I was totally inspired by the beat up version of Optimus in early AOE photo's. However, I was a little let down by the fact the toy version has no rust, damage, etc. So, I bought a Legends Class RTS Optimus and went to work.
First I completely disassembled him and primed him, the truck parts in grey the rest in flat black. I then did a full repaint to a lighter color, added trim around the cab, add the flames, and chromed out the metal/robot parts. I then added layers of of gold, green, black, and brown to get the final rust color. To note, I did this almost 100% with spray cans, spraying at about 2ft to only get a misting of color. I also taped off a few of the difficult parts to get the fading I wanted. Light touch ups and such were done by hand using the smallest brush I could find and some metallic copper paint. The larger bullet holes were drilled with a dremel using a 1/16th bit, the smaller ones were drilled via hand with tack...
All things considered, I think he came out pretty well.
The sword, was simply primed, chromed spray painted, and then accented with metallic red paint mixed with red sparkle paint.
