At the same time I was working on my custom Transformers Animated Windblade, I was also working on this pair of custom TFA figures. Each of these toys is an homage to the misunderstood Decepticon: Transformers Animated Wasp.

In the show, Wasp originally starts off with a similarly constructed chassis or body to the familiar Bumblebee. Unfortunately during his time trying to become part of the Autobot Elite Guard, Wasp is incorrectly labelled a traitor and is sent to prison. He doesn’t do to well in the brink, quickly escapes, and then isn’t quite the same as he once was. Wasp gains a weird voice pattern, odd mannerisms, and promises to avenge himself against Bumblebee, whom he felt has wronged him. He makes his way to Earth to locate the Autobot, and chaos ensues. It is the Wasp seen during these episodes that my custom toys homage. They also reference the Wasp that appears during this transition period, before he is transformed into something more sinister…

The impetus for this pair of custom figures was a local Transformers fan, Nickbot. He’ll be leaving the state of Arizona very soon, and I wanted to make this custom for him for his send off. At the same time, I figured if I was going to make one, why not make two so I could have a Wasp of my own? So “planzzz” were made and I got started on sculpting some heads.

I began by disassembling a loose deluxe-class Elite Guard Bumblebee that I had (which has a ton of parts and pins by the way), and then began sanding down his base head. I knew that I wanted to give him his large mandible-esque chin and to match the control artwork I had as close as possible. So I began to add Apoxie Sculpt to build up the shapes of his head.

I would work on this head in between working on Windblade. I’d mold quite a bit of extra material on to the head, knowing that I’d sand it way down to get the shapes I wanted. I’d then let it cure while sanding the other custom. It took a lot of sanding to get the chin to look as good as it did. My customizing desk was covered in dust and plastic particles. I’d use differing grit levels of sanding sticks to get as smooth of a surface as possible on each contour.

My initial intention was to try to keep the light piping from the original Bumblebee eyes as well. Unfortunately I realized that those eyes would have been too small, so I decided to go ahead and sculpt in some bug eyes in those cavities. But that meant since I already had the chin done, the eyes couldn’t be as big as I wanted.

At least I could add a pretty menacing brow above the eyes, and I really like that feature. I also added to his chin/cheeks so that the mandible would be a bit more distinct. Finally, I tweaked the “antenna” shape on his head and sanded it all down. Test fitting it on the loose Bumblebee I had looked good, and I found that the new head did transform fine in vehicle mode.

With one head done after about 2 weeks of on-and-off work, I started on #2. I knew that while #1 was good, I wanted more buggy eyes, a longer/deeper chin, and for his cheeks to suck in a bit. So I went about creating the second one a bit differently.

I began by really sanding down Bumblebee’s original chin. I wanted a straight and vertical flat mouth. I also wanted to completely remove BB’s horns and crest. Unfortunately I went a bit too far and began to sand through the plastic until there were gaps or holes. Whoops. “I’ll fix it in post…”

I began by sculpting bulging bug eyes. I initially thought they were big enough, but after I made the new chin and brow, I realized they were too small. At this point I had also realized that the new brow I built was made from material that hadn’t been mixed properly and therefore never cured. I had to tear off the soft material and start again, adding another day and a half of work.

Finally I got to a point where I was happy with the second head. The chin had the shape I wanted, his mouth area was wider, his eyes were “buggier”, and his head crest was more pronounced. Overall both heads looked great, and they looked like Wasp.

I detoured briefly and decided to carve out their hands so they would have claw-ish hands instead of Bumblebee’s square fingers. Using sanding sticks and a hobby knife, I trimmed down the hands until I was happy with them.

Then it was off to start painting. I started with the heads and the door panels, and everything looked fine at first. It seemed as though the Model Master Acryl Gloss Green I chose would work.

Sadly, that didn’t end up being the case, as it took forever to paint the base green. Both the black plastic of Elite Guard Bumblebee and the bright yellow of regular Bumblebee ended up being a challenge. Very quickly I got sick of painting green…

Fast forward a couple of days, and a couple of diversions to work on Windblade instead, and I got almost all of the parts for the pair of Wasps completed. The underlying blacks and lime greens were easy. I decided to use a flat black for the windows, and gloss black for detail parts.

I ended up hand painting the head details since I couldn’t mask off the indented areas or eyes. Even though they are hand-painted in the end, they still look pretty good.

