Kitbashed, Repainted, Customized Transformers War For Cybertron Optimus Prime

When I watch the trailer for the War For Cybertron game I'm always struck by how battered Optimus Prime looks. It almost seemed a travesty to turn the bright, shiny toy with it's sparkling blue and red into a damaged war machine with chipped paint everywhere. Some like their figures pristine, new and perfect but I prefer a touch of realism so I used just about every trick I know to make this look like what I see in the trailer:

• fine detailing with a tiny brush
• drybrushing
• paint chipping
• washes
• colour blending to get the glow effect
• decals (for the faction symbles)
• drilling a hole in the barrel of the gun (thanks to Vegetacron for the idea)
• scratchbuildling an axe from... can you guess? Like all customs of mine needing extra parts I used cuttings from an ice cream tub. I also I branched out and used a fruit punnet because I needed transparent plastic for the blade. For the shaft I used parts of missiles and a leftover cog from DotM Ratchet's Mechtech weapon.

As well as spending a long time on this difficult project I used a variety of techniques for the photoshoot such as a bright light (my 300 lumen bicycle light) and a diffuser (a piece of paper held over the light) so give bright ambient light. Different techniques allowed me to make the axe appear to glow in some shots and bring out the crackle details in others. The result: my best custom so far and my best photogallery yet.

Addendum: I was very proud to discover that Blurrz at Seibertron.com chose to spotlight me on the front page as part of the Transtopia Masterclass series. You can see what he said about me here.