Legsies

A rohbut stands on its legs

Assembling Optimus started with the legs, the left shin to be more exact. As I've only lived through the G1/G2 properly, those box-protected wheels were a bit odd to me. Still, it looked plausible enough for me.

The thigh was almost ridiculously easy to set up and attach, as there were no fancy details or submodules. In the upper part of the leg, those two fan-like bits made me slightly cautious: had I prebent them at proper angles or was I going to have to fight them later on?

Right leg

The next identical but mirrored component was pretty quickly done. With these second copies the biggest problem in my mind has been that, even as they've been faster to do becaues I've known what goes where in which order and I have spotted some optimizations in my build process, it has carried a risk of overconfidence. That's why I've actively slowed myself down, to work on these a bit more calmly.

Project III/21

Freightliner FL86

Just behind the previous project the gift series also contained the leader of the Autobots. I almost used the word iconic here, but caught myself in time. According to the illustration, this was a bit more modern design than G1.

The difficulty-o-meter in the back cover was a more of a rare sight in MEM sets. This one was supposed to be just about the most difficult set they made. Sadly not all these had a scale, so I couldn't compare my own thoughts about the challenge provided.

As usual, an eight-stage guide and two sheetfuls of pieces. Nothing looked depressingly difficult at a first glance, so the surprises provided by the round pieces were going to shock me as they came.

Finished: Project II/21

Bumblebee

Of the usual Autobots, I had this idea that Bumblebee was just about the second-best known, right after Optimus. He used to have a bit more modern head at some point in the eighties, and returned to the original look after the Underbase storyline when Ratchet rebuilt him. Only because the medbot just preferred the old one. Why would you ask the guy himself what he wanted...

Partial assemblage: arms

No more armlessness

Who knows why the arms were the last things to build to this rohbut. The hand, forearm and the elbow were straightforwards builds and quickly connected.

These remaining pieces were quickly smashed into Bumblebee's upper arms and then shoulders. This was a joyfully nice wrap-up for the build. The other cat was also interested and came to oversee my work - and I guessed, to pressure me to feed them for the evening.

Partial assemblage: lower torso

Legs and hips

Half a hood of a VW Beetle wasn't the simplest thing to build, but on a general level it didn't end up half bad. The curiously shaped curves raised the challenge a bit. Nicely the instructions didn't suggest the fender/wing needed to be bent into the final shape from the start, but it got tweaked in three stages whenever another thing was installed first. These feet were much more impressive to view from the front than the ankle side.

The most special thing about these knee modules was that they were attached to the rest of the legs with only three studs per side. At least the thigh module could've, in my uneducated opinion, fit four studs. Nonetheless they got tight enough with just three.

The full legs consisted of four submodules. On the right side the connection between the shin and the foot ended up wobblier than I wanted, even though I felt I had squeezed the modules together well, before the tightening of the connectors. Maybe I had been a bit too cautious in my fear of breaking things.

The process of the left leg went just like the first one, and according to custom, a bit faster. That didn't have any visible difference to the looks of the results, which was positive especially for the first assembled parts.

When both legs were done, the first one was clearly less sturdy-feeling and a bit more flimsy. I trusted that when they were both attached to the baseplate and the torsto, the problem would cease to be one.

Craftily Bumblebee's legs were first attached to the baseplate and only then to the hip module. Personally, I would've appreciated more fumbling space when connecting the legs to the hip, but maybe this approach prevented some breakage.

There was a funny effect with the legs: Bumblebee seemed like he was hovering, even though the attachment studs were tightly on the baseplate. As we all knew, Transformers could fly, so a bit of a hover wasn't out of character. Again this post contains a few sessionfuls of building and such.

Partial assemblage: upper torso

The head and torso

Building Bumblebee started from the hat-holder department. As a kid I had somehow liked Goldbug's look more than Bumblebee's, but as these were matters of taste, there wasn't much to argue here. Again I had some difficulties preparing the curved surfaces without a handy item to roll against.

