I finally got a sideswipe a little ways back, though he was lost in a box after moving, having finally found the boy (and then cursing much and digging about to find his engine and gun) I set up shop to paint the twins.
I'd already mixed up a batch of gold for Sunstreaker. I didn't want him to be the paler gold that is the straight up testors gold, instead I'd wanted the deeper, richer, color that you see in Aztec or Egyptian gold. sunny's primary color is testors gold with some copper and brass to deepen the color and add a hint more 'warmth' to the paint.
Sideswipe is also a custom paint. Metallic red and copper with a bit of brass and gloss red to get a nice ruby color.
The two were carefully disassembled and painted up, then I applied their decals and did the detail work for their robot-mode parts (mostly black detailing and some gold/silver drybrushing to accent the detailing the two had molded in.
After the paint dried I reassembled them (made sure I had them put together right and that I'd left friction areas unpainted) then I masked their wheels and robot parts and hit them with glitter spray. I've worked with it before and I'd found that if I put detail work with ink pens like sharpie down the ink would run faintly, something I was actually counting on this time to add to their detailing (especially on their engine blocks)
When the glitter dried I removed the masking on Sunstreaker's robot-parts and hit him with the glitter again (he's a vain boy, extra glitter struck me as right)
When the glitter dried again I touched up everything I could find, let the paint dry then removed the masking on everything but the twins' wheels and hit them with a few coats of glosscoat. All the gold detailing on Sideswipe is in Sunny's gold, and all the red on Sunstreaker is in Sides' red.
The two of them can still transform normally with no paint wear and their decals SHOULD line up perfectly - I just... erm... well, I can't find their TF sheets ^_^;
Please comment, I'd love to hear what others think on these two.
http://s166.photobucket.com/albums/u90/jedi_sheng/Sunstreaker%20and%20Sideswipe/-Rialla
XBL GT: Captslayer21
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