Paints, Repaints and Kitbashes, Oh My! Transformers Quickbashes - Touchups Last Updated 10/23/24 Gamer Edition Optimus Prime axe added. This page is for my Transformers "Touchups." These are places where I only did a little painting, and the goal was to improve the existing character or compensate for poor factory paints. Sometimes it's about painting an accessory to better go with the character. But in all cases, these were fairly quick jobs that only involved paints. If you think something here belongs in a different category, let me know.

• TMII Cheetor Touchup: Not really a kitbash at all, but this repaint was such a spectacular improvement over the original that I had to put it up. I got the spots by using Pactra gloss black paint and the smallest of the brushes that comes with a Pactra kit, just dabbed black here and there (except on the face and head, where I used a pin for more detailed spotting). The rest of the details are various acrylic paints I have. To get the white fur on the chest effect I actually smeared the paint with my thumb to blur the edges like fur.
• jaAm!: Armada Hot Shot touched up with panel lines and other details, plus a quick little jaAm jar (there's a "redone dialogue" parody of the minicomic that comes with Armada toys, involving Hot Shot having Torgo-like speech patterns and a fixation on jam).
• Touched-Up Vector Prime: I had a bunch of metallic leaf pens sitting around, so I decided to make Vector Prime shinier. Vehicle Mode views: 1, 2.
• Cybertron Snarl Touchup: Filled in the panel lines with dark blue paint, did a light blue drybrush over the dark blue plastic. Painted the claws later.
• Winged Thunderblast: Added paint to the inside shells of Cybertron Thunderblast's boat parts to make them look more like mechanical angel wings.
• Cybertron Mini-Con Versus Pack 4 touchups: Fixed up High Wire's joints, gave both ink washes and other details.
• Classic Ultra Magnus touchup: I mainly just painted the helmet blue, but also added a few touches of red. I think it makes the figure a little less dull without going overboard into "mapping the G1 scheme onto a cab-only version" scheme.
• Speed Dial Mod: Real Gear Robot Speed Dial 800 modified so that he doesn't use his keyboard as his chest. Used some scrap from the Exo-Force Golden Guardian sticker sheet for the gold bits.
• Robot Replicas Touchups: The Revoltech-like Robot Replicas seem to have been a touch over-ambitious and under-funded, resulting in a lot of molded detail but not a lot of painted detail. So I've been fixing some of them.
  • Bumblebee: I didn't go completely movie-accurate, I like the metallic blue on the windows seen in some other toys. I gave the yellow more highlights, put black in the nooks and crannies, and made the gray parts more gunmetal.
  • Megatron: Much simpler, just a black wash (paint mixed with water) and then a thin layer of metallic pearl white.
• Neo Shifter Atlas::Raan: The stock colors of the toy had too much weird color separation in robot mode, so I added some yellow up top and some blue stripes on the "pants". 3" Titanium Bumblebee included for scale.
• Night Beat 7: I felt it looked a little drab, so I added some coloration to more evoke Headmaster Nightbeat. 9/2/07.
• Battle Begins Optimus Prime: Removed the battle damage and generally touched up the figure from the "Battle Begins" two-pack from Transformers Animated. June 2008.
• Battle Begins Megatron: Likewise, removed battle damage and touched up the figure in general. June 2008.
• McDonald's Lugnut: A Happy Meal toy with the colors improved and more details added. July 2008.
  • Robot View 1 - With alternate leg transformation.
  • Robot View 2 - Different angle, same alternate transformation.
  • Robot View 3 - Official leg transformation.
  • Vehicle Mode
• Powerglide's Heart: Universe Classics Powerglide has a molded heart under his chest panel (an homage to "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide"), I simply painted is neon red.
• Universe Classics Legends:
  • Wave 2: Megatron (G2 tank), Hound (G1) and Jazz (G1) Legends figures given a bit more paint.
