The Energon Pub

[jimsloth]

I was frustrated with that big red brick behind his head, so I painted that whole part bright yellow, and cut it down to size:


Then I swaped out the blue fins for yellow ones from a Hotshot:


I also swaped out the silver headlights for yellow ones:

[TM doomtron]

wow that does look better. cool. hope you dont mind but ive been working on one basically just using every good idea that ive found. youres, someone had a arm modification idea that worked well. one thing that ive added my own was adding energon infernos wheels. unfortunately you need two sets of wheels as only two of them are compatiable per inferno. luckily i did. it added gerth to him in vehicle mode which if you look at his human seats that is one big car to begin with. youre idea really does something for his bot mode pretty cool.

[jimsloth]

can I get a pic of those other rims on him?

I'm also in the process of adding Clocker's arm pipes, but am trying to figure out a way that they could flip around so the points of them look right in both modes (you know, so the longest pipe is closest to his thum in robot mode, and the highest of the ground in alt mode). I don't want to just remove them and swap which goes on which arm during transformation. Basically that means cutting the pipe pieces in half and adding some sort of nail head/swivel hinge.

[TM doomtron]

sure no problem. have to be later got to head to work soon. thats what i was trying to remember clockers pipes. saw it somewhere. that looks way sweet. you guys know something if prime neo g1 prime has a voyager release like weve seen recently. that means most of cybertrons, energon,and armadas deluxe sized cars will fit in close scale with neog1 prime. time to build an army! yea

[jimsloth]

yea, I've seen other people use clocker's pipes, but I have yet to see ones that look right in both modes (that is without just swaping R and L between pics)

[Ramrider]

To be honest, I don't think the Clocker pipes look very good on him - they seem far too big really. And the blasters/exhausts are emulated on Hot Shot/Excillion anyway on the insides of the doors.

Nice job, Jim.
I'm partway through repainting a blue Hot Shot from before I knew about the red, but if I manage to find one, I think I'll just get hold of a red and do the relevant parts swap/repainting.

[jimsloth]

... And the blasters/exhausts are emulated on Hot Shot/Excillion anyway on the insides of the doors...

yea, I know they tried to show those on the insides of the doors, but half the look I want is them in car mode, and also, in bot mode they do the thing I'm trying to avoid, going from shortest on top to longest on bottom. If I ever accomplish what I'm trying to do with the pipes I may grind those out of the inside of the doors so I won't have double.

I also saw someone put the Clocker pipes on his legs so they look like the G1 toy legs. Thats cool and acceptable, but then I still need to add them to the outside of the door, and would then probubly be scratchbuilding them shorter and thinner.

[TM doomtron]

i decided to go with gold for the his wings. i wanted to add infernos wheels because it seemed more rodimus than hotrod.

[jimsloth]

I'm redoing Hotrods chest now to look more G1. First I sanded all the detailing down nice and smooth, even the circles at the top, cut off the vents, and glued on some strips of styrene:


I then trimmed down/filed and sanded the styrene. Heres a pic of where the vents will be when done, compared to the way it looks straight from the package:


And here's a pic of my flame stencil laying in place. I colored the styrene with a blue sharpy and the flames with a highlighter just so I could see the color contrast better.

[Ramrider]

Nice... very nice. Is the flame stencil a guide for painting on the flames, or are you actually going to attach it to the chest... 'cause I can't help thinking that might look as good...

[jimsloth]

Nice... very nice. Is the flame stencil a guide for painting on the flames, or are you actually going to attach it to the chest... 'cause I can't help thinking that might look as good...

At first I was thinking, def. paint, but the more I think about it, I'm consittering doing a sticker. I'm just not sure about Fusion paint over other color Fusion, and I don't want to attempt to just pray my masking job is perfect enough that I could do one color right next to another without getting either overlap or a small blue line inbetween.

I would hand paint it if I a) trusted the paint to cover well b) I could match the color well c) I thought it would be durrable enough considering the chest is the bottom of the car mode.

Plus, sticker would let me print the autobot logo right on it. I've never used custom decals before, but for this one, I may have to make an exeption. Down side is I already used fusion yellow on the back piece as shown above. I'd want it to match that. Dilemma.

[Tramp]

As far as painting goes, your best bet is to paint the entire chest yellow (or gold, whatever color the flames are) since it is the lighter color, then apply the stencil of the flames over that, covering where the flames will be, and leaving the rest exposed, and paint the darker color (orange, red, whatever) over the lighter color.

[shadowstitch]

Wow! I never considered buying the original Excellion, because I didn't like the color scheme... I only bought the repaint because I liked the Hot Rod homage...but now I might have to get one just to swap the wings/headlights. Thanks!

And your figure's looking good! Keep it up!

[jimsloth]

Yea, I might not have consittered buying Cybertron Hotshot if it weren't for the fact that I realized his telescoping thighs would be perfect for another kitbash I was doing. I hate buying a bot just for a couple parts.

[jimsloth]

So I'm working on this guy again. I've done a few mods right now, but only have pics of his new head (without paint yet). The hardest part was hollowing out the inside of the brim so its now flush with the rest of the helmet.


Then I cut off the antennas, added some styrene to even out the crest and rounded out the back of the head and the ear covers. You can't really see it yet but I also carved the little detail into the bottom of the ears too. Should show up with paint. The one on the left is unaltered just for comparison.