They both got reassembled into car mode so I could do the detail hood stripe, I added a few more details, a quick clear coat to even out the dark green, and voila: I had two finished Transformers Animated Wasps.

In the end, the overall effort isn’t as impressive, or notable, as something like Windblade; but they are still a pretty cool achievement. The heads are nicely sculpted and unique. The paint jobs looks pretty spiffy, and both Nick and I now have deluxe-class Wasps for our Transfomers Animated collections.

Oh, my next attempt with this mold will most likely be a certain blue female bot whose character I seem to have an affinity for…

So May 2014 was a fairly depressing month for me for a variety of reasons. It was a bit difficult to want to keep pushing forward, and one of my key ways of dealing with it all was to dive deep into my projects at work and at home. That focus on work let me distract myself with the tasks at hand, and then the time would just pass. As such, I jumped headfirst into trying to get this custom Transformer completed by the end of May.

This custom sculpted and painted figure is Transformers Animated Windblade. The character of Windblade is the first fan-created character that Hasbro has ever developed. She is the star of both her own comic book mini-series from IDW, as well as the inspiration for an upcoming retail Transformers Generations toy. She is also rare in that she’s one of the few female Transformers in the current TF universe, which brings up some interesting discussion since the current TF’s don’t traditionally identify with any gender.

With my custom, I’ve brought the Windblade character into a different universe: Transformers Animated. TFA is one of my favorite versions of the Transformers brand. The re-imagined characters, the homages to Generation 1, the great cartoon, and the excellent toys were some of the best ever produced. Unfortunately, the franchise ended several years ago and no new fiction or figures have been produced since then. That however doesn’t mean that I couldn’t keep it alive by making my own customs…

Once after I had read issue #1 of Windblade’s mini-series, I instantly got the idea to bring her character into the TFA universe with a custom. Sarah Stone’s artwork screamed to get an Animated version. I also realized I most likely needed to hurry to try to get the concept completed before both someone else thought of it and while Windblade was in the spotlight.

My take on the TFA version of Windblade is that she was once a car based Transformer like almost all of her fellow Autobots. However, once she learned that her friends Jetfire and Jetstorm had been granted the ability to fly, she too also looked into getting skyward. After working with the same team that developed Optimus Prime’s Wingblade upgrade, Windblade was granted the ability to soar above the metal plains of Cybertron.

The core figure for my custom is the TFA deluxe Arcee mold. It’s a superbly designed toy that was only officially ever produced three times (with one of those releases being very, very rare). I happen to own all those releases, but I also have previously customized this mold twice before for two earlier customs: Chromia and Moonracer.

I knew that I would have to do quite a bit of sculpting and modification to get her to work. Not only did she have a unique headdress, but she also needed wings because her alternate mode was a jet. My original plan was to scratch build the wings with styrene sheets, but as it happened I had a loose deluxe-class Cybertronian Megatron who I could steal the wings from. They also matched the hooked wing style of the original character.

It took a good two weeks to carve out the spaces for the wings and rebuild the platforms with apoxie-sculpt. I would saw and sand down the original plastic, test fit the wings, and then mold the updated wing pods. I’d give a day for the molding compound to cure, and then I would sand, test, and repeat.

I also worked on her headdress using both styrene and apoxie-sculpt. This also took quite a while to get it to a state where I was happy. It took multiple attempts and updates to get the pieces to look good. The headdress took even longer than the wings to get right.

The biggest problem is that I was getting impatient while I had to wait for the sculpted pieces to dry. I desperately wanted to be able to get some paint on the figure. I was quite pleased once I got to that point of the project and started using my airbrush again.

Painting was a bit more difficult this time around, as I tried to match Sarah Stone’s art as much as possible when coming up with the paint deco. Her upper body and lower legs were repainted several times to get a look that I liked and that I felt hit the right notes to be Windblade. I also had to come up with a paint scheme for her alternate jet mode that matched as best possible. Overall I think the colors and layout work well to convey that this is really TFA Windblade.

The hardest part was definitely getting the eye details correct. I knew I couldn’t hand paint detail that small, so I ended up airbrushing some blank stickers and cutting out the little red curls for her face. After a few attempts I trimmed the shapes to my liking and attached them. I added tiny bits of other red detail to get the stickers to blend into the rest of her face.

