Holy crud, unexpected! Thanks for this!
That's really awesome!!! What paints/dyes did you use? I'm trying to do a couple of customs myself, but not sure how to start them off! I heard that RIT dye can be used for the base color and then model paint for all the apps, any truth to that? give us a taste of how to start and what problems one might face!
I used Krylon Fusion black, Rustoleaum Grape, Testors acryl purple, Testors acryl teal, Testors Model Masters silver and lastly Testors acryl black for touch up.
I have never used dyes but the idea intrigues me. I haven't really looked into it much but what I've seen is that your color of die + base plastic color gives you your end result color. That's kind of scary when you think about and honestly, some of the dye jobs I've seen aren't terribly great. Seems most customizers prefer paint including me.
I'll be honest, most of my customs are minor works like added paint details or a new head. It's rare for me to do a full repaint. Anyhow, every custom regardless of how hardcore it gets just starts with an idea and imagination. From there I just run with it and the plan tends to change as I go along, see the progress and start to think about things more as they become reality. The only problems I've really run into are laziness. This particular idea sat in my head for 2 years while the toy itself sat in a bag tucked away in a tote for just as long. Once I actually got started painting it sat around for nearly 6 months in parts just lying in a tupperware dish with the base coat on. :oops:
The only problems I've really run into were on my first custom (a black repaint of universe 2.0 Sunstreaker) I made the mistake of painting the joints. This made everything super tight and the toy became impossible to transform. I had to disassemble, sand parts and reassemble. Work that could have been avoided by simple masking but I didn't even think about it. That's still my biggest issue with making customs. It's just not possible to NOT paint some joints and because these are high friction areas the paint chips. Careful upkeep, a watchful eye and steady hand after your done goes a long way to keeping things nice. That and touchup paint!
