Based on the Steel Movie action figure Vapor Trail Steel and the Round Vernian model kit "Vifam"
The first thing I did was assess my resources. I decided the Vapor Trail Steel would work best for this project of the ones I had left, then went looking through my stock of Japanese robot models. One of the kits I got at Origins, the Round Vernian Vifam, looked like a good pick, although the feet wouldn't be quite right. Still, the feet were big enough I wouldn't have to hack off any part of Steel's feet to get the robot boots on, like I had been forced to do with Arcee and Bowshock. Since I'd be integrating a lot of cheap plastic parts, I decided to go with the epoxy putty again, rather than Sculpey. I also cut up a trading card sheath (the rigid kind) to make the chest plate piece, in three layers (including a raised Autobot insignia).
Time to hack bits off Steel. Obviously, I had to reshape the face a lot, since Defcon does not look like Shaq. And I decided to amputate both arms at the bicep and replace them with arms from the Vifam, since that would give me elbow joints and wrists...this marks the first time I've made a kitbash with more points of articulation than the base figure. I glued the Vifam's lower bicep pieces to the stumps and merged the pieces with putty, also building up the shoulders. The entire front torso was also built up with putty, and a little of the back. The head used a couple of upper bicep pieces from the Vifam to shape the sides of the helmet, and a fair amount of putty and carving. The head-mounted gun is a cylinder of putty stuck to a small thruster from the Vifam's back. I also left a flat part to attach the Vifam's backpack, which is hinged to let the pilot enter the Vifam's torso.
The next step was to attach the leg armor. I chopped the guts out of the boot pieces (the stuff that would let them connect to the model's structure) and glued them to Steel's legs, filling in the boots and knees with hot glue. Quickly realizing I'd never make the knees look good with glue, I put on a layer of putty to bring the kneecaps up and over Steel's own knees, then filed it down so the putty was flush with the plastic. I added a few discs to the knees to try and match at least PART of Defcon's own legs.
After that, it was mainly a matter of painting and fiddling, attaching the backpack and forearms once they were ready, and then fussing with details and trying to keep the blue paint out of red areas for a couple days.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results. The Milliputt putty was easier to work with this time (maybe it absorbed a little water from the air), which let me do more sculpting than is visible in this scan (for instance, the three slots on the abdomen are recessed, the lines on the biceps are sculpted into the putty and the helmet has a lot of detail). If I'd been able to take apart the Steel figure's torso, I might have tried to put in the ball jointed shoulders of the Vifam, but that turned out to be impractical.