Finally after some detail touch-ups she was done. I took some photos and then uploaded them to Twitter. And then my custom project went mini-viral…

Very quickly the photos were retweeted and favorited multiple times. My phone’s was continuously buzzing from notifications and my email inbox somewhat exploded. The first photo I posted reached 94 retweets and 108 favorites within 24 hours. The other photos had similar high share counts. Transformers fans from around the world began to share photos of my custom amongst themselves, even with those with names I couldn’t say or spell. In addition, not only did other famous TF creators and artists begin to share it (like TFA art director Derrick J Wyatt), but the official Transformers Collectors Club even retweeted it for another boost in attention the following day.

My custom TFA Windblade is now complete. Robot mode. pic.twitter.com/4jxvw2YqT8

— Andrew Green (@FloatingCat) May 30, 2014

My concept and planning paid off. I hit while the iron was hot, and it felt good that I still knew what the Transformers fandom liked. The admiration and praise I received for my hard work gave me a boost. That boost reminded me that the fans liked my work, and it reminded me that my talent was highly regarded.

And so by the end of May, I had ended on a high note. I pushed through the rough spots by focusing on my work, and I ended the month with a bit of cheer. Not only did I feel better about myself, but I had a great custom figure for my collection, and a sense of pride within myself as Summer finally started.

A custom-made army

After quite a hiatus, I finally got back into creating custom figures for my Transformers Animated collection. So what project did I choose? To create an army of voyager class Thundercrackers of course.

In my personal queue of customizing projects there has always been this idea near the top of my list: making a version of the voyager class Transformers Animated Thundercracker. In fact, this project has been in the queue since the very beginning.

You see, this particular custom makes up for a toy that we were promised back in 2009 that never saw retail shelves. At BotCon 2009 we were shown the final toys from the Transformers Animated (TFA) line. Of those, a batch of them were eventually made available for purchase, and the other half never saw the light of day.

Voyager class Thundercracker was one of the toys that was never made available. And with Thundercracker being one part of trio of core seekers, the missing figure was a definite hole is many collections.

Now mind you, the concept behind this custom and toy isn’t very exciting. It’s the exact same toy used for Starscream, Skywarp, and Sunstorm. It was only a redeco in Thundercracker colors. No fancy additions, no remolding. In fact the color scheme of the toy isn’t all that spectacular either. It’s pretty plain and somewhat boring. To the casual observer, it isn’t really all that big of a deal.

But to TFA collectors, it is considered by many to be a holy grail. An unobtainable figure.

A single copy of the figure, probably a painted test shot, is the only one to have made it out into the world. Photos of a complete boxed copy surfaced in marketing materials, but never in person. I even asked a collector who did a video review online of the sole toy what he had sold him for. I got a reply that he sold it for “multiple digits”. So some version of this guy was out there, and we weren’t ever going to ever have him.

So very early on after getting my airbrush, I procured a voyager class Skywarp that could be re-purposed into a Thundercracker. That sealed figure unfortunately sat untouched until mid-2013 when I dug into this project.

My plan was to match the official toy photos as much as possible. No improvements in design or paintwork. No additional details. I wanted him to look as if he came directly from the factory. Even though the toy colors don’t match the show’s artwork, I still aimed for toy accuracy.

I also figured, somewhat naively, that while I was doing one; it might not be too terrible to do more. And I knew my local AZ collector friends would jump at the chance to own a version of this toy, even if not official. I assumed that since his deco wasn’t too detailed that the mass-production wouldn’t be all that bad. So I put the call out to 4 locals, “provide the base figure and I’d paint him up.” And shortly thereafter, I had 5 voyager class base seekers: my Skywarp and 4 Starscreams.

As I was disassembling my Skywarp, the part count began to grow. Piece by piece I unscrewed panels and popped off parts. Then I got to things like the toy’s hidden arm cannon gimmicks and saw the multiple tiny parts that made up the mechanism. I took photo after photo, trying to discern and hope that I could put these crazy mechanisms back together.

So after about 3 hours of constant work one night, the 5 figures turned into several hundred parts, pins, and screws. My extended computer desk was covered in pretty much nothing but pieces of plastic. This was the largest figure I had customized to this point, and I here I was doing it 5 times over. “Hoo boy”, this might be more than I bargained for.

The next steps followed my standard process: wash each part in soap and water, dry them, and then separate into different bowls depending on the base paint color needed. Then it was time to begin painting.

