Project Rodimus: Coming along great!

The last few nights have been filled with paint, blood, tears, sweat, sanding polishing buffing, resanding, polishing and buffing. Oh buffing...especially today. My fingers are aching from buffing this paint to a glorious shine. I never got good paint jobs on my model kits up until recently when I decided to paint my stuff like I would a real car. That means, sanding then primering, the base coating, then clear coating x4, then wet-sanding, then clearcoating, then wet-sanding and finally laborous polishing to achieve a nice shine.

Here is a before and after picture of the exact Rodimus I painted.

Well, I guess it paid off because Rodimus is looking darn good. It is REALLY difficult to keep pieces from touching each other and scuffing, but the clear-coat really does a good job at keeping nicks to a minimum. Transformation, while not impossible, would require patience to avoid scuffing the finish. Since I have plans on selling this bad boy, I won't attempt it. I am just happy at the way it came out and would like to experiment a little more on my next Project Rodimus.

Front of Rodimus.

Rear of Rodimus showing the gold flaked wing. Notice the gloss on the lower legs..yeah that's tons of buffing!

I wasn't sure how he would look with a chromed face, but I took a chance. That's the only way to find out!

I didn't want to leave the leg panels red, so I painted them Charcoal Gray. It has a beautiful metallic flake to it.

At the last second I decided the legs should be glossy to match the rest of the figure. It looked a little of with just colored plastic.

Oh yes, his Rodimus Prime face-swap gimmick still intact!

Again, I used a chrome finish for his Rodimus Prime face.

He still has his teeny Matrix which I will be applying a chrome finish to. The gold outer casing on the Matrix will be painted the same gold color as his wing.

Oh, my bad! Did I forget to mention he now has an LED Gimmick? Oh yeah. The best part is that his Matrix is still removeable. I was proud of this one. It works off a button battery with a micro switch which is conveniently located in the drivers compartment. Unfortunately, to transform him, you would have to remove the gimmick. Hey I'm only human.

I am SOOO happy that I was able to integrate an LED Matrix into this figure. The design does not allow much space to include the power-source, so I had to use a THIN button battery, a micro-switch that I lost about 10 times while putting it together, and the thinnest wire you have ever seen...literally one strand. Again, transformation is possible, but alas, the LED feature has to be removed to accomplish transformation because of the wires.

Overall, it is coming out great. I still have a couple of details here and there to finish so check here for updates. In the next few days I will also be detailing the drivers compartment. I almost don't want to sell it.

Oh and here he is next to Takara's version.