This little guy is the result of many weeks of work. His name is Copperhead, and he’s part of the Transformers Prime universe.

Designed as an exclusive for a local group of Arizona Transformers fans on TFW2005.com, this project included the creation of 10 custom-painted legion class figures for what we jokingly called “Cacticon”.

I knew that this project would be a lot of work, and I had planned for it; but it surely was A LOT OF WORK!

The seed for this idea sprouted from talk amongst our group. The primary group of us have been meeting for over a year, having started just a bit before BotCon 2011. We had met each other on-and-off before that, but we started meeting monthly just before BotCon 2011. Since I had begun customizing, and others within the group had as well, we began to dream about having our own exclusive figure for the group.

I kept getting good responses from my customizing work, and I kept pushing back on commission requests since I didn’t want money to corrupt this hobby I was having fun with. I was / am of the mindset that money and time constraints would make me lose appeal in the fandom. Therefore, I would brush off the talks whenever they came up.

However, one night an idea (or two) popped into my head and lodged itself in my brain. I simply couldn’t get it out, and had to get the ideas down on paper before I went to sleep. And then on the next day I began working on viable concepts. The fruits of that labor were a Bumblebee redeco called Copperhead (originally Coppertone), and a Arcee redeco called Diamondback.

The idea was that both were Transformers Prime characters/toys, and that were readily available and inexpensive. Furthermore, I had planned on using legion, or legends class, figures which I thought would simplify the process. The final theme concept was to turn them into desert / Arizona / snake-themed characters, which I felt was applicable for our Cacticon concept.

I presented 2 Photoshop mockups to the group in a poll and asked for them to vote. I stated what I thought each would cost, what would be included, and how long it would take. I didn’t want to charge too much to scare people away, and I didn’t want to charge too little to make it costly for me to do. In the end there were 2 pricing schemes: $26 and I’d get the base figure for you, or $20 if you supplied the figure.

The poll went for a little over 2 weeks, and Copperhead was a winner by a small margin. I began asking for pre-orders for Copperheads, while in the background I pocketed the Diamondback concept and had other possible ideas for her in the future.

Finally after another 2 weeks or so, Copperhead production was ready. I had gotten payment and/or figures, and was ready to make a grand total of 10 Copperhead figures. Supplies were purchased, my airbrush setup came back out into my office, and I got to work.

One of the members, Matt, had written Copperhead’s bio information (found on the card back above); and another named Brad had promised to complete the Photoshop work and printing of the updated packaging artwork to match the new figure.

The work was long and tiring. Many a late night over the course of several weeks. If you are interested, more step-by-step details can be found in a Flickr set about the full creation of the Copperhead army. I took photos of pretty much every step of the process, as well as my tools, techniques, and tips. I’ll hit on some of the main points below with photos.

The 10 original Bumblebee figures ready to be turned into Copperheads. I don’t think I’ve ever had this many of the same figure before.

First edition deluxe-class Bumblebee inspects the carnage that is 10 disassembled legion Bumblebees. The idea was to do a deluxe-sized Copperhead as well, but I haven’t had time to finish him quite yet.

Me starting the first round of masking off the wheels on each figure. 4 wheels per figure, times 10 figures, is a lot of masking tape. I ended up using 1.5 rolls of it on this project.

Here the initial bits of paint work had been completed. I had used 2 whole bottles of tan Model Master Acryl paint by this point at $3.50 a piece.

This was about 3/4 through the project. A prototype Copperhead had been completed to test the design, and he’s in front. The others had been masked up and ready for the primary brown stripe. I actually came up with a pretty good idea of templating the masking tape by cutting them all out a once so they’d have the same curve. They still were a pain to line up, and on both sides of the car.

All the figures had been painted with final touch-ups and reassembled. They had gotten a coat of clear semi-gloss as well to add a bit of sheen. Only thing left was packaging.

Brad and I completed the packaging right before they were due, outside of the Tempe Marketplace Dave & Busters. We were down to the wire.

I think these shots are quite funny. I had 9 weapons available at the end of the project, and so what better way to utilize them other than stacking them on top of each other? Copperhead is now ready for business anytime of the day.

Here you can see how I lined up the Copperheads in a row to show him transforming from car to robot, and back. A rare occasion to take a shot such as this.

The Army of Copperheads is ready for duty.

So in conclusion, I’m happy to be done with this project. I’m pleased with the results, and the response has been pretty good. The shear effort needed to get these guys done was mind-numbing. So much paint, so much masking tape, so much repetition. I also didn’t make any money on the project, but that wasn’t the point. The finished outcome was what I was concerned about.