I planned on using as base paint colors directly out of the bottle as often as I could. The more that I’d have to mix, the higher likelihood that I’d run out of the custom color midway through the project. And mismatched parts at the end would be devastating to the final product.

I started with Model Master Acryl Ford/GM Engine Blue on some mini wings as a test. This base blue was as close as I thought I’d get to the plastic color needed, but it ended up being a bit too dark and a bit too metallic. I unfortunately had already purchased 3 bottles as while I ramping up for the production. Oh well.

Fortunately, my second tests with Model Master Acryl Cobalt Blue led to better results. The only drawback is that the base paint is very flat, almost to a point where it’s chalky. Another experiment shortly after this led me to try glossing the paint, which worked surprisingly well. Spraying a bit of Future Floor Polish (yes floor polish), added just enough sheen and glow to make the paint pop. Future is like a thin, clear acrylic paint. In fact, the test parts looked really, really close to the blue plastic I was aiming for. With that test successful, I began painting several hundred parts blue.

Over the course of maybe 2 weeks of on-and-off nightly painting, the majority of the project’s base coats had been completed.

As it turns out, the custom mixed colors weren’t all that bad to create. A violet/pink purple for the wing stripes, and sky blue for their hands and biceps. Simple stuff considering the scope of the project.

Unfortunately the masking of each hip wing (20 overall with double sides), and the main canopy piece took a long time. In fact, the main canopy had to be painted in several stages. Each time masking off 90% of the part just to get a particular paint app perfect. The intakes on these canopies were also kinda crazy as you can see with the mask I ended up making to get them just right. And then the heads were “lots of fun” to paint too…

By this point in the project, I had worked through two entire weekends just painting. Each Saturday and Sunday, from sunrise to well past midnight I painted. Bowl after bowl of parts were sprayed, inspected, touched up, and glossed. Multiple bottles of Cobalt Blue ended up empty. The grind of this project was starting to hit, and in all honestly I was very much looking forward to being done with it.

I was also noticing that I had painted over some of the metal pins that I couldn’t remove during the dis-assembly process. So then I made the decision to hand paint silver on each pin and hinge to make it truly look factory fresh. I even painted some of the springs. Those touches added that little bit of extra authenticity that was needed.

I had also begun to put parts together, such as the legs, while other parts dried. I’d paint one part, and then assemble another. I was putting the army together from the feet up. From his toes to his waist things were going fine. Unfortunately trouble arose when I got to those hidden cannon mechanisms.

As it turns out, there is no rhyme or reason to how each of the hinge pieces go together. I didn’t know which ones were supposed to be in front, which went in the back, which arm they were supposed to be in, and the like. And after I had started putting them together, I found that due to clearance and rubbing issues, certain copies of the arm wouldn’t close all the way.

So after much hair pulling while trying to solve the problem with brute force; I decided to test each arm (all 10 of them with 8 parts a piece), take them apart if they had issues, sand down the hinges, repaint the hinges, and then reassemble each arm. This step alone was an entire evening. All this work for a feature that would rarely, if ever, be seen.

But finally nearing midnight on September 14, a little over a month after I started, I had assembled a fully complete army of Transformers Animated Thundercrackers.

The next day I did a bit of additional customizing work (described later in this entry) and then decided to take photos of the crew. I set up multiple group shots and took all the detailed photos I usually do at the end of a project.

With that done I decided to put away my gear. I cleaned up my customizing table, put away my tools, condensed all my paint bottles, did a full chemical cleaning of my airbrush, and put everything else away.

Then with everything stowed away I looked back at the reference photos on my computer one last time and noticed something… I missed one paint application on each of them.

I grumbled.

To solve this the next day I hand-painted that last bit, and then I had the full army completed to my satisfaction.

The final output is actually kind of amazing. They really do look like the unreleased toy in my honest opinion. The blue is pretty much spot-on to the original photos, as are all the other colors. Each paint detail is there, and every pin and screw is visibly metallic.

The tiny bit of additional work I mentioned above was some paintwork on a set of custom heads I purchased from TinMan.A.H on TFW2005. I wanted to make my seekers stand out a bit from the retail releases, and so I painted this alternate set of resin heads to better match the characters’ profiles. Starscream matches his body’s color and has an Allspark fragment stuck in his head, Skywarp looks fearful with giant eyes, Thundercracker is smirking to match his ego, and Sunstorm has his G1-seeker helmet that he received in an episode of the show. I like the bit of flourish these add to my figures.

