As another Sculpey project, I built a couple of guns for Thundercracker. The first effort, a stubby pistol, I put directly onto a bulb to harden, with unpleasant results. The rifle shown here was my second effort, using a wire frame with Sculpey rolled around it, then filed into shape and painted to match his color scheme. A sort of laser carbine.

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