Would I do this again? Maybe, but I’d have to think long and hard about it. I’m definitely burned out at the moment and my other projects have stalled.

But I am proud that our group finally has a little custom exclusive to call our own, named Copperhead.

And don’t forget to the look at the Flickr set for more details!

This old rust-bucket to the left is my custom-made Transformers Animated Kup. He is by far the best custom figure I’ve completed to date. He’s also the first to have extensive sculpting work.

The character of Kup in the Transformers universe is traditionally a representative of an old Transformer. Transformers, while millions of years old, do age. Kup has usually seen it all; having been there since the early days and seeing many, many battles throughout the centuries. He has loose parts, doesn’t move as fast as the others, and in general is just a grouchy old guy with lots of stories to tell.

Kup did show up in the Transformers Animated universe, but only as official artwork in the Transformers Animated Allspark Almanac – Volume 2. In this universe, he’s an old retired member of the Elite Guard and has transitioned into being a drill instructor for the Autobot troops. He also has the distinction of naming some of the prominent characters.

While I would have loved had they actually made a real toy for the guy, it was up to me to create my version. Taking hints from previous customizers, I used the deluxe-class Cybertron Optimus Prime toy as the base. Then with a bit of sculpting and paint, he’d be transformed into a version of the beloved Kup. I tried my best to transfer design cues from the official artwork onto the appropriated toy as best I could.

This guy has the distinction of being the first to have any sculpting work. I used a modelling material called Apoxie-Sculpt. It’s a two-part clay-like material that you mix together and then sculpt. You have a few hours to mold it to your choosing, after which it turns into a hard plaster-type material. You can then sand down or trim, and then built upon further if you wish.

I first disassembled and cleaned the base figure like all the customs I do, and then I started sanding down the original Optimus Prime toy’s head. Particularly the large chin and “ears”.

I then mixed a bit of the apoxie and placed it on his head. I wish I had more photos of this entire process, but I did build the head layer-by-layer over the course of a week. Starting with a base form for his chin and face, I let it dry, and then built up the helmet and nose afterwards. Then I let it dry some more and built the ears or sides of his helmet. In between each phase, I would sand down or straighten hard edges with sandpaper, files, and an exacto blade. A bit of water on the fingers also helped to smooth out bumps and ridges, just like other clay because you will leave fingerprints in the stuff. The material also would stiffen if you let it sit for a few hours in case you wanted to shape it with more refinement, as when it’s fresh it is a very soft putty. Furthermore, the other nice thing about the Apoxie-Sculpt is that it lets you build upon itself, even if dry, letting you fix earlier mistakes and fill imperfections.

I did end up using a little trapezoid of styrene so his chin would have a hard edge. I also had to make sure his lightpiping would still work and that presented a challenge as well. After a bit of shaving, the light piping from the back of his head was able to squeeze into place when I was done.

At the same time, I knew that I needed to make some additional sculpted details. I wanted Kup to have a thicker torso than Optimus, and so I built up some detail around his waist. I also wanted to try to match the artwork with his very wide torso and to differentiate him from Optimus. I’m happy how it turned out, but in the end I had to carve out more from the torso than what I had initially built due to transformation limitations. I had to sand, then test fit, then sand some more in order to get his chest to lock into position in robot mode.

The other sculpted detail, while tiny, was important. Recent versions of Kup have all been seen smoking a robotic stogie called a cy-gar. What it does in the various fictions is unique, but here it helps to sell Kup as a drill sergeant. Beginning with a penny nail, I slapped some apoxie-scuplt on it and tried to form something similar to the art. Once that dried, I started to bore a whole into the appropriate place on his mouth. Unfortunately, I was stubborn and did not use a drill bit, but instead actually used the cy-gar and my fingers to very slowly drill out enough material from the head so it would fit snugly. I’m very happy with how it attaches securely, but I did end up with blisters on my finger and thumb from trying to hand-bore the hole for almost half an hour.

The final bit of ingenuity with the cy-gar was that since it could not be kept in his mouth during transformation (it would stick out too much), I simply used the empty screw hole on the back of his crotch as storage in vehicle mode.

With the sculpting complete, it was onto paint. I tried my best to 1) match the artwork colors, 2) match design cues, and 3) try to make differences in the color palette work for the better for the toy with more contrast.

Using a newly purchased motorized color mixer, I mixed my colors. I’m happy with the end palette I chose, but I ran into a big, big problem near the end; one I will try not to repeat.

