Probably a lot of kitbashers and repainters have noticed that G2 Megatron would look terrific without his horrible Ninja Turtles styled deco. A simple silver and black paint app with some detailing on the chest changes the look pretty thoroughly. I decided to keep the shorts and treads the deep green, since black would actually cause them to stand out more (awkward for the shorts) and grey or silver would cause them not to stand out enough.
Here he is with a couple other repaints.
For my Alts, I've set the rules that the collection may include no straight repaints and that only two members may share the same basic sculpt. Those two should be as differentiated as possible. The presence of Smokescreen and Red Alert rules out (Silver)Streak, but Prowl with the leg mod allows Camshaft with the door mod. And somehow, I always thought of Prowl and Bluestreak as buddies, so I decorated Camshaft to bear some resemblance to Diaclone Bluestreak.
Furthermore, who the heck is Skids? He's barely visible in G1. I don't really like the Scion sculpt as Ironhide, because it doesn't give the impression of something that can take a beating. It looks like a miniature ambulance, though, which makes it perfect for Ratchet, as several others have noticed.
I leave his backpack very slightly different from the default transformation because I think he looks better from above or behind with the red cross showing. I'm planning on adding a sticker reading "Paramedic" across the Scion label and adding a siren once I find a good one. I'm not sure whether I want to paint the horns, since although they're clearly grey in the original, the red matches the stripes rather well, and I'll be using a different head from Prowl.
Here's a group shot of most of my own customizations so far... I only started this past month.
Trailbreaker uses filler inside Swindle's head so that I could leave the body unmodded. I wanted to transform Meister into something G1 Jazz without using the reprolabels, which look terrific but which leave him no longer like something you'd see on the road and also suggest he's a Porsche when he isn't. Ironhide appears in another thread. It seems I'm the only one who really prefers Ironhide with the windshield as his chest like in G1. Since I like my Alts unique, it also helps to make him look quite different from Trailbreaker.
Finally, the leftovers. The guy on the left was a custom I bought for cheap on Ebay who originally had a Windcharger head. I whittled his neck a little and added Nem Prime's head, which looks nastier. He's called Slipstream. For Swindle, I removed the Windcharger's visor and added red eyes, which actually resembles G1 Swindle's face a bit more (he had no visor) and looks decidedly more threatening, I think.
Those are my little attempts at customization so far!
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
/t-DSC08207.jpg)