    • Robot Modes
    • Vehicle Modes
  • Wave 4: Bumblebee (sportscar) and Brawn (Hummer H3), both G1 Series.
    • Robot Mode (stripey BB)
    • Vehicle Mode (stripey BB)
    • Unstripey BB
  • Wave 5: Warpath (tank) and Rodimus (sportscar), both G1 Series.
    • Both modes - Treads and face touched up on Warpath, spoiler painted yellow on Rodimus.
• Redwind: A loose Steelwind Classics Mini-Con dunked in wine red Rit dye for a while. February 2009.
• Mikroburst: A spare Wind Sheer (Armada) dunked in bright red dye and then painted a bit. May 2009.
• Revenge of the Fallen Legends Wave 1: Optimus Prime is more of a full repaint, but I'm keeping the wave together. Might later add Springer. June 2009.
  • Optimus Prime and Megatron, Robot Modes
  • OP and Megs, Vehicle Modes
  • Optimus Prime with Jetfire pack
  • Sideswipe and Jetfire
  • Chromed Sideswipe - After damage due to a sliding door forced me to glue things together in a way that prevented transformation, I went more whole-hog with the paint job on Sideswipe, including use of AlClad chrome.
• Revenge of the Fallen Legends Wave 2: Pretty much just touchups all around. Mudflap, The Fallen and Enforcer Ironhide are in all four pics (Grindor didn't need any work).
  • Robot Modes
  • Vehicle modes: 1, 2, 3
• Knockoff Ravage USB Drive: A little bit of joint shaving, but mostly I just used AlClad chrome on the legs and replaced the blobby paint on the eyes with a better job. Beast Mode, USB Drive Mode.
• Mini-Con Pinpoint: The Mini-Con that came with Power Core Combiner Leadfoot needed some chrome, and I added it. And painted the eyes blue. November 2010.
• Rodimus Major Chromed: I have chrome paint, and TF:Animated Rodimus needed chrome. So I gave him some, and added a few other little details to bring the toy more in line with the animation model. November 2010.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• War for Cybertron Soundwave: One of the problems of the War for Cybertron Decepticons is that their neon purple accent color is just too pale and washed out. And it was also clear that Soundwave was meant to have more purple details than they had budget for, plus the silver paint matched poorly with the gray plastic. So I touched it up and unified some of the silver bits. November 2010.
  • Vehicle Mode (I considered painting the wheels black, but ended up leaving them alone)
  • Robot Mode
• Legends of Nara Metomorphs: Scout-sized insect Transformers. Not too bad, but lacking in paint and with loose joints. I fixed the joints as best as I could, and added paint to three of them. Pics: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
• Legends Roadbuster: Mostly making the existing color scheme look better, but added some gunmetal to places that lacked it. October 2011.
• Speed Stars Mirage and Leadfoot: Non-transforming Hot Wheels scale cars released for Dark of the Moon. The undersides have relief sculptures of the robot modes, horribly underpainted. Mirage was only available at secondary retailers like ShopKo, while Leadfoot was a Target stocking stuffer exclusive. I chromed Mirage's interior and headlights, added more detail to Leadfoot, and painted around the reliefs on the undersides. November 2011.
  • Cars
  • Undersides
• CostCo Chrome Bumblebee Legends: The CostCo exclusive Battle Ops Bumblebee was later sold at TJMaxx for a low enough price I grabbed one. It came with a very boring chrome Bumblebee with no paint save for stripes on the hood and trunk, so I fixed mind. November 2011.
• Transformers Prime Legion wave 1: Of the five figures in the first wave, I felt all but one would benefit from some additional paint (the Vehicon was something of a lost cause). March 2012.
  • Cliffjumper - painted wheel hubs and exhaust pipes, plus painted some Best Lock weapons for him to use.
  • Ratchet - Some silver detailing, added Autobot symbol to the hood and painted the cardiac lines on the side panels.
  • Arcee - Silver on the wheel centers, rear view mirrors and blades.