As it happened, I did not make enough of the custom-mixed aqua blue paint that is his primary color, and so I ran out of it near the end. This became a problem because this guy has so many rub points. His joints were tight, the base plastic was red, and I had thinned the paint too much. Furthermore, the dried apoxie-sculpt isn’t as hard as the plastic and therefore “chips” if rubbed against, leaving a bright white base. It has gotten to the point with the figure and the lack of paint, that I’m afraid to transform him. Another nick on his helmet or ears would be nigh impossible to repaint because I can’t match the color again. Word to the wise for the future: mix a lot more paint for cases like this.

The final modification to this guy was re-purposing the shield accessory as a backpack. All I did was bore a hole, using an actual drill bit this time, on one of his back panels. This hole could then be used to peg in the shield so it could be positioned as a backpack. The other nice thing was that this hole was hidden in vehicle mode. I’m quite pleased with this simple mod for Kup.

Now he was finally painted and I put him together for the first time. I added a few more robot mode details, and repainted some details that I felt were too sloppy. Some of the black lines I had originally hand-painted, were masked and repainted again with the airbrush to have harder edges. In the future, I will try to paint any details with the airbrush when possible, as the visible brushstrokes on this guy aggravate me.

I then transformed him into vehicle mode, and came across all the rub issues. I tried to cover them up as much as possible with more paint, but I also added vehicle details this time like yellow lights and a gray bumper. As it turned out, some of these vehicle mode details helped the overall robot mode as well.

The final, final piece that he needed was his faction symbol. Kup is part of the Elite Guard and so needed the Elite Guard emblem. One order from Reprolabels, and Kup was now complete.

The overall response to Kup by folks who have seen him has been tremendously positive. I’ve shown him off to local Arizona Transformers fans to a lot of praise. Some have offered to buy him from me, but unfortunately this guy was built to be part of my personal collection. In addition, some folks have asked if I could mold his head for their own customs. While I would have liked to have done that, now that he’s painted with his lightpiping inserted; I don’t want to risk ruining his face, especially since I don’t have any more of his paint.

After this custom project, I’m now much more comfortable with how to add sculpted details, and Kup is just the first of a series of Transformers Animated customs yet to come…

To the right is my custom painted Transformers Prime Skywarp. He is a follow-up to a previous customized figure of mine, Thundercracker.

If you read the previous blog, Skywarp is one of the trio of seekers that usually shows up in Transformers fiction.

The gist of how this particular guy came to fruition, is that after I had completed Thundercracker; I really, really wanted to keep him for myself. I had difficult self debates on whether I really wanted to give him away.

In fact, I went searching local Toys R Us stores looking for another Starscream toy to make into another Thundercracker. That way I could give one away and then keep the other for myself. It would be the best of both worlds.

The other side of that search was that if I could not find a second Starscream figure, then I would have to give Thundercracker away.

As it happened, searching across the valley led to no additional Transformers Prime Starscreams (and actually no other TF Prime toys either), and so my custom Thundercracker’s fate was sealed. I was content with the outcome, and then promptly gave Thundercracker away. I had also purged myself of Transformers Prime toys and felt relieved.

Unbeknownst to me, Jessica had decided to get a second Starscream online. She had hoped to secretly have one be delivered in time for me to customize it. She did in fact purchase one, but as it turns out he didn’t arrive quite quickly enough.

Fast forward to a couple of days after I gave Thundercracker to his new owner, and a box arrived in the mail from BigBadToyStore, an online toy store I use frequently. As it happens, I did in fact have another figure on the way from them, and it actually was one of the final figures of my collection. However, this box had arrived 2 days earlier than the tracking on my package had stated.

This box, as it turns out was Jessica’s second Starscream. So I opened the box, and she laid out the story…

The unfortunate thing was that I was now stuck with this figure. I couldn’t just return it to a local store and purge myself again. Plus, she had gone through the trouble of finding one for me.

After this small personal dilemma, it was readily apparent of what the final outcome of this toy was going to be: he was going to get transformed into Skywarp.

Back when people finally got a look at Thundercracker in-person and online, of course they all chimed in that they wanted to see me create a Skywarp. I mean, all of us fans was to see the seeker trio. It’s a no-brainer. So off I went to the hobby store to pick up some purple paint.

As stated in the other post, this figure is really quite easy to customize. He comes apart well and has little-to-no rub spots. Starting again with a previously done digibash, I got to work prepping and painting.