His shoulders were very straightforward and his head fell onto the shoulders like it was set up that way. At this point the instructions hadn't told me to do anything in too complicated a way - yet.

Next I installed those half-arcs to the upper torso. Getting those in the proper shape was a bit complicated, because they were not to be circular in form, but something a bit less predictable. I managed, as the image below showed. The shoulder modules were to follow, they also settled in neatly after the arcs were done.

Bumblebee's torso was still missing his backpack and the chest, or the VW Beetle's passenger compartment. The side window frames were craftily protruding parts. Again the curved parts didn't end up perfect, which I noticed best afterwards, but I couldn't mangle them anymore after the installation because I'd just broken them.

Getting the chest into the rest of the torso made me a bit nervous, because of the tightness of space available. My concern was proven unnecessary, it settled in just wonderfully and the back part sealed the subassembly like a puzzle piece. Nice progress here, only two-three sessions with all the random interruptions.

Project II/21

VW Type 1

Following the traditions over the years, Santa added more buildables to my work queue. This time it was a Metal Earth Models' Transformers series Bumblebee, not the golden one but a normal steel grey. I believed that this was maybe the only model where a non-steel colour would've fit perfectly.

Finished: Project I/21

Ministatue

Lord Megatron was a lot of fun to paint. Based on a quick search there's a bunch of these unpainted -series figures, some of them interesting such as Starscream, Optimus Prime, and Soundwave from the second wave. Where'd I put them all? Well, I've thrown old builds away occasionally, away from collecting dust and eating space.

Photos

The usual normal photos taken around the subj.. eh, leader, still in suboptimal backgrounds and lighting conditions. That was something that was to be fixed sooner rather than later.

Silly pics

Of course I had to take some less serious photos with all my three Megatrons. I mean, I had used MP-36 as my model for the painting!

Painting Megatron

Painting by the numbers

The default surface

I started by painting with the basic grey, because most of his body (or frame, him being a rohbut?) was going to be that. This was nicely paintable in one go, because there were enough !grey parts to hold him on while painting around.

The dark greys

Megatron's arms, the Fusion Cannon and most of his legs were to be painted dark grey. I took this stage as my next one, as my process seemed to be "the bottom-most layer first", not totally unexpectedly. With the feet themselves I made a bit of mess, and had to fix them later.

Blackness

Originally, as stated above, I was going to do the black parts with German Grey instead, but the contrast difference between that and the dark grey was so small that after the first parts I redid those with flat black instead. It proved to be the best choice, silly me had thought I knew better. In addition to both gun business ends, Megatron's pants, the scope's lense I also painted his mouth and robotic unibrow. Before these I had done his face with a lighter grey, to give it a proper difference from the rest of the body and the head.

Getting to the details

To complement the greyscale, Megatron had a few colourful spots on his abdomen: some blue, red and yellow bits. His eyes were also red and his upper arms had red bands, not to forget the red button on his Fusion Cannon. For some stupid reason I had some doubts about the upper arm reds in this scale, but as they worked fantastically in MP-36, I knew them to work here too.

Technically he was now done, except for the decal on his chest. I just wasn't ready to call him (or myself) done at this point.

More!

No, that wasn't enough. I wanted to improve the details according to my own madnes. As the first extra step I painted the eye-bit of the Fusion Cannon / scope's rear bit's edge to be more rubbery (VMA Tire Black) and redid the lens part with black. Megatron's gun mode's gun barrel's insides got a black layer and a follow-up with drybrushed Gunmetal.

Final stage

Of course I couldn't leave this just on normal paints, because they looked a bit too flat to me. The greys I washed with the grey wash and the yellow/red/blue bits I coated with the satin varnish to make them stand out a bit differently from the rest of the body. That gloss varnish I only applied to the scope's lens.

A decal

Obviously the more or less undisputed leader of the Decepticons had to have a roundel in the middle of their chest. So that's what I did: I applied one violet decal on Megatron's chest. This time I had no complaints about the decal work, for a change.