  • Bumblebee - Lots of extra details on this one, especially on the back end.
• TF:P Cliffjumper Hammer - Added some energy effects. April 2012.
• Airachnid Touchup: This started as just adding a few bits of metallic purple to TF:Prime Airachnid and went a bit overboard. In retrospect, I should've left the paint off the shins. July 2012.
  • Robot Mode front
  • Robot Mode side
  • Head closeup
  • Vehicle Mode front
  • Vehicle Mode side
• Weaponizer Optimus Prime Touchup: Pretty extensive, actually, but meant to look minor. I repainted the light gray plastic as either silver or gunmetal, added a lot of silver detail and a little bit of enhancing in other colors here and there. July 2012.
  • Vehicle: Front and Back
  • Vehicle: Right
  • Vehicle: Left
  • Robot: Various views
  • Robot: Action Pose
• Cyberverse Flamewar: Another of those things that started with "I'll just add a few bits" and ended up adding rather more, including painting up a Best Lock figure weapon for her. Still looks about the same, so I have it here rather than in full repaints. September 2012.
  • Robot Mode
  • Action Pose
  • Vehicle Mode
• Bot Shots Cliffjumper - I decided to bring it up to the paint app standards of non-SuperBots. May 2013.
• Legends Waspinator and Chop Shop - Waspinator needed a lot of paint to bring out the wasp-butt and other details, Chop Shop benefits from a little more orange paint. September 2013.
• Rescue Bots Dinosaurs: Mostly Legends-sized figures, with one "Scout" standard sized one.
  • Heatwave Dinosaur touchup: The little Legion-sized dinosaur Rescue Bots were decent, but rather underpainted. So I fixed that. May 2014.
  • Blades Dinosaur touchup: And another one, requires a lot of layers on the white paint I added. May 2014.
  • T.Rex Optimus touchup: While waiting for the other two Legends ones, I got the "Scout" sized Optimus Prime T.rex and gave it som emore color. August 2014.
  • Boulder Dinosaur touchup: I really hate painting hazard stripes, but I also don't like Boulder toys without them, so I end up painting a lot of hazard stripes. September 2014.
  • Chase Dinosaur touchup: This needed a bit more work than most, because of the unpainted spines. September 2014.
  • Group shot, dino mode: Just the Legends size ones.
  • Group shot, robot mode
• Fat Tankor chroming: I touched up Generations Deluxe Tankor ("Fat Tankor" rather than Octone/Octane) with chrome on some bits and panel lining. August 2016.
• Chromed Skrapnel: Chromed the horns on Generations Skrapnel and painted the eyes of insect mode black. August 2014.
• Generations Reflector: And since I'd gotten a spare Skrapnel to mod, might as well paint up Reflector to look more like a camera and more like a gun in those modes, yes? August 2014.
• Generations Gears: Minor paint touchup, mostly to the face. October 2014.
• Generations Jetfire DeChromed: I really didn't like how the chrome looked on Thrilling 30 Jetfire, so I removed it and painted some of the bits black instead. November 2014.
• RiD Grimlock Warrior Fanmodes: Some weird alternate robot modes I found for Robots in Disguise (2015) Grimlock. December 2014.
• RiD Grimlock touchup: Mostly needed paint on the dino mode forelimbs. December 2014.
• Grimlock's a Truck! I built a Lego platform to let him pretend he's fooling anyone. I later unskinned a cheap RC car and made a better truck platform for him, which you can see in action assuming the file didn't get mangled.
• Manacle touchup: I don't get a lot of third party stuff, but a friend convinced me to get Manacle and Turrets to flesh out my Metroplex set. They're pretty good, but there were some gaps in the paint on Manacle, so I addressed them in February 2015. I did later get Reprolabels for the set.
• Hyperchanger Optimus Prime: The cheesy Voyager-sized Hyperchanger Optimus Prime from Robots in Disguise (2015), touched up a bit. March 2015.