I did change the design and add some bits of my own, specifically with regards to his wing stripes and dealing with his gold canopy in jet mode. I’m really fond of the stripes on his wings and they are probably my favorite feature. Some additional details I added were things like the yellow “eyes” on his chest. They are yellow to appease those that think Skywarp should have yellow eyes versus red.

So like before, I have another customized Transformers Prime seeker. I had gone into this with the idea that this guy would stay in my collection as my sole TF Prime figure, but who knows where his final destiny lies.

The guy to the left is a recent custom painted Transformer called Thundercracker. Based on a classic Decepticon character, he’s a repaint of Transformers Prime deluxe class Starscream.

There is a little bit of history on how this guy came to be.

There is a new Transformers TV show out there called Transformers: Prime, and there is a version of good ol’ Starscream in the show. They recently released the first wave of toys from the show, and that is where this base figure originates.

I do watch the show, but have decided to not purchase any figures from the series. I’m trying to stop collecting TF altogether and move on to other things. In addition as I’m a completest when it comes to collecting, I just don’t want to start on yet another series.

So I had a friend who kept threatening to “gift” me a figure from the show as a gateway drug of sorts. He kept talking about when the toys showed up in stores, I’d be getting my own Starscream. With knowing that this event was going to happen, I concocted a plan to give it back to him customized.

Just before the new year, he ended up dropping a deluxe class Starscream in my lap. Time to get painting…

As in TF tradition, there are usually 3 characters called “seekers” that all share the same body/toy in the franchise’s history: Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker. With Starscream already in the show proper, that left Skywarp and Thundercracker as neither of them have shown up in the show or toyline yet. I had initial plans to make the toy into Skywarp, but then word came out that an official Skywarp redeco would be coming out in Japan. That made the decision to make Thundercracker a bit easier, and make it so my friend would have the seeker trio even earlier.

So using both the Classics Thundercracker figure and this already completed digibash as bases, I started to work dissecting the figure and getting it ready for paint. I removed all the screws, and pulled him apart as best I could making sure to note what pieces and screws went where. I made sure to wash the plastic with hot soapy water to remove the mold release chemicals and oils they use to make the parts come out of the molds easier. Then I prepped the parts with bits of wire and masking tape where needed.

Doing all the prep was a lot easier than I had thought with this figure. The figure overall is very intricate and complicated, but he was really, really easy to repaint. There was not a whole lot of issues getting this figure completed. The only slight hiccup was that I had to repaint his left-wing twice because the stripes were not symmetrical across both wings.

The paint went on very well, and I was actually able to use certain parts of the original figure as is, such as parts of his chest, making the whole process easier. It only took about of week of work; prepping, painting and waiting for parts to dry.

The unfortunate thing is that once he was all done and reassembled, I really had a fondness for the figure. Looking at him on my desk, I was very impressed with the final output. I had very strong emotions to keep him for myself. However, after a bit of hemming and hawing, and glares from Jessica, I decided to go through with the plan.

So the other day, Thundercracker was delivered to his final destination as intended. All in attendance were a bit stunned, and I got the reactions I was looking for so it worked out.

Some of the others were a bit jealous and already coming up with requests for their own customized figures. I’m not ready to do this for money, as then it’ll lose its fun when it becomes “work”.

Of course, I have other personal customizing projects to complete in the pipeline as I try to finish out my wild ride with this Transformers resurgence.

It’s also a foregone conclusion that Hasbro will release their own official Thundercracker as some point, as they always do, and it will be interesting how he’ll differ from my take.

I’ll still miss not having this particular figure on my desk though, but I do have a bunch of pictures to remember it by.

Back in December 2009, I was fortunate enough to procure an Iwata 0.2mm airbrush, lots of supplies, a medium sized air compressor, and pretty much every Createx acrylic paint currently available (thanks Jessica). The point of getting the airbrush was because I had been talking about making my own custom Transformers. I had made the one at Botcon, picked up a couple of duplicate figures intended as customs, and I eventually wanted to make an orange Aveo Transformer to match my real car. So I now have an airbrush in my possession and toys to customize.

I originally played with the airbrush shortly after getting the set, but ended up just being frustrated. Using some random small Venom action figure from Goodwill, I tried repainting it red to redeco him as Carnage. The paint didn’t flow smoothly, it globbed up, the paint flaked when touched, and the pinpoint detail the 0.2mm was supposed to have just wasn’t there. It was not a great first impression.

Discouraged, I put it away for several months.

Then last month, I felt like trying it again. I hadn’t been creative in a while and it felt like a good time to give it another whack.

