Paints, Repaints and Kitbashes, Oh My! Transformers Quickbashes - Full Repaints Last Updated 10/16/24 Cassettebot Reject added. This page is for my Transformers Repaints. These involve more work than the Touchups, and often mean I'm making up a different character. Some of these are also the result of dyeing the plastic. However, other than potentially needing to shave off plastic around a joint or something like that, there are no modifications other than coloration.

• Grrl Action Team: Repaints of the Street Action Team as Arcee (Sureshock), Chromia (Grindor) and Moonracer (High Wire). They no longer transform without scraping off paint, though.
  • Herceptor PVC: Repainted a pewter color Perceptor PVC with the Grrl Action Team colors.
  • PVC with Mini-Cons
• Cybertron Oval painted: The Oval remold for Cybertron has clear police flashers on top, but the colors almost hide this. I knew I couldn't make it white without making it untransformable, but I otherwise got it as close to G1 Prowl as I could.
• Cybertron Garboil: Garboil is a blue Laserbeak recolor released in Japan in 2005. I repainted a Cybertron figure as Garboil for a friend. It's not meant to transform.
• Hot Wheels Cliffjumper: Got a red Concept Camaro Hot Wheels and painted AllSpark Power Cliffjumper's hood stripes onto it. No big deal. January 2008.
• Movie Optimus Primal: I noticed how close Stockade (2007 Movie "AllSpark Power" line) was to Optimus Primal, and did a quick repaint, building a knockoff Primal sword a handle so the toy could hold it. February 2008.
  • Robot Mode (action pose)
  • Robot Mode (static pose)
  • Robot Mode (action pose)
• Legends TF:A Optimus Prime: Beyond a simple touch-up, most of the toy ended up repainted, even if it was just as the same color in order to ensure matching. October 2008.
  • Robot Mode (full)
  • Robot Mode (upper body)
  • Vehicle Mode
• Bakuformers: Bakugan repainted as Transformers characters in the spirit of the Eggbots and Unicron's Mini-Con Dead End. Updated 6/13/10 with Chop Shop and Sundor.
• Oopstimus Prime: Not actually a completed project. The idea was to dye a RotF Wideload to roughly Optimus Prime's colors, and then make Optimus Major or Optimus Minor or something out of it. But most of the plastic wouldn't take dye, and the truck shell warped. Oops. June 2010.
• Fast Action Battler Street Ninja Nightbird: A FAB Arcee dyed black and then painted black and metallic purple, to evoke the G1 ninja bot Nightbird (who was actually gray, but hey). Dye let me avoid having pink seams all over the place. June 2010.
  • Robot Views: 1, 2, 3
  • Cycle Views: 1, 2, 3
  • Comparisons to Arcee: Robot, Cycle
• Steel Eagle: An Autobot who really digs America, repainted from RotF Autobot Gears. Winner of the July 2010 AllSpark Art Challenge!
• Metal Heroes Speed Stars Soundwave: A Hot Wheels sized non-transforming toy that recasts Revenge of the Fallen's Soundwave with a TF:Animated style vehicle mode...but the official toy fails to paint in all the molded details, so I rectified it. August 2010.
  • Package photo of original paintjob
  • Left Side
  • Left Front
  • Right Rear
• Chibi Carnivac: I picked up a Zooble named Doxy to see what's up with this "Bakugan for Girls" line. Once I'd finished messing about with it, I decided to repaint it. September 2010.
  • Various views
  • Bakugan Laserbeak reacts to it
• Hot Wheels Drag Strip: G1 Drag Strip was based on the Tyrrell P34, a real six-wheeled formula racer. Hot Wheels released the P34 in their 2010 line, and while neither was yellow, I figured the white one was close enough to repaint as Drag Strip. The 2011 line includes the Danicar, a different six-wheeled racer designed by Danica Patrick, and all it really needed in order to look like a Generations Drag Strip was a Decepticon symbol. October 2010.
  • G1 Drag Strip
  • Generations Drag Strip
• Crossovers B.A. Baracus: I got a spare Energon Tow Line with a broken weapon in a batch of junkers around 2006 or 2007, and set it aside meaning to repaint it into something. I finally decided to dye it black and paint it up as the A-Team's van, which would turn into a robot B.A. Baracus. The real A-Team van is dark gray above the red stripe, but I didn't like how that looked and went with black on top as many licensed toys do. December 2010.