The only thing that is missing from these guys are their gold Decepticon emblems. Unfortunately I don’t know where I could procure or make these, and I wasn’t about to try to spray something that intricate. In all honestly, I barely notice that they are missing but I assume we’ll come across a solution in the future and apply them then.

So to sum up; looking at the entire project, I’m estimating that I used about $50 of materials and spent about 100+ hours creating these guys. Again, like the Copperhead project, the workload for this far outweighed my original estimate. I don’t mind that I did the full set, but I really ought to think a bit more about a project before I tackle something like this again.

In the end, I’m still tremendously proud of the achievement.

I’m most certainly going to be taking a sizable break before my next project, which will most likely be a single, smaller figure.

As stated earlier, all 5 are already spoken for.

I will close by saying that along with Thundercracker being in my original customizing queue, so was the other TFA seeker that we never saw a toy for. I’m sure I’ll get to her eventually, considering that I have another Skywarp and a pre-cast head at the ready. I’m sure when I reach that point, I’ll be more comfortable altering the figure to give her a proper toy for my collection…

After about a 12 month hiatus where I was not customizing Transformers, I recently completed 2 repaints that homage pre-Transformers toys called Diaclone.

Diaclone was a Japanese toyline from Takara that predates the American Transformers line. Most of the toys from that line came over unchanged when Transformers came along in 1984, but there were also variants that were available in Japan that never made it over. Also in Diaclone many of the toys would have multiple color variants that we never saw on our shores.

Blue Bluestreak

One such variant was a blue Datsun “Fairlady Z” toy. The original mold was used for multiple TF characters like Prowl, Bluestreak, and later Smokescreen. In addition to bringing over the toys, Hasbro also often re-used the Japanese art on the US packaging too. Again this worked most of the time… except when Bluestreak came along.

Technically Bluestreak is named as such because he is a talker, annoyingly so, and therefore would “talk to you till you were blue”. As it turns out the toy we got was silver and grey. However, the original art was based on the blue version of the toy. So there on your American box for your silver Bluestreak was a blue Bluestreak. Bluestreak should be blue right? The art and instructions show that he is. That kind of inaccuracy can drive a kid nuts… for 30 years…

So fast forward today and I’ve now got my own Blue Bluestreak that is part of my updated Transformers Classics collection. He’s a simple repaint of an existing toy and homages the classic Blue Bluestreak to a tee. The design and idea are not unique and have been done before, but I’m still glad I made him. It feels good to finally have a real version of this toy, even in an updated form.

It’s hard to see in the photos, but his metallic blue paint is really striking. It took quite a bit of work, and multiple layers to get that effect. In person he looks amazing.

Marlboor

Marlboor, or Marlboro Wheeljack, is another Diaclone oddity. The original Autobot cars were based on real racing cars of the time. In fact most of their decos matched existing cars, including their advertising/sponsors. In most cases, Takara would change a letter or two in a sponsor’s name and then call it good. Gitanes = Citanes, Martini = Martinii, and in Marlboor’s case: Marlboro = Marlboor.

Furthermore Marlboor, as he has come to be known, is also styled after the cigarette brand as well with the distinct red stripe. Throw in a uniquely styled head, and you have a 30-year-old figure that many collectors would wish to have.

So as it happens, in 2012 the UK TF convention Auto Assembly produced a kitbash kit that included a new head and stickers so customizers could turn their Wheeljacks in Marlboor. I had a fellow AZ TF fan pick up a set for me, which I promptly sat on for a year.

Again, fast forward to today and I have my own Classics Marlboor. I utilized existing customs from other folks and made my own amalgam of what I’d want my Marlboor to be. I’m happy with how his red paint turned out, and his overall deco is quite nice. However, I do feel that he does look better in race car mode.

Am I a fan of how he’s related to cigarettes? Not in the slightest, but the deco is still cool.

More Diaclone?

After completing these two, I’ve now got the itch to fill in the other gaps of Diaclone cars we never saw stateside. Red Mirage, Black Tracks, Black Ironhide, Red Sunstreaker, etc. If I do go on that path, it’s gonna be an expensive and lengthy process to complete those figures. But oh would they look so nice…