So at the same time I received the airbrush, I had received some extra Revenge of the Fallen Transformers meant for customizing tests. Using three of those figures, I had it in my mind to re-purpose them as movie-themed Insecticons:  Shrapnel, Kickback, and Bombshell. All deluxe class vehicles with similar color schemes.

I started by digibashing the figures. Using some macro photographs I took of the toys, I loaded up Photoshop and recolored the original plastics. Using photos of the original G1 toys, photos of the Robot Heroes, cartoon screenshots, and other images I tried to match characteristic details of each character in their redeco. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time getting the details exactly perfect; as I just wanted a base from which to work on with the actual paint. I tried to use colors that matched paints I already had so I wouldn’t have to mix unique colors. I thought this digibashing process would take quite a while, but I cranked all three rough redecos out in about 2 hours.

The next step was choosing which one to start with, and then taking it apart. Jolt, the basis for Shrapnel, seemed like a good starting point with a larger number of screws versus pins. Pins can be a pain to remove and put back, so I saved the other two figures for later. Piece by piece I disassembled Jolt into as many parts as I could, all along keeping track of each screw and where they went by taping them to sticky notes. Screw lengths and widths are not uniform across the figure as I found out at Botcon. I had to make sure each screw went back where in came. Each part was then separated into separate bowls that were grouped by color.

I decided to start with the pearlescent yellow that was for the windows to mimic the yellow/gold plastic on the original. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the translucency of the blue windows, but I figured the paint would look good against the other colors. The initial bits of yellow would also not need to be masked off making it a good starting point. I also tried my hand at the pearlescent silver bits with his pincers on his back.

Unfortunately as I came to find out, the non-opaque paints I have do not cover well nor spread well. I had not figured out the correct mixture of paint to illustration base at this point and so I slathered each piece just trying to get it to coat. The paint was thick and much of it was wasted. I did not start with an opaque base and so most of the paint just didn’t stick. I also had not sanded each piece prior.

I also was finding that the airbrush was clogging a lot. Constant cleaning and disassembling of the airbrush were common occurrences. In addition, I was quickly running out of the small bottle of the airbrush cleaner I had. Halfway through the painting process while trying to clean the brush, I ended up stripping the threads off the 0.2mm nozzle. That put a delay in the customizing, after which Jessica headed to Phoenix and nicely picked up both a replacement 0.2mm nozzle and a 0.3mm nozzle (which works via some slight jerry-rigging). That was an additional $80 I had not planned on…

I fumbled through the rest of the colors over the span of 2 weeks, finding better paint mix ratios and seeing that the opaque colors like white, black, and dark colors don’t need much spraying before seeing results. I tested my hand at masking, unfortunately finding that some pieces need to be perfect and ended up with some bleeding such as black streaks in the yellow. Also, the Createx paints don’t cure unless they are heated with a air dryer or heat gun. Even after that they still show fingerprints and smudges. Next time I will try actually using the clear coats intended for finished pieces.

So I had all the pieces mostly painted, they had been heat cured, and I felt anxious to get the figure together. Seeing it all in parts strewn across the table kept irking me.

Starting with his arms, I quickly found out that because I had painted so thick and/or the paint wasn’t fully cured, parts which rubbed or twisted against others rubbed the paint off in spots. Ball and swivel joints rubbed down to their base plastics which was a bright electric blue. Furthermore I found that if pegs had been painted, the pieces wouldn’t fit together cleanly or smoothly. I ended up breaking the base peg on his left knee trying to dry fit the part. At least the screw and other parts that followed still keep him together. On later pieces I ended up scraping away unnecessary paint on these pegs with a exacto knife so the pieces fit better.

Once fully together, I started to paint the small details. Red eyes, detail highlights, headlights, bumper trim, and the like.

Transforming Shrapnel, or even moving some joints, is not as smooth as I would have hoped. His parts are very tight due to the paint, and he is quite hard to actually get transformed between modes. In addition, the colors that I had don’t quite match up to what I had planned. The yellow is not quite orange enough, the purple is a bit dark, and the silver is just a bit too white (even though I can’t quite get the chromed look with just paint).

But I can now honestly say I’m glad to have this first self-designed custom Transformer completed. He does look quite nice on my desk even with his imperfections.

The question now is when I’ll get to the other two Insections I had digibashed. I must admit I’m a bit burned out at the moment as the process wasn’t what I consider fun. Also, do I make changes to the coloring to match what I wished the scheme was or keep the other two the same to match how Shrapnel turned out?

I guess we’ll see if and when I get to Kickback and Bombshell.