• Rescue Bots Blurr: Needed a few colors added, so I obliged. March 2015.
• RiD (2015) Jazz touchup. I added various trim details, painted his lance, and also used him to demonstrate how Legion class Fixit could be used as a weapon. June 2015.
  • Vehicle mode
  • Robot mode
  • Lance as rifle
  • Fixit as melee weapon
• Touched-up and armed PRiD Legion Bumblebees: Three color variants of the Robots in Disguise (2015) Bumblebee, with some minor paint touchups and weapons modified from various sources. August 2015.
• Firebreak Mini-Con: I got a spare Tailgate to make into Peribot (see Full Repaints), so I just dyed it green as a test of my dye and then painted parts red so it could be a weapon for Victorion. October 2015.
• Hyperchanger Thunderhoof touchup: I corrected a few boundary issues and added red highlights. December 2015.
• Blizzard Strike Swelter touchup: Added detail to the head and guns. December 2015.
• Rescue Bots Growl touchup: Growl, a police dog that turns into a motorcycle, is one of the better Rescue Bots Mini-Cons, but it still benefitted from more paint. Growl being ridden. February 2016.
• Legion Clampdown touchup: Added a bunch of stuff to RiD (2015) Clampdown, but most notably the claw and the woodgrain on the side panels. February 2016.
• Legion Drift touchup: Drift from RiD (2015) with some detail work. February 2017.
• Legion RiD Ratchet touchup: Nice Strongarm-based mold, but like most of the Ratchet toys in RiD (2015) it was sorely lacking in paint. June 2016.
• Titans Return Galvatron touchup: Like many, I didn't care for how the mask on Voyager Titans Return Galvatron restricted head motion, but I noticed that the details were already there on the faceplate, so I just painted them in purple and left the mask in his torso. July 2016.
• Titans Return Scourge touchup: Added some light blue and silver here and there, rather than the more extreme modifications others did. July 2016.
• Battlepack Strongarm: The Battlepack figures were close to the old "Scout" class, bigger than Legends/Legion but not quite Warrior. Strongarm really needed paint, even by the standards of RiD (2015).
  • Vehicle Mode
  • Robot Mode
• Titans Return Brawn touchup: A little to the Titan Master, mostly added gunmetal to the vehicle. September 2016.
• Titans Return Apeface touchup: Added more color to his "transtector" but didn't change the Titan Master itself. September 2016.
• Thunderclash Reprolabels: Got a Battle Core Optimus Prime from Combiner Wars at Ross, put on the Reprolabels set that make it into Thunderclash, but also painted a few bits where the labels really didn't work properly. October 2016.
• RiD (2015) Windblade significant touchup: I added a lot of details, painted the sword and filed out the inside of the scabbard to let the sword go in without scraping the paint off. October 2016.
  • Robot mode front
  • Robot mode side
  • With sword drawn
• Warrior class Thunderhoof with Reprolabels: Got the set for the Warrior class figure, which was pretty good for robot mode, but required some paint touchups in vehicle mode. December 2016.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Titans Return Hot Rod: Mainly just added silver to the wheel hubs and pipes. December 2016.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• RiD Stormshot Touchup: I really liked the toy, and the factory paint job was actually pretty good...but I knew I could make it better. January 2017.
• Legion Springload touchup: Nearly a full repaint after I was done with things...and I'd actually gone into the project thinking I just needed to tweak a few details. HA. January 2016.
• Functionist Prime: Voyager Titans Return Optimus Prime with no head, instead using a slightly repainted tail section as a Functionist inspired head (something from the backstory of the IDW continuity).
• Generations Insecticons: Thrilling Thirty, Combiner Wars, and Titans Return. Each got one Insecticon, so the gimmicks are different for each. I modified them all in some way. March 2017. A few months later, I added Reprolabels to Kickback and added Molotow chrome to the gun.
