The Energon Pub

Hey guys, I know there are a few of you guys who are members of both this board and also TFW2005.com. I just wanted to let those of you who may not hop over to TFW2005.com, that today they honored the TF customs community as well as the artists. On their frontpage, several artists and their work were honored, some of which are also members of this board too (I was one and I am both honored and humbled). I just thought I'd pass this along to you guys here and to encourage you guys to hop over to http://www.tfw2005.com and check it out! (*note: TFW2005 is having some server issues, but they are actively working on trying to fix them. If you do hop over to there and you get a "500" error, please just be patient.


Here is the direct link to their article as well : http://www.tfw2005.com/spotlight-custom-transformers-at-tfw2005.htm

Man, those customs are pretty darn impressive. They're so flawlessly painted that it's easy to understand why they got into the spotlight. I'm a little disappointed to see that they're almost all Alternators though. Doesn't anyone do any serious kitbashing anymore? Don't get me wrong, most of the Alt customs I've seen are beautiful pieces of work and deserve to be seen by a large audience. However, it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to do the majority of Alt customs out there.

Please forgive me Alternators customizers! I don't mean to be offensive or insult your work; what you do still involves a lot of skill and talent. I don't know if I could do a better job or not at painting.

i agree with dev on that, u've seen one repaint you've seen them all lol *joke* dont kill me!

who knows maybe they will send us the overflow of there fund raising

I thought that was pretty cool of redline to do that! Definately got the KB forum there a little more exposure. They should do it every month.

Devastator wrote:Man, those customs are pretty darn impressive. They're so flawlessly painted that it's easy to understand why they got into the spotlight. I'm a little disappointed to see that they're almost all Alternators though. Doesn't anyone do any serious kitbashing anymore? Don't get me wrong, most of the Alt customs I've seen are beautiful pieces of work and deserve to be seen by a large audience. However, it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to do the majority of Alt customs out there.

Please forgive me Alternators customizers! I don't mean to be offensive or insult your work; what you do still involves a lot of skill and talent. I don't know if I could do a better job or not at painting.

I think the reason there are so many Alternator customs IS because it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to make one. They're big, easy to take apart, and because of their scale, extra parts from model kits are readily available. Plus, the Alternators line is extremely popular. As are Alternator customs. It's only natural for people to want to do Alternator customs.

The Alternator line is also a great stepping stone to get involved in the hobby. And as a person creates more and more Alternator customs, their skills improve and they take on new and more complex projects. Start with a repaint, next start adding scratchbuilt extras and remolding, then do a reshell, etc. Skills learned doing Alternator customs help with any other kitbashing project a customizer wants to take on. I honestly doubt the kitbashing community would be what it is today if the Alternator line was never released.

Devastator wrote:Man, those customs are pretty darn impressive. They're so flawlessly painted that it's easy to understand why they got into the spotlight. I'm a little disappointed to see that they're almost all Alternators though. Doesn't anyone do any serious kitbashing anymore? Don't get me wrong, most of the Alt customs I've seen are beautiful pieces of work and deserve to be seen by a large audience. However, it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to do the majority of Alt customs out there.

Please forgive me Alternators customizers! I don't mean to be offensive or insult your work; what you do still involves a lot of skill and talent. I don't know if I could do a better job or not at painting.

I was thinking the same thing (about alts) when I saw it. But Redline is a bit biased towards alts. And as you and Lobo stated, alts are failry easy to bash AND because it's popular. And as Lobo stated, it's a good stepping stone. Hey, I started with mostly Alts and then branched out to other things. "Serious" kitbashing (including scratchbuilds) is starting to become more common and hopefully the trend will continue. However, given the time it takes to do more complicated bashes, you won't see too many of them done as you would Alt repaints which can take a couple of days to do.

Yeah. While I don't dismiss it as being simple (I've repainted my whole set) I am getting kinda sick of Alt repaints.

Lobo wrote:I thought that was pretty cool of redline to do that! Definately got the KB forum there a little more exposure. They should do it every month.

Devastator wrote:Man, those customs are pretty darn impressive. They're so flawlessly painted that it's easy to understand why they got into the spotlight. I'm a little disappointed to see that they're almost all Alternators though. Doesn't anyone do any serious kitbashing anymore? Don't get me wrong, most of the Alt customs I've seen are beautiful pieces of work and deserve to be seen by a large audience. However, it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to do the majority of Alt customs out there.

Please forgive me Alternators customizers! I don't mean to be offensive or insult your work; what you do still involves a lot of skill and talent. I don't know if I could do a better job or not at painting.

I think the reason there are so many Alternator customs IS because it doesn't take a lot of kitbashing skill to make one. They're big, easy to take apart, and because of their scale, extra parts from model kits are readily available. Plus, the Alternators line is extremely popular. As are Alternator customs. It's only natural for people to want to do Alternator customs.

The Alternator line is also a great stepping stone to get involved in the hobby. And as a person creates more and more Alternator customs, their skills improve and they take on new and more complex projects. Start with a repaint, next start adding scratchbuilt extras and remolding, then do a reshell, etc. Skills learned doing Alternator customs help with any other kitbashing project a customizer wants to take on. I honestly doubt the kitbashing community would be what it is today if the Alternator line was never released.

Your last statement, about how one would start simple and getting more complex later, describes perfectly what I am planning for my first Alternator repaints & kitbashes. Starting with a one that just requires some touch-up paint and new head, then a complete repaint and last on my current plans is a half re-shell. I just hope I'm not getting ahead of myself in planning things.

I've got an Alternator Repaint/Bash that I will reveal in the next couple of days. It is not as tremendous as Menasor, but I believe it's in a class of it's own. All I can say is Alt Ravage sucks and needs some serious bashing.
What I'd really like to see is a Ford GT Hotrod and A Rodimus Prime Scion with xtra rearend Battle station.


I have finished him. I'm happy with the end result I hope everyone else is too. Find him in the Repaint gallery soon.

Well regardless of anyone opinions about the difficulty level or skill necessary to customize an Alt, the main point I was trying to make is that TFW2005 honored some of our very own here at Transtopia on their front page. I just thought it was a cool piece of news and I just wanted to pass it along to you guys!

. . . maybe we could start a thread to discuss the skill level/difficulty to customize each toyline and specific molds? I think that would be very helpful. Also, I also find it very useful (and fun) to see artists discuss what mediums their into at the moment.

Again, just thought I'd pass along the tidbit of news to the artists here and to give my props to each of you for your work!

Well... while we're waiting here's a little teaser.http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l65/J ... nch001.jpg