  • Robot front view
  • Robot side view
  • Battle Platform
  • Van left side
  • Van front view
  • Van rear right
• Cyberverse Wasp: A Target exclusive Cyberverse Bumblebee redeco dunked in green dye and given some additional details. I used gold rather than light green, as it seemed more suitable for a movie design. June 2011.
• Legends Skywarp: A spare Reveal the Shield Legends Starscream dyed black and then given silver, purple and orange paint. It warped a little in the dye vat, annoyingly, and I had to file out the connection slots in the wings to let the vehicle mode peg together. June 2011. Both pictures have comparison to Starscream.
  • Robot Mode
  • Jet Mode
• Chromed Legends G1 Megatron: AlClad II chrome, plus a few other paints, to jazz up the little gunrobo. December 2011.
• Legends Scourge: A spare Optimus Prime from the same wave as Megatron above, dyed black as much as possible and then painted as Scourge from Robots in Disguise. February 2012.
  • Robot Mode
  • Vehicle Mode
• Ardee: TF:Prime Deluxe Arcee (RiD version) painted sky blue with rainbow bits, a Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony) Transformer. May 2012.
  • Robot Mode
  • Action Pose
  • Vehicle Mode
• Hot Wheels Vehicons: Got a couple of Mad Manga cars, cut off the tailpipes, and painted them up as Vehicons. June 2012.
  • Various views
  • Demotivational Poster
• Bot Shots Starscream: My main complaint with the Starscream Launcher set is that unlike the other three launchers, the included Bot Shot didn't match the color of the launcher. So I fixed that. I could have made the launcher gray, but I decided instead to make the Bot Shot silver, and add some more dark red details. September 2012.
  • Robot and open Launcher
  • Combined Vehicle
• Adobe Shockwave: Yes, a computer nerd pun that no longer even makes sense, as the Shockwave software seems to have died off. A Legends Commander size Shockwave from Dark of the Moon, painted to look like it's made of adobe, with some turquoise. I broke it during disassembly, so it can't be transformed anymore, but the paint job wouldn't really allow that anyway. February 2014.
  • Front view
  • Other views
• LioHead: A spare Under-3 toy repainted as Lioconvoy, accomplished with the help of a set of triangle-head screwdrivers so that I could take it apart. July 2014.
• Peribot: A Thrilling 30 Tailgate dyed green and then painted as a reference to Peridot from Steven Universe. November to December 2015.
  • Dyed parts: All the same dye, but absorbed at radically different rates and in different ways. So, my initial plan of just dyeing it and doing detail work went out the window. I slightly altered the shape of the head to better evoke Peridots hairdo.
  • Dyed and assembled: Yeah, so definitely needs paint.
  • Robot Mode: Hard to get detail on the bright yellow parts to show in photos.
  • Vehicle Mode: Shiny gem paintjob.
• Combiner Wars Whisper: With Alpha Bravo, Rook, and Offroad getting G1-based replacements in Combiner Wars, I had almost enough to let Cyclonus/Galvatron have four "leftover" limbs. After determining that a fourth was not likely to be in the offing, I got a spare Blast Off and turned it into Whisper (based on the Micromaster stealth jet) for a fourth limb. June 2016.
  • Robot Mode with original face.
  • Corrected Robot Mode with G1 Whisper for reference.
  • Vehicle Mode
  • Arm Mode
  • Galvatronus assembled
  • Galvatronus with painted cannon barrel
• Duocon Garnet: Like many others, I noticed that the Battletrap duo in Power of the Primes (Battleslash and Roadtrap) were kind of reminiscent of Garnet from Steven Universe. Since I'd already made a Peribot Transformer, why not Garnet? Well, I did have to wait a while before I found a second set to modify. Dyed Battleslash red, replaced the faction symbols and did other minor painting. April 2018.