• Ptero vehicle mods: I got a lot of Pteros on clearance because the Titan Master figure colors lent themselves well to reuse as other characters. But I decided to do some tinkering with one of the leftover vehicles. August 2017.
  • Dyed red parts: I was able to get the red-orange parts to dye a deeper red. Later attempts to use yellow dye to get one to go orange were unsuccessful.
  • Chromed gray parts: After dyeing the red parts, I used a Molotow chrome marker to change the gray parts. I also added some small Reprolabel Autobot symbols.
• Cyber Battalion Prowl: Pretty good toy, but (shockingly) needed more paint. I also added large Reprolabel faction symbols. September 2017.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode with package photo for comparison.
• Metalhawk Touchup: Before he got a different head in Power of the Primes, Metalhawk got to be a set-exclusive in Titans Return. All I really did was add gold paint to the backs of the arms so that the antennae would be gold in head mode. September 2017.
• PotP Grimlock Toes: Another minimal "add some gold" touchup, helping bring out the toes of PotP Grimlock with a little paint. February 2018.
• Titans Return Rosanna: Reprolabels makes a set to turn Rewind into Rosanna, one of the few good things to come out of Kissplay. Having had bad luck with the head stickers on Dispensor, though, I dyed the head pinkish-red and painted on details rather than using those stickers. June 2018.
  • Robot Mode
  • Altmodes
• Titans Return Tidal Wave: Another Reprolabels project. Normally I don't bother taking pictures if all I did was apply the labels, since you can always go to their site and see the labels applied, usually straighter than I do. But there's no picture on the site of just the carrier mode (they have a "starship" mode that's sort of modified), and I also took a picture of the bare robot. June 2018.
  • Bare robot mode without stickers at all.
  • Labeled carrier mode
• Quintus Prime touchup: I just painted purple around the Prime sigil to help with contrast. August 2018.
• Tiny Turbo Changer Scorn: I like the mold, but the paint job was pretty sad, and the base color wasn't red enough to match other versions of the character, so I dyed and painted a spare. October 2018.
• Lionizer with painted mane: The molded mane details on Battle Master Lionizer don't really look like a mane, mostly because there's no paint and the sides are lost in black plastic. So I matched the dark gray paint used elsewhere on the toy as best as I could, and painted just the mane. November 2018.
• Firedrive Dye Mishap: The goal was to use Rit's "Frost Gray" dye to make the Battle Master version of Firedrive look more like the G1 toy, which had gray limbs rather than white. Unfortunately, it appears that the gray is a mix of colors with different dye particle sizes, and the plastic was better at taking up the green particles than the rest. December 2018.
• BotBots Touchups (Series 1): Some BotBots just needed a little extra color here or there, others I felt needed more extensive work (especially when the toy departed significantly from the character art and I preferred the character art design). And some I just messed with Because. Not a touchup, but doesn't really go anywhere else, I made a display rack for my BotBots. Updated Feb 2019 with the rack all filled up. With 9 Sugar Shocks and 6 Jock Squad, I evened things out a bit by putting Nrjeez on the Jock Squad tier.
  • Twerple Burple: Just needed the stripes completed in a few places, a red permanent marker did the trick. December 2018.
  • Professor Wellread: I really disliked the "nervous nerd" look of the toy and preferred the character art. I kept the mostly-black hair, just painting enough white to fit the pages in book mode, and I continued the black onto the diary-style strap in book mode. Total repaint of the face, touched up the pants, and added white paint to the molded page details on the arms and legs. December 2018.
  • Fun Guy: I used the same marker as on Twerple Burple to add red to the fruiting bodies attached to the arms, but it's not really something that makes a big enough difference to take a picture. Maybe later.
  • Autumnal Slobberrock: In progress, seeing how well the plastic takes dye. Going for a more brownish rock, then will paint fall colors on the mossy bits. Ended up WAY too dark, not sure if I'll try to do anything with it.
  • S.A. Cheez: On top of bringing out some of the hidden molded detail, I decided to move the face up to the top, where there was clearly a spot to do one. December 2018.
