Cadet 2, fashionably late reporting Furai Optimus Prime

[PilotMM]

Hello group!
Sorry, I am late to post. I have been working diligently the past few days! I picked up the Flame Toys Furai Optimus Prime IDW Version kit. I am a huge Star Wars fanboy but with so many great builds going on here I decided to go a little different direction. Plus my kids are crazy about Transformers right now. Talking to the LHS attendant, he seems to think that Furai might actually be a division of Bandi or previous employees. I would venture to guess he is not far off in his assessment because the kit is extremely well put together. My only gripe is that there are no water slide decals, just peel and stick stickers. I plan on painting most of the stickers that look like they can be easily painted and will just settle for peel and stick for the ones I cannot recreate.

So as for the build! There are a ton of parts. Because I don't like the look of unpainted plastic kits I opted to prime and paint everything, even if it was the same color as the plastic. This led me to priming some stuff on the sprue and then using a ton of blue-tac and cocktail sticks to paint each part. The fun part is I am doing some basic weathering as I go and its really turning out nice. I plan on doing just a little chipping since I am making him look a little battle worn.

Here is the box.
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I opted not to do photos of the sprues only because in the instructions and on the back of the box they have a really good parts map.

I have to run to work so there will be more to follow but here is a teaser shot of his chest.

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Thanks for checking in, I will report back later tonight or tomorrow.

-M

[Twokidsnosleep]

Super cool project

You are not late, perfect timing in fact

[Kingdan]

This is gonna be cool

[kiwigav]

Nice

thats gona be a build that meets more than the eye

[PilotMM]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Kiwi that is my plan, I want to make this something that you can stare at for a while and pick up different parts. I am hand painting the different shock inserts so there is a little more detail picked for example.


Ok here is some actual build updates! For some reason, Flickr took a long time to upload my photos but they are ready now.

So as I mentioned after each part was primed I cut and trimmed all the sprue gates. I then used bluetac (orange in this case) to mount everything to toothpicks.

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In this photo, you can see the 8 different metallic paints that I will be using in some form or another. I love the fact that Tamiya gives you options, Titanium Silver, Metalic Grey, Gunmetal Grey, Chrome Silver, Flat Aluminum, Titanium Gold, Gold Leaf, Copper, and Metalic blue. So far the only ones I haven't used are the Golds and Copper. That might change

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Gun Metal

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All the parts that are suppose to be red.
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Are now red! The fun part was allowing myself a little creative liberty here. I would go over some places darker (deeper) and leave some sections lighter. Depending on which side you look at there are little variations in reds. I know that the Peterbuild Truck would all be the same tone but this is a Transformer! Who is protecting the All-Spark here on earth!

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This is his shoulder joint and will hardly be seen but I really took my time with the panel liner to make all the detail pop. I pretty much did this for all of him so far.

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This was fun! All of these parts are Chrome Silver but I figured his face would/should be a little different. I hit it with a dab of smoke and then barely hit it with some red. Unfortunately, this photo doesn't do it great justice. When it is completed I will snap some photos outside in good light.

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Speaking of creative liberties; I added a little red/blue shading. This is his leg cover and the box art (which is great) kind of shows some coloration going on there. *shrugs* I am sure I will hit it with some Smoke after its put together and I can see how the light plays on it when its together better.

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Check out his abs! There is a crummy sticker that goes on here that is supposed to show all the black lines of the grill, I just used panel liner. I also hand painted the little silver squares there.

So this is my favorite part so far. Here are the crummy stickers. The big rectangular ones go on his forearm shields.
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I thought long and hard about how I could do this. I totally messed up the first one and stripped it, sanded it and it will have to be repainted red. BUT! This allowed me to come up with this:
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This was after the first coat of panel liner in the recesses. I have since soaked it down and the dark likes look sooo much better. I plan on carefully cutting out the Autobots logo and just sticking it in the middle unless I can come up with something else.

Lastly
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So the way the two parts to go together for his... um... junk... left a nasty seam. I didn't realize this until I got it together. Bummer because I would have TET them together, sanded them down, primed them and painted them if I had known. So I had to call an audible, extra thin CA smoothed with a toothpick then sanded down. I handpainted the sanded part and it looks.... Ok. I will probably hit it with some smoke to make it a little less noticeable and I am trying to think how I can weather it, I need to look at some photos online of weathered and battle worn chrome.


So today I spent the evening prepping the last parts for primer. It's all the blue parts and there are a TON of blue parts. They give you like 5 options for his hands; holding his gun, fist closed, open hand, pointing, giving the bird, ok maybe not giving the bird but you have options. I am also not sold on using Tamiya's Blue for blue parts so I might spend some time mixing paints to see if I can make it look closer to what I think is right. Maybe Tamiya Blue and a dab of Tamiya Sky Blue to brighten it up just a bit?? IDK. I did a test coat of just the blue and it looks good, just a little dark.


That's where I am so far. I am guessing I will be close to finished by the weekend? Thanks for checking in!
-M

[Kingdan]

Great progress I like it

[PilotMM]

"All right all right all right!"

Spent, what felt like an eternity, priming blue parts this morning. Ran out of nearly all types of thinner and had to make a quick stop at the LHS. While I was there I decided to look at paints because I still wasn't sold on my blue and had a Viola moment!

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Colbolt Blue! Perfect! Can you see all the hand options?? BTW I wasn't wrong; there is an option for "The Finger." Its the thumb

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You can see where it lines up. I was going to try to mix something but it's just perfect.

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BAM!

Here is the ONLY thing I have left to base coat paint. Still trying to decide on what color to make it because I know it's going to be heavily weathered.
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So tomorrow will involve a 5K run, putting some pieces together, riding my bicycle to watch fireworks, maybe an adult beverage and then weathering. I am really excited with how this guy is coming out!


Thanks for stopping in.
-M

[gaz45]

Looking great so far mate

[Twokidsnosleep]

Superb
Absolutely loving this

[jmurphy18]

this is looking great! Build and color look great