Detailed FoC Grimlock

Sorry for not posting in the last few days... I had some organizing going on in my computer room and actually haven't really been online much. Anyway, last weekend I decided to touch up my FoC Grimlock transformer (or is it considered Generations Grimlock? I don't know...) I ended up painting a lot more on it than I expected to, but I'm really happy with the results. I think that it really added some depth to the figure (if you get what that means) and it really makes him stick out on the shelf. Check out the pictures and video below to see for yourself:

 

HMM Gojulas WIP #4

Since the weather was actually mildly nice yesterday, I took the opportunity to go out and primer and base coat three runners of parts - K1 and both Q plates. Which was a good thing, because a pretty decent sized ice storm hit last night and now we have over an inch of solid ice... everywhere. Doesn't look like I'll be going out to paint again anytime in the next few days. I've already finished detailing and top coating these, all of the pieces to the "inner frame" of the head, but I'm only about half done with the other parts I have base coated. These parts were actually a lot of fun to paint, especially the one in the bottom right corner - I expected it to be a paint with how small some of the details are, but it turned out pretty nicely in my opinion and it was quite rewarding to see how good it looks after everything. Here's a couple close up pictures of these parts:

HMM Gojulas WIP #3

I actually got a decent amount of work done on the Gojulas yesterday and this morning, and I'm hoping to get even more done throughout the day today. These are all the pieces from the I plate, and next up is K1, all of the "inner frame" parts to the Gojulas' head.

HMM Gojulas WIP #2

I know, I know, I already broke my promise about the "daily update" thing.... looks like I was being a bit overly optimistic about myself then. Oh well though, I'll get these posted as often as I'm able too.

Work has been kind of sporadic over the past few days because of the super-low temperatures around here. I've gotten out to paint occasionally, but it just isn't the most fun activity in the world whenever it's only 4 degrees in your garage. I got my space heater out of storage though and that's helped marginally.

Anyway, here are the pieces (and close ups of them) that I've gotten completed since the last update. They're what remained of the S plates. Onto I!

 

Custom Painted Hasbro Dark Spiner

This is my custom painted Hasbro Dark Spiner zoid - technically the first Zoid I ever painted. It was about a year prior to me getting my first HMM when I decided to paint this guy, and I must say that it's one of my proudest accomplishments. I was actually very unexperience with even using an airbrush at the time, and the shading on this kit rivals what I can do to this day.

It's much simpler than an HMM of course, but there was still a wealth of detail to hand paint, and lots of great armor parts to airbrush. I honestly can't remember what insprired me to do this paint scheme, but I like it a lot more than the original to be honest.

It's unfortunatly missing a few pieces - the small vents on the forearm on each side - but those were gone whenever I first picked up the kit to paint. Looking back, the plastic on this kit (being an older hasbro model) is actually a bit unusual. It's very soft, almost to the point where it feel's malleable. That's not a bad thing however - it actually makes it feel sturdier after assembly than other kits.

Below is a full photo gallery of the kit:

 

Daily HMM Gojulas WIP #1

I figured I'd post some work-in-progress images on here, and talk about the kit some. I've actually gotten a decent amount (well, like 20%) of the kit done, and I'm extremely happy with how it's going. I hope to make these WIP posts daily and keep you all updated, so I'll try my best to keep on top of that.

Today I finished up half of the S plates, mainly consisting of the spines on his back, and parts for the thrusters that go on his back. The spine pieces actually took a TON of work to complete, as each two-sided piece was a 30+ minute job detailing alone. These pictures are of them all after top coat.

 

Next up is the other half of the S plates, with some reasonably less interesting parts, but it should still be a enjoyable to paint anyway. I hope to get those painted tomorrow, and detailed at the beginning of next week. If you'd like to see the progress of my Gojulas up to this point, check out the WIP video from my Youtube channel below:

 



Digi-Fusion Shoutmon Project

I recently purchased the entire first wave of the new Digimon action figure line, called Digi-Fusions. They're a pretty fun line to play around with, as all of their parts can be swapped around with the other figures to make new creations, or digivolutions from the show, such as Shoutmon X4 and MetalGreymon. The most fun aspect of the line though is that Digimon figures are back in stores! As a big fan of Digimon, and even bigger fan of the toys, I've been waiting to see this ever since their last release in 2004. Here's hoping the line does well!

Anyways, as fun as the toys were, I still had a few issues with the production of some parts of them. For instance, many of the pieces are nearly hollow, and make for a very light weight and cheap looking figure. Some of these hollow parts are neccesary for the "fusion" ability, but most are not. Therefore, I decided to "customize" some of the figures and try to make them just a bit better.

I am starting off with Shoutmon, just to try things out and see if I even have the skills to do this. I've repainted action figures like Transformers before, but I've yet to venture out into full-blown modifications, even as simple as these may be.

I used a combination of three types of putty/clay, being the Milliput Epoxy Putty, and Mr. Hobby Dissolving Putty. I began though with some simple Air-Dry Clay bought from Wal-Mart. I used this to fill the most of the holes on the figure itself. After this dried, I went over the top of it with a bit of dissolving putty just to seal it in there, and finally placed the epoxy putty over that.

The epoxy putty dries very hard and can be sanded down to be smooth. Any little knicks or imperfections in the sanded epoxy putty can then be fixed with just a bit more of the dissolving putty.

Although it kind of looks like a mess in the picture, the arm piece here is actually extremely smooth, just as the pre-molded plastic is. Putting a bit of primer and paint on this will (hopefully) make it look like it was originally produced this way.

I have about half of the pieces to the figure completed now, and I've been working at it for about a week. Most of the time is spent applying putty, waiting for it to dry, sanding, and repeating the process until you have a nice clean piece. I've also only been working on it sparingly in my spare time so it's going a bit slower than it could because of that as well.

And incase anyone's wondering, I'm using 400 grit sandpaper to start out the sanding, and moving to 600 grit to finish it up and smooth everything out nicely. I hope to get more work on this guy done soon, but honestly I have no clue when I'll get him completed (especially the painting part). Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later though.

 

HMM Berserk Fuhrer (Fury) Inner Frame

Here's the painted inner frame of my HMM Berserk Fury. It's  really solid inner frame, and can get in lots of poses as you can see from the pictures below. I really applaud Koto for making a full inner frame on this guy, as I think it's a feature that really puts it in the upper tier of the entire HMM line. Personally I wish that all, or at least a lot more, of the HMMs had full inner frames that could be displayed on their own.

I still havent completed the armor on it (had a bit of a mishap that means whenever I do complete it, it will be a "battle damaged custom) but I'm happy displaying it like this, just as I would have been happy displaying my Liger Zero as just the inner frame. Check out the full gallery of pictures below!