The Energon Pub

Easily one of the things I dislike most about Titans Return are how empty the guns look to accomodate Titan Masters sitting in them for some silly reason. Hot Rod's bothered me like crazy and I almost thre the guns aside until decided to look for some something to fill in at least the majority of the gap. Had to find something I had two of that I didn't mind using for this purpose. Much testing of junker figure parts until the front leg thigh pieces of a KO USB Ravage caught my eye. So I unscrewed them from the poor lil Ravvy and crammed them into the gaps and painted them silver to match the rest of the gun I had already painted silver and... well I think it looks pretty cool. Certainly an improvement over how they looked before. They're not glued in, just squeezed in tight so can be removed if I ever find a cooler alternative (I see Shapeways has an untested design but I'm a bit poor and unable to risk such costs on things that are untested)




Still need to clean up that Marvel Hot Rod paint job and decide how many, if any of the Toyhax stickers I will use on it I already got months ago. Mainly bought to have a more contrasted flame/chest seperattion. Can't apply stickers til I know I'm done painting.

Don't get the Shapeways filler even if it gets tested. I think instead of making a filler they should just out-and-out make new guns based on the Photon Lasers of the G1 toy (along with a 5mm port that tabs into the engine block, or better yet a new chestplate with a hideable engine block). If you're up for that level of scratchbuilding, you could do that yourself and set the toy's stock guns aside for when you want to use the gimmick.

Regarding your Marvel/rejected beta color scheme paintjob, I question the silver thighs for two reasons. One is that the comics sometimes colored his legs orange, the other is that the bluish-grayish off-white probably comes from the beta design where his crotch was actually the top of his windshield.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Don't get the Shapeways filler even if it gets tested. I think instead of making a filler they should just out-and-out make new guns based on the Photon Lasers of the G1 toy (along with a 5mm port that tabs into the engine block, or better yet a new chestplate with a hideable engine block). If you're up for that level of scratchbuilding, you could do that yourself and set the toy's stock guns aside for when you want to use the gimmick.

I like the guns as they are now. I'd never want to use the titan master seat gimmick of the guns cos I think it looks ridiculous and has ruined many a potentially good weapon for the Titan figures.

Regarding your Marvel/rejected beta color scheme paintjob, I question the silver thighs for two reasons. One is that the comics sometimes colored his legs orange, the other is that the bluish-grayish off-white probably comes from the beta design where his crotch was actually the top of his windshield.

jeez you're picky. Once they'd settled on colour schemes (early comic appearances sometimes have differences) his thighs were consistently silver (same colour as his arm exhaust guns) and I liked that a lot so I did that.

Marvel UK G1


G2


IDW Regeneration One sequel to the Marvel US run


And even if it were an error, Takara themselves have just done an official redeco of Masterpiece Hot Rod using the colourscheme of AKOM's actual error coloured Hot Rod.

They did? That's even stupider than the King Grimlock recolor of MP-08 (and all the 1989 Pretenders that did the same stupid thing of changing black to blue even though the blue-for-black in the comics was just due to the limits of printing at the time).

I would like to point out that in that panel with Arcee, Hot Rod's supposedly-silver legs, his definitely-silver blasters, Arcee's silver parts, and Arcee's white parts are all about the same color.
On that note, and reiterating up what I said about it being likely inspired by the beta design, my point is that some sort of pale whitish-blue or bluish-white (since, logically, with his crotch forming the base of the windshield the rest would be formed by his thighs) would be more apt than silver.

Also, perhaps instead of regular burgundy you should use the unholy ichor flowing in the veins of the worthless hellspawn who decided to demonically taint the adserver with Adblock-ducking audio ads.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:They did? That's even stupider than the King Grimlock recolor of MP-08 (and all the 1989 Pretenders that did the same stupid thing of changing black to blue even though the blue-for-black in the comics was just due to the limits of printing at the time).

Have you not been looking at the news thing on the right? The Takara Targetmaster Hot Rod with the AKOM colors has appeared in there a couple times over the past few days.
I actually like the King Grimlock redeco and it's the one I've been looking for to get cheap enough for me to afford it. Lovely bold silver on what were the flat grey parts too. It's not technically a character accurate colour sceheme but it certainly ticks my nostalgia box even moreso than the original deco and would brighten up my home a bit more.

I would like to point out that in that panel with Arcee, Hot Rod's supposedly-silver legs, his definitely-silver blasters, Arcee's silver parts, and Arcee's white parts are all about the same color.

Hot Rod's silver parts definitely have a bolder blue and shaded differently enough. And as for Arcee's 'white' parts they've done that to make her look more metallic and shinier...as a robot should be. Plain white is a very dull colour to shade and shine without doing so.

On that note, and reiterating up what I said about it being likely inspired by the beta design, my point is that some sort of pale whitish-blue or bluish-white (since, logically, with his crotch forming the base of the windshield the rest would be formed by his thighs) would be more apt than silver.

IF for some reason it had anything to do with the supposed windshield crotch (which we don't actually know as we are not the Marvel colorists) then it doesn't even matter cos they clearly render Hot Rod's legs to look metallic and silver works just fine for that without having to go all the way with some kinda cell-shaded attempt to copy the comic colouring explicitly. I painted them silver to match the guns on the toy and IDW's more advanced modern colouring capabilities rendered them a shiny grey or SILVER too. At the end of the day this is my Titans Return Hot Rod I've been tweaking to be the the way I want it cos it's mine and nobody elses. And this topic wasn't even about the paint scheme. I just knew that some people like myself hated the big Titan Master sized gaps in the TM guns and I had a cheap easy way to filling in the parts for Hot Rod's to make them, in my opinion, less stupid-looking and I thought I would share the idea with people who might like to do the same or similar. If I'd know it would cause such a fuss I wouldn't have bothered.

Also, perhaps instead of regular burgundy you should use the unholy ichor flowing in the veins of the worthless hellspawn who decided to demonically taint the adserver with Adblock-ducking audio ads.

Lost me there. I don't know what you're talking about as I haven't used Adblock in a while since it got crappy.

You're right, I'm sorry, I'll back off on the paintjob (I admit to being biased against the Marvel color schemes for the TFTM-original cast because I think that since they -except UM- were designed for the cartoon the final cartoon colors should take priority with them)

Your filler mod looks very good, the fillers practically look like original equipment. Very well done.

I still use Adblock since it takes care of most things, but the past few days I've had some incidents of auto-refreshing ads and a couple of audio-playing ads getting past it.