The Energon Pub

Movierverse Viewfinder: The Time for Listening has Ended

Repaint and heavy retool of Movie Payload to make Viewfinder, the Hand of the Reflectors. Never liked the intrusive claw gimmick (nor how photographers tried to hide it), so I removed it.

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Little is known about the Decepticon agent known as "Viewfinder", since it is very rare to meet someone who has seen him and survived. Some say he used to work for Cryotek before the uprising, lending his massive frame as hired muscle to the infamous criminal mastermind. Regardless, what is known is that he seems to act as a hitman for the Decepticons, eliminating assets targeted by his superiors.

However, what sets him apart from being just another brute in the Decepticon army is the precision with which he carries out his assignments. His targets' corpses are found either isolated, out in the open, or otherwise at their most vulnerable. When engaging, he strikes with the precision of a scalpel and the ferocity of an Allicon. Many suspect that the efficiency of his attacks prove the involvement of the so-called "Reflector Corps.", an elite spy network coordinating his actions.

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I love the concept, as well as the choice of colors and the wordings!

If I may make a suggestion, try to go for a few more coats of thinned paint for a smoother surface. Another technique is to apply a coat of thinner (the same kind you use to thin the paint) over the final coat of paint, in order to keep the paint in its liquid state a little longer, thus allowing it to settle down and even out.

I'd also recommend using an airbrush, but those might not be to your tastes.

Anyways, nice job!

SKYWARPED_128 wrote:I love the concept, as well as the choice of colors and the wordings!

If I may make a suggestion, try to go for a few more coats of thinned paint for a smoother surface. Another technique is to apply a coat of thinner (the same kind you use to thin the paint) over the final coat of paint, in order to keep the paint in its liquid state a little longer, thus allowing it to settle down and even out.

I'd also recommend using an airbrush, but those might not be to your tastes.

Anyways, nice job!

Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, that purple ended up having some streaking problems. I love that color but I can't find it through any cheaper/more available paint suppliers. Plus the angles I shot at tended to emphasize the glare and the surface more than the colors themselves.

I'm always hesitant about thinner because i usually cover a lot of areas with one color consistency, so I'm worried I'll run out and mix a bad ratio the second time.

Anyway, thanks for the support. It's nice to hear some feedback.

A nice custom like this deserves some kudos!

Actually, there's really no exact ratio to thinning paint. Even with the same color of the same brand, different batches can produce varying consistencies. The best way is to try to get it to the consistency of skim milk. That means, when you swirl the paint in a jar or cup, it leaves a thin translucent film that runs back down the wall of the jar.

I usually just eye it when I thin paints for airbrushing. In general, a 1:1 ratio is a good place to start.

SKYWARPED_128 wrote:A nice custom like this deserves some kudos!

Actually, there's really no exact ratio to thinning paint. Even with the same color of the same brand, different batches can produce varying consistencies. The best way is to try to get it to the consistency of skim milk. That means, when you swirl the paint in a jar or cup, it leaves a thin translucent film that runs back down the wall of the jar.

I usually just eye it when I thin paints for airbrushing. In general, a 1:1 ratio is a good place to start.

Basically, what I'm worried the most about is it being too thin and seeping into the cracks. I tend to work from the inside out (gears to panels), so the last thing I want is the top layer running and screwing up the sublayers. With light colors, I try to buy paint with a little less flow so the colors don't run, at the cost of some streak lines.

Plus I hand paint because I'm not precise enough to airbrush panels and then detail the gaps.

Shuttershock wrote:Basically, what I'm worried the most about is it being too thin and seeping into the cracks. I tend to work from the inside out (gears to panels), so the last thing I want is the top layer running and screwing up the sublayers. With light colors, I try to buy paint with a little less flow so the colors don't run, at the cost of some streak lines.

Well, paint for hand-painting don't need to be as thin as paint used for airbrushing. It can be just a little thicker than skim milk, but thinner than out of the jar. I've actually tried applying paint using a q-tip, and surprisingly, I can put on a good coat of thinned paint without running. The end result was still a little streaky only because I used Tamiya paints, which is formulated exclusively for airbrushing.

BTW, you can avoid paints running into cracks and seams by disassembling the toy. I know it sounds like more work, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Shuttershock wrote:Plus I hand paint because I'm not precise enough to airbrush panels and then detail the gaps.

You mean pre-shading to get that "quilt-cover" look? Nothing short of a machine will be able to do such a thing freehand. The technique most use is by roughly panel-lining the the panel lines using either an airbrush or even a marker, and then mist-coating the surface until the panel lines are barely visible.

There's also post-shading, where you actually use a lighter shade of the base coat and fill in the panels with a 0.2mm super-fine airbrush, but I'm admittedly not experience or brave enough to try that out yet. Seems like more trouble than pre-shading.

In general, usage of distance, paint viscosity and air pressure, as well as masking and using stencils, are part and parcel of airbrushing and rattle cans, due to the nature of sprayed paint.