#hotaltmodeproject

As always, it's really inspiring and reassuring and motivating to hear from the voice actors and directors and writers. I'm full of ambition and creative energy afterwards. Battery recharged!

@hoistsautobody and I have a ton of ideas for art and custom painting to make before the next TF Con we can attend. We are considering the prospects of tabling once the con returns to our more-local Baltimore as well as taking on commissions work, but we have a lot to work out before then-- stay tuned for updates!

Hoist and I are already making costume plans for the next go around and drawing out plans while we endeavor on the way-to-long journey back to the East Coast where we hope to slide in between waves of freakish bad weather.

He's posted a sneak peak of his costume, so I'll add mine here with a simple little rock candy recipe I looked up while waiting out of layover:

Here we've got in-Progress G1Ratchet! His back doors open!

I'm not super pleased with the line work here, and I'm planning to tape and repaint (again) for crisper lines, but! I also think he came out pretty well. This is again putting primer over the factory paint instead of stripping and repainting from metal. I think it came out well. You definitely can't see the words on the sides from the original paint and Ratchet is more practical than flashy so all white primer with all white paint isn't too difficult.

I'll maybe try to put some Cybertronian on the side after I repaint, play around with it. We'll see.

This base I found in a Hot Wheels bin at an antique mall on the way to a camping weekend in Central PA. Since the treasure hunt to find the Hot Wheels base is PART of the fun of this project, I figured I'd start including where I find the cars if I can remember.

so I decided to strip Ratchet and start fresh. Primed and taped off and recoated white. I left his cab and rear as they had been, but took the paint off the top and sides of the box-bed. For some reason the paint seems to go on with a grittiness that I couldn't flatten out. It might be metal dust from the stripping.

I'll remove the tape and get in the red lines again soon.

I found the paints don't layer well together, so for future repaints, I'll need to be sure to apply primer whenever I'm changing colors, which is a bit of a pain, but easily manageable.

I repainted Ratchet using my taping method and he came out pretty well! Still needs some touch up in a few spots, but I like the overall look.

Haha, turns out, I forgot to bring a yellow OR black acrylic paint with me, so Sunstreaker is on TOTAL hold, Sideswipe and Dead End can be only be half done, but! Red Alert is looking good!

Some shots of Blades in a beautiful twilight. I love the way his paint job came out. I wasn't absolutely sure halfway through, but when you trust the process, it works out.

I used Tamiya Color Acrylic paints in Flat Red, White, Titanium Silver, and Dark Grey for the undercarriage. I picked up a new modeling brush in size no. 1 which really helps with the detailing.

The color blocking I went with is a combo of some interesting real life helicopters I found on Google and their original G1 Alt mode designs. The blades spin, though the pain did bulk up the connection joint a little, so they don't spin as easily.

As I said in my last post about them, the plastic on the green model gunner I used for Vortex gave up the ghost and snapped left and right, so I had to ditch his landing stabilizers, the actual gun contraption, and I had to take out his interior cab, so he doesn't have seats or flight sticks like Blades has. But you know, that also tracks with the characters, right?

I might spend time piecing the undercarriage gear together and gluing it, but the connectors are wonky and I'm not positive in my glue's ability to hold.

Also, I'm getting some time to work on my Hot Wheels customs. I've picked up four Lamborghinis over the last year-- two Countach twins, one Countach without the spoiler, and even a lambo with police printing. So, since I got the time, I'm working to take the bottoms off and get these guys primed and ready for Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, DeadEnd, and Red Alert respectively.

The red 'copter is fine and all the parts work! But.... the green plastic is really brittle and doesn't even glue well! Bits snapped one after another putting the kit together, and then again taking it apart for painting. So I've had to ditch lots of the components including the underbelly mount and guns and the interior cabin details because of snapping plastic, but the outer shell is still solid and the rotors are good enough!

Currently everything is primed and drying on the grass. I need to take a closer look at my color blocking and what makes sense where on Vortex and Blades, but then, I can get the actual paint job going.

A dragonfly photo bombed my pictures, so here's a closer look at him!