  • Individual robots
  • Individual vehicles
  • Combined Garnet
  • Re-enacting Jailbreak scene
  • With Peribot
• Models & Minis Tanks: A local sculptor in Amarillo makes a lot of Warhammer-compatible miniatures, among other things, and every so often I buy a bag of his miscasts to see what I can do with them. "Runt Tanks" (small Ork vehicles) end up in these bags a lot, so I've made some up as Junkions. And I eventually bought some non-defective (but still in need of minor bubble-fills) "Odin Demolition Tanks" and painted them up as Rumble and...Rumble?
  • Rustbukkit WIP: Physical mods to my first one, which I ended up naming Rustbukkit. October 2014.
  • Rustbukkit complete. November 2014.
  • Tommycooker WIP: Tommycooker is old slang for a flamethrower, and I decided that the weapon here was a flamethrower. The bits bags did not contain weapons for the tanks, because those tended to cast correctly. May 2016.
  • Tommycooker almost complete: Realized after taking the pictures that I hadn't given him an Autobrand. June 2016.
  • Tommycooker complete. June 2016.
  • Rumble and Rumble: Odin Demolition Tanks painted up in the colors of Frenzy and Rumble, but each insists he's Rumble. July 2018.
• Siege Buzzsaw: I ended up with a spare Spy Patrol set, so I decided to make Laserbeak into Buzzsaw, even though an official one was likely to come out. I disassembled Laserbeak as far as I could, the only rivets were on the wings and between neck and head. I did have to dislocate one wing to get at the neck-base pin (so now it's a bit floppy). I dyed the body and wings black, then used Krylon gold leaf marker, Molotow chrome marker, Tamiya clear red paint, and some Vallejo black gloss for touching up damage done when putting the pins back in. May 2019.
  • Various views
  • Bird bros on Soundwave
  • Ravage jet mode (Not sure if I can really kitbash the spare Ravage meaningfully, but I found an "as good as Titans Return" jet mode while trying to figure out what to do with my spare, so you get to have it inflicted on you.)
• Nemesis Rung: An evil version of Rung who hangs out with Nemesis Prime. (I wanted Earthrise Rung for the map piece, and it was on clearance, so I figured black dye is an easy starting point....) The Dark Energon bits are a swirl of two different color shift metallics (purple to blue with bits of blue to purple). I very briefly considered a Unicron-inspired color scheme before realizing that Rung was already in those colors. July 2020.
• Primus Rung: And since I had one more spare left, I decided to dye it blue and then paint it up in the colors of the TF:Cybertron Primus toy. The blue dye ended up going almost black, so I painted over most of the toy anyway (and despite extra coats and looking fine under normal light, the brighter lights of my camera box show some mottling). I used one of the White 2.0 beta paints for the white highlights, and it has a strong UV glow, so I used the UV flashlight on it. November 2020.
  • Ladder of Rungs: Nemesis Rung, Primus Rung, my touched up regular Rung, and an unmodified Battlefield Rung all together.
• Tiny Turbo Changers Channel: Tiny Turbo Changers series 5 Ironhide (redeco of Ratchet) painted as a Cyberverse version of my OC Channel. October 2021.
• Lava Terrorsaur: One of the exclusive online toys for Kingdom features an alternate timeline in which Terrorsaur survived the Quantum Surge, getting a new toy that's an extensive retool of Airazor. I decided to get a second Wingfinger and make another take on the concept, having him survive...after a fashion. He's a red lava-charged Fossilizer like Tricranius. Mostly it's just a dye job (iPoly red and orange mixed together), but the dyeing revealed several areas of painted plastic that ended up looking more pink than red. A few I left, others I painted over. The entire face turned black, so I painted on green eyes. October 2021.
• Kingdom Soundblaster: I grabbed a spare Core class Soundwave and dyed the blue parts (except for the fists) black. Driving the pins out was hard, and I actually bent a pin punch in the process. It looked pretty good just dyed, but after a while the gold tone I got from the silver paint started to fade, so I repainted those parts and did some other touchups. November 2021.