  • Shredderjack: Another quick red Sharpie touchup. January 2019.
  • Choco Dawg: So, I tried dyeing a S'up Dawg a little darker, since it looked kinda undercooked. Of course, the dye that other plastics refused to take up got slurped in by this toy quite intensely, overshooting my desired shade by a LOT. I let it sit around for a while, before deciding to make the ketchup into icing and tweak the chest detail a little with more snow white paint. Now it's an ice cream bar with a corndog theme, kinda like Choco Tacos have a taco theme. January 2019.
• Cyberverse Soundwave: Not only did the factory paint job omit a lot of colors, it got several applications wrong (like dark gray on the shoulder fronts). So I fixed mine. I almost didn't paint the fists, but ended up doing so on the grounds that I didn't really need to give him any borrowed guns. March 2019.
• Knockoff Micromaster Hot Rod: I got this as part of a random lot of "3 for $3" knockoff Micromasters/Minicons from Wish in 2017, and intended to paint it up, but it took a while to get around to doing so. July 2019.
• Siege Ratchet: For some reason, they decided to make a lot of the red parts of the design out of light concrete-colored plastic, and the wheels as well. I dismantled it as much as possible (the pelvis was lightly glued together) and dyed the pelvis and fists. The upper arms and thighs were held in firmly by rivets...not pins, these had been hammered to expand at the tips. So I had to paint those, plus a bit of the waist. I popped the wheels out and tried dyeing them black, but they only made it to dark greenish gray. I decided that trying longer heat would risk warping them, and left it at gray. November 2019.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Siege Sideways: I got an accessory-less spare Siege Bluestreak in a trade, and decided that if Barricade can get a Siege version in this mold, why not Revenge of the Fallen Sideways? I dyed the fists black before painting their exteriors gloss black, painted the helmet black and used Tamiya clear red for the windows and eyes. December 2019.
• Siege Rung: I added eyebrows, cleaned up the sloppy borders on the goggles, painted the forearms and part of the altmode the closest gray I could get to the original, and redid the metallic blue in a brighter hue using Color Shift Aqua Flash. February 2020.
• Netflix Magnus: The figure looked unbalanced with the shoulder pylons mostly unpainted (just the side and back of one pylon) and the missile launchers being the same color as the pylons. So I did some quick paint addition. June 2020.
• Cyberverse Scout Wheeljack: They always mold his Lemmy-stache, but almost never paint it. This toy was particularly bad about it, so I repainted the entire face. Then I noticed that the wings were painted blue on the package renders, so added that as well. I considered painting the windshield to look more like the show's hot pink, but decided to stop at the face and wings. June 2020.
• Earthrise Astro Squad: They went to the trouble of adding bits to each mold to make them plausible as solo vehicles, and then didn't paint them so that they just sort of faded into the background. I added black edging to Fuzer's extra little fins, and blue to Blast Master's cockpit. August 2020.
• Earthrise Smokescreen with painted hubs: Just ran a Molotow chrome marker over the hubs and then neatened up the borders. December 2020.
• Netflix Soundwave touchup: Added a few colors, made the yellow bits a gold as close as I could get to the other gold. "Sticker" details on the shoulders and kneecaps done in Tamiya clear paints except for the red on the shoulders. January 2021.
• Earthrise Trailbreaker touchup: I decided to paint the windows, but instead of metallic blue I painted everything silver (mistake one: the first paint I picked left chunky bits when it dried) and then go over the window parts with Tamiya clear blue (mistake two: it dried with bubbles in it). While I was in there, I also painted the shoulder gun silver and added some more silver to the rear hubs. It lookse worse in person than in the pics, but I can live with it. (Also includes the accessory pack radar dish, and an alternate gun storage method I found but that also eliminates ground clearance.) January 2021.
