I've no idea if I'm the only one that loved not only that particular episode, but the character of Nightbird as well. A part of my view on Nightbird is that I came into the fanbase on an unusual heading. The first canon item I ever saw/read was The Magnificent Six, then I read the comics due to an advertisment in one of the GI Joe issues. I saw a bit of the show, but not much... and from there I read a few fanfics - which heavily influenced my perspectives. 'First Words' was, fittingly, the first fanfic I ever read (Megatron's 'origin' fic, very good)
To finish the tale and get to the point, I'd read 'Preaching to the Converted', an essay about Nightbird, before seeing the episode... so I'm of the 'Nightbird is sentient' fan-base. This means that I've been hunting for toys to kitbash into my favorite ninja for decades - literally. I wanted her to be able to transform, and preferably be a animal-former, but the toys of the era were too boxy and with little manuverability.
Beast Wars came out, but none of the characters came close to what I wanted. Beast Machines followed and I debated some of the models, but again, I couldn't find something 'just right', so again I waited. Transformers: Animated came out and while I didn't watch the show, I did look at some of the toys. I bought one BA for her legs for a copter-former kitbash I had in the works. After transforming her from spider mode however, I found myself staring down a near perfect model for Nightbird. (It was the purple waist, mouth and the arm spikes that reminded me of NB's arm-mounted sai's)
So I went and bought ANOTHER BA and a Jazz, since he store I bought at was having a two for one I ended up with four TFs all told)
The BA that was giving her legs for the copter-former also gave up her shoulder joints. The became NBs new knees (one of the Jazz's also gave up the section of his legs between knee and swivel joint to lengthen NBs upper legs a bit)
Jazz also ended up sacrificing his upper arms for the bicep swivels, as well as giving up his wrists and hands.
I then carefully removed the holders for his nunchucks and put them on NBs bustle to give her a more 'mecha' look.
Once everything was assembled, I removed most of the brass factory-paint (I'd found with my other kitbash that it could make fresh paint tacky. Once that was done I disassembled her and dunked her in a bath of black dye to darken her purple and Jazz's white sacrifices.
Once the dye bath was done I let her dry out, then gave everything I didn't want to stay purple a coat of black paint. Once the paint was dry I pulled up an image of Nightbird and sorted out which parts I wanted to be silver (I didn't want as much silver as the show version (ninja's shouldn't be that shiny)
I'd already decided, long ago in the 80s, that when I got nightbird I would be drybrushing the silver on for a more unique look.So once the areas were decided, the silver was dry-brushed on - on a side note I also painted a big chuck of her helmet, blakck for the lowered parts, silver for the raised. her light-piping still works but now she doesn't have half a red helm.
Once all the painting was done, I hit her with matte-spray and then used my sadly not-so-good camera to take some pictures of her. I'll be taking more pictures of her once I can get a model stand with the waist 'clamp' and swivel joint so I can show off her manuverability.
http://s166.photobucket.com/albums/u90/jedi_sheng/Nightbird/(My initials spell JEDI, in answer to possible questions
-Hunter Rialla
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