  • Version 1 (just dye)
  • Version 2 (painted too)
• Blackboard Ultra Magnus: So, I work at a college that uses the Blackboard course management system. In 2022 we're getting the updated version "Blackboard Ultra". When I mentioned that on facebook, someone made an Ultra Magnus joke, because I know a lot of people who have to use Blackboard and know they can't deal with that now. Now, I'd had a spare Robot Heroes Ultra Magnus for some time, with it sitting on my Ultra Magnus shelf. Time to do something with it! I dyed the figure black in case of joint issues, then painted it regular black with a Pledge Future topcoat. Once that cured, I put two coats of chalkboard paint on it, and seasoned it with actual chalk. (The eyes and "Bb" logo are painted on, though). November 2021.
• White Dot: Techincal difficulties during the March 4, 2022 premiere of the MST3K Gizmoplex resulted in a white dot being on screen for about fifteen minutes while they fixed things. In the after-movie chat, they joked about White Dot being the new breakout character. Sure, 2D fan art of White Dot is easy, I decided to use a spare BotBots Bemyne to make a transforming bit of fan art! (Sadly, the transformation is really tight in places, so I had to touch up the dot mode after taking the bot mode pic.) March 2022.
• Paint-Stripped Nano Metalfigs Wheeljack: Okay, totally removing paint counts as a total repaint, right? The base layer was more of a heat-shrink wrap than proper paint, and I had to go into the nooks and crannies with a pointy metal tool to get out the rest of it that acetone didn't make slough off. Not a lot of molded detail, worse than decoys, but I may paint it as Exhaust or Slicer. (Wheeljack was included in both of the first two 18-packs, no paint differences at all, so I felt fine stripping this one for potential reuse. The base paint layer is way too thick to paint over.) January 2023.
• Noah B.A.T. - Not Neo-B.A.T., nope. This is the Studio Series Exo-suit Noah Diaz with dye and some paint to look like a B.A.T. Trooper from GIJoe. I dyed the medium gray black and the light gray parts blue (this took a LOT more dyeing), then added a little paint. I decided against trying to freehand the Cobra rondels, and will take some more pictures once the set I ordered from ToyHax arrives. November 2023.
  • Robot and Aerial Modes
  • Robot with Drone
  • Comparison to Unpainted
  • With ToyHax Cobra emblems
  • With Transwarp Key - I was disappointed by the sad metallic orange paint on the Transwarp Key that was packed with Studio Series Optimus Primal, so I used a much better metallic orange and some gold mixed in while wet. Not worth its own entry, so Cobra stole it.
• Core Class G2 (Comic) Universe Megatron - I got a spare G2 Universe Megs at Ross and decided that it needed to be painted and dyed to get close to the first comics appearance in GIJoe. I didn't try to match the camo pattern, and I decided that most of the blue was comics-standard "blue for black" coloring. While the paint job can probably survive transformation, I didn't really change the tank mode other than making the barrel black. December 2023.
  • Comparison with stock version
  • Comparison with comics page
• Core Class Night Slash Cheetor - Once Core Class Cheetor showed up on the shelves, I grabbed a spare, dyed it black, and painted it in a scheme inspired by (but not trying to be exactly like) Beast Machines Night Slash Cheetor. I left out the gold spots and replace them with a simplified set of gold paint apps. To fake the clear plastic, I put clear Tamiya orange over either platinum paint or chrome marker. Neither worked as well as I'd have liked, probably because some dye leaked through, but it looks interesting nonetheless. June 2024.
  • Robot Mode
  • Beast Mode
• Cassettebot Reject - When Ollie's got in a bunch of unsold Kingdom toys, I grabbed a Blaster with the vague idea of maybe dyeing the Eject black to get Rewind. But before I could get around to it, Soundblaster came out with an official Rewind. Thus, the toy sat in my pile of "extras maybe for kitbashing" for a while until I grabbed it to help with my review of Studio Series Steeljaw (I didn't want to remove the original one from its display location). That left me with the spare Eject, so I decided to try the "dye black, paint silver and paint over with clear Tamiya" thing again to see if I could get it to work better this time than on Night Slash Cheetor. Eh, not really. Maybe it's just the orange that doesn't work well. The layers of paint ended up thick enough I could barely transform it without scraping, and it's definitely never gonna fit in a chest compartment. October 2024.

---

Back to Dave's Kitbashes Page.