  • Vehicle front and left
  • Vehicle rear and right
  • Robot
• Kingdom Vertebreak: Disappointed by the seeming lack of color on the toy (turns out that you just need REALLY bright light to see the differences, I got a spare to paint. While it looks like this is an extensive repaint, I just used a quick minis technique used for painting skeletons, but went heavier on the brown ink (well, a Citadel Contrast thing) to make it look more like a fossil. Under normal lighting, the stock colors of Vertebreak look like just monochrome super dark brown. February 2021.
  • Beast mode next to stock colors
  • Robot mode next to stock colors
• Earthrise Ratchet: I decided to paint the blank white windows with "water medium," and as long as I was doing that, paint the wheels, and then the front end, and then I made some crosses for the shoulders...mission creep project. March 2021.
• R.E.D. Arcee: The lack of paint on the arm blades and the wrong plastic color on the energy effects were major aesthetic failings on this toy, so I did what I could to address them while sticking to the same general look of the paint scheme on the figure itself. June 2021.
• Sparkless Bot: The Netflix line "zombie" redeco of Barricade is okay in car mode, but there was too much clean gray in bot mode. I fixed that, via intentionally using Citadel contrast medium wrong, plus some terra cotta paint drybrushing and a few other details. October 2021.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Studio Series #83 Soundwave Touchup: Abused contrast medium to fix up the "Sunbow White" effect on the figure, plus added a few more bits of crimson, and painted over the inexplicable brown on the rifle. Bonus: since I just found Core Class Ravage, have a meme. February 2022.
• Selects DK-2 Guard Touchup: This black redeco of Earthrise Ironhide was just a little too black for my tastes. I added silver trim around the windows, silver hubcaps, repainted the tires dark gray, and used water effect paint to make the headlight lenses blue. I also tried thickening up the tabs that keep the side panels on the boots, with limited success. April 2022.
• DotM Laserbeak Touchup: The "tiny pink Bumblebee" disguise that Laserbeak adopted briefly in Dark of the Moon got a Studio Series Core Class toy before the obvious Bumblebee, but suffers from the usual lack of paints plus having two different blacks. Oddly, it also has very obvious L2 and R2 on the outer faces of the upper arms, instead of hiding those marks somewhere else. So I added some paint details, changed the windows to dark blue, and filed down the upper arms so that I could put tiny Micromaster-scale Decepticon symbols on them. November 2022.
• Tsundere Battletrap: While reviewing Studio Series #99 Battletrap, I noticed that he had molded lightpiping eyes, but they'd been painted over in gunmetal and multi-eye slits had been painted on his cheeks instead (which, to be fair, had the slits molded as well). So I painted the "real" eyes metallic colorflash red, and while I was looking closely at the face I also touched up the rather sloppy gunmetal paint applications around the rest of the face and helmet. Anyway, with the eyes painted, the red slits look more like the kind of "embarrassed/stammering person" cheek details seen in manga visual language, including on "tsundere" characters who cover up their attraction with bluster. It's not like Battletrap likes you, b-baka. July 2023.
• Battle Changer Mirage: All I did for this one was remove paint. They just had gunmetal paint over the entire bank of side windows, I scraped off the paint on the border trim bits. A few seconds of work for a significant improvement. August 2023.
• Gamer Edition Barricade: Technically there's a small physical mod here too, I carved a notch in the gun so it would sit more stably between the halves of the forearm. But this was mostly just covering all the existing purple other than the Decepticon symbol in Purple Flash (purple to blue) color shift paint, adding more Purple Flash elsewhere, and then putting neon purple on the wheels. August 2023.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Red-Eyed Nemesis Leo Prime: Frankly, the face of the Leo Prime/Nemesis Leo Prime lion is...sad. And kinda dopey. So I tried painting the eyes metallic red with Evil Shadows and eyebrows. Not sure it's any better, but at least it's differently bad now. September 2023.
