Hello all, I'm new here but thought I would share my first transformer customization project.
As you have probably gathered from the title I chose not to start small
I painted a lot of miniatures in my youth but nothing this big before so being considerably older (no wiser) I decided to treat myself to a new airbrush and learn how to use it over the course of this project.
I had seen various other Fort Maxes online after a brief googling found this fine effort that I used as a guide.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/attachments/radicons-customs/46281d1221081349-custom-fortress-maximus-fm-chest-21.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/211327-custom-fortress-maximus.html&h=540&w=720&sz=101&tbnid=SwcVc1SQLlklvM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&zoom=1&usg=__pmX5181pRizVuzIiOmAzt7f_1e8=&docid=yam0BcuVUqjlkM&sa=X&ei=ZJxgUeDHBI6rPMrhgaAK&ved=0CDcQ9QEwAQ&dur=248I started with a cybertron metroplex as a base, added some chest cannons, sourced some other guns to bulk him out a bit. I wanted to preserve the light-piping on the orginal head so I sculpted on the detail and used cutdown parts from an energon superion to make the sticky-out bits(if you know the technical term please let me know!)
Next came the difficult part, the model was dissassembled, undercoated then painted in sections. As I was learning as I went this means that one bottom section of leg is a different grey than the other...will either fix it later or learn to live with it!
Painting process was:
clean section, undercoat, (airbrush)preshade with black, (airbrush) base colour, ink wash, drybrush highlights, details then metallics (base coat, inkwash, drybush)
the only difference as painting the metallics on the face where I hand-painted the highlights rather than drybrushing.
Hopefully the attachements will appear below. I would love to hear what you think of my first modelling project in 17 years.

