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This figure had terrible looking guns that bore no resemblance to anything in the cartoon and his hip and thigh joints were too floppy to support his meagre 5g of bodyweight. He came with a nice sword but as Optimus didn't use it after he upgraded to this body I didn't paint it. The more work I did on this toy the more details I noticed could be improved. I removed the stomach spikes and covered up the area with dark plates but couldn't think of a way to add the other, brighter plates without hindering the transformation, so that detail is still missing but it's still more accurate than yours!

When I started building his gun I had a choice between very screen accurate but possibly looking homemade or something really cool that looked factory made but totally inaccurate. I settled for something in the middle.

Fixes:

- Scratch-built gatling gun (using one of his guns, parts from Megatron's gun, a missile, part of a Gundam leg, part of a Neo Shifter used to make Unicron, cotton bud shafts, a small cog and ice cream tub cuttings),
- Scratch-built cannon for left arm (using part of the original gun and a ring from a superglue tube). The forearm is held together with magnets. The left hand can be stored inside, the cannon can be stored in the chest cavity. No, it's not difficult to retrieve!
- Exhaust pipes trimmed and moved to a more screen-accurate place that allows them to point upwards whether or not the wings are deployed. Even though they're made of soft rubber it took a really long time to cut through them,
- Spikes removed from abdomen and replaced with more accurate smooth grey plates,
- Spikes removed from truck's bumper and replaced with more accurate three pronged horizontal... er... thingy,
- Bumpers can fold further into backpack so as not to hinder waist twist now that they take up more space,
- Elbows trimmed to allow slightly more bend,
- Rhinestones added to mimic lights on front of cab, top of cab and waist.





























More pictures here.

I'm impressed. Judging from your past work, I was already expecting something nice, but this really set the bar for customized BH "Optimii" that much higher.

And that Gatling gun...

Epic! Great paint job and the smokestacks and gatling gun are perfectly done, they really put him over the top

I have just been asked some questions about this custom, so I thought I'd post the answers in case anyone else is interested:

a)What type of paint did you use?

I probably did a base coat of Humbrol enamel silver. It's very hard wearing and sticks to anything so I use it as a primer.

For the visible metallic greys I use Games Workshop paints. For the rest I use any brand of water-based paint that comes in a tube. It's as thick as toothpaste so it can be watered down to whatever consistency you want. Then it's all varnished with a floor varnish from a DIY shop.

b)What did you use to cover the chest spikes and how did you attach it?

I always use cuttings from plastic boxes that food came in. Yogurt, ice cream, whatever. Then it's glued on with superglue.

c)How did you spilt the ionic pulse launchers(those guns the BH Optimus came with)

With a saw. I have a jeweller's hack saw.

d) How did you customize the face and did you use rhinestones for his eyes?

The only thing I did to the head/face was paint it. I didn't use rhinestones for the eyes, only a tiny dot of paint.