• EarthSpark Tacticon Arcee vehicle mode: While I didn't consider the robot mode to be worth the hassle of painting over all that black, I liked the molding of vehicle mode and just thought it needed more paint. Still had to paint over some black, of course. The pearl white looks better under normal room lighting than under my photo lights, annoyingly. Taillights are Tamiya clear red over pearl. September 2023.
• RotB Weaponizer Wheeljack with some dye: The toy needs a LOT more paint, as you can see, but the worst problem was that the wheels were the same brown as the body. And while I was failing to dye them black (getting more of a dark chocolate) I also put the barrel of the included almost-no-paint Rhinox Beast Battle Master in the black dye. Given how snug the front end is in vehicle mode, I'm reluctant to paint any of the robot torso, although I might do the glasses at some point. October 2023.
• Legacy Strongarm (RiD): Finding that I had a paint that matched the handful of glow effects on this toy, I decided to add more. The box render showed a few more glowy bits than the toy, but I went beyond just that, and also redid the eyes. I considered continuing the stripe on the rear fenders, but adding a white stripe on darker plastic is a hassle. January 2024.
• Legacy Energon Megatron: I added blue and red details to some of the unpainted dark gray plastic parts, a little more to the torso, and painted the undersides of the wings to match the top sides (rather than trying to match the original toy's look for the wings). I painted most of the tank weapon to more or less match Armada Megatron's colors, and the metallic green blade seen in the Energon cartoon (not the glowing red one from the toy). February 2024.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode and packaging renders for comparison.
• Legacy Tasmania Kid: Between "save on the paint budget" effects and some weird choices with the paint they did apply, the beast mode of this 2024 toy is a bit messed up in terms of colors. I did a little bit to address this (including a few paint apps that would never be done on an official toy, like blending the gray up into the torso), and then painted the claws to match the teeth. March 2024.
  • Beast and Robot Modes: Minimal changes in robot mode.
  • Battle Master Mode: A silly fan mode, held by the sort of "hybrid beast mode" I've been keeping my Studio Series Optimus Primal in.
• Gamer Edition Sideswipe: Mostly just needed more glow effects, but I decided to paint the gun to look more like it was a transformed arm. June 2024.
  • Robot mode in regular and UV light
  • Vehicle mode in regular and UV light
• Legacy Evolution Beachcomber: Finally got this a year late, via eBay. Most of the work I did involved painting the gloss black gun in matte black and dull silver, so it would look more credible in its role as the front brushguard. I also cut an appropriately-sized Autobot symbol in half and added it to the hood. July 2024.
  • Robot mode with and without Paradise Parakeet.
  • Vehicle mode.
• Gamer Edition Decepticon Soldier: Like Barricade, I painted over the existing metallic pale purple with Purple Flash, and added some neon purple to panel lines. Okay, a LOT of neon purple. And more Purple Flash. I may have gone a little overboard. (No UV pictures, turns out the gray plastic glows enough under UV to cancel out the effect of the neon paint glowing). I did use some light orange and white paint to add more of a faux glow effect ("glaux" effect?) to the t-visor. September 2024.
  • Vehicle mode front flank
  • Vehicle mode rear flank
  • Robot mode with both arms
  • Robot mode with gun arm
• Legacy Galvatron: A redeco of Legacy Energon Megatron above, I discovered I had a purple paint that was very close to the factory color, so I went ahead and improved on the looks of this one too. October 2024.
• Gamer Edition Optimus Prime: More neon! Mostly neon red, a little neon blue (the eyes and the Matrix) although it doesn't glow as well. Also some platinum paint to touch up the dark silver parts. I don't plan to do anything to the vehicle mode. October 2024.
  • With Gun-Arm: Both normal and UV lighting.
  • Matrix Revealed: Light our darkest hour, and in UV!
  • With Axe: Painted the energy blades a blend from red-orange to yellow, with yellow on the runic bits. This took much longer than the main figure. I also added some black wash to the gray parts.

---

Back to Dave's Kitbashes Page.