Friday 10 July 2020

A very special commission

Hello everyone, 

Jonathan, my eldest son turned 10 this year.
He's become increasingly interested in board games and tabletop games with me and my wife, so I wanted to give him a special gift for big boys.
Another thing he kind of likes are these pop-culture shows such as Transformers and Pokemon, that and Hot Wheels.
Convenience has it that I recently came across an Australian company from Queensland who has developed a Transformers rip-off miniatures game called 'Bot War'. Which seemed like the perfect gift to me. Funny enough, the thing he was most stoked about when he got the box was the ruler inside 😁.

The models themselves are 8-10mm scale, which means that the robots, while varying in size, are between 35-50mm tall. 
While very crisp and slightly bendable, the plastic resin they're using has two fundamental flaws. 
First is the fact it doesn't take superglue very well, the glue tends to flow around and pool, causing a crust when it finally dries. 
And secondly, the're a hell to clean. I tried filing, scraping, shaving, sanding, nothing seems to work. Even now not all of the mould lines are completely gone and I had to repair some details with greenstuff already. 
All of these flaws made them more than a bit of a challenge to prepare and paint. There are a lot of flat surfaces, making it hard to hide any mistakes. 
Considering the challenge ahead, I decided to paint up his models myself as that's one thing he's not too keen on himself. 

I still need to do the villainous Atlanticans, but here are the Vigilantes from the starter set:
  • This is the leader called General Duke, apart from the missing wheels and up-turned visor he looks exactly as Optimus Prime. 
  • My favourite model from the set: Wolf
  • Love the pose on this one, not sure what he's transforming into though. He's called Aegis, which doesn't really tell me much either. 
  • Another colour scheme I blatantly ripped of from an official Transformers model. In Bot War she's called Angel and again I'm not sure what she's supposed to be in vehicle mode, She's got two pairs of small wheels on the back of her legs, but nothing else that hints towards a kind of vehicle.
  • The creator made some strange design choices when he created these bots in my humble opinion. This one's name suggests he's some kind of race car (Topstar), although he's quite bulky and looks more like some kind of construction vehicle to me. So I went with a very different colour scheme compared to the one on the website.

Size comparison, I have to start using a different kind of ruler because this one is pretty hard to read with its reflective surface.



The official set, I don't mean to brag but I think mine look just as good 😉😁.


That's it for this week, currently enjoying the term 2 holiday with my kids. Won't be doing much in the next week as we're going on a road trip. 

Stay safe everyone, until next time!

Wouter



14 comments:

  1. Woooooooa! They're looking awesome!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much for your kind comment again Michal, appreciate it a lot!

      Delete
  2. What a wonderful gift for your son, always find the kids like something more that you've worked on for them. Hope you have a safe road trip

    ReplyDelete
  3. They've painted up lovely, your clean up work must have been most excellent. This makes me think of the Transformers movie with its cheesy music score too :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent work on these! Very clean, sharp lines.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fantastic work & paint-job ! They look awesome !
    I've always been a fan of transformers & always will be.
    Greetings

    ReplyDelete
  6. Better than the studio ones mate!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Better than the studio ones except for the yellow one. In that case I like both equal. Love the studio blue but you know, bumblebee.

    Shape wise it reminds me of the head masters.

    Damn I feel like a terrible (adult) person envying so much a kid. Too bad I'd have to shave my pornstache to look like a kid. 😖

    Me wants robots now. Go paint the deceptic... I mean the generic bad dudes. Hurry up!

    ReplyDelete
  8. A very special commission indeed :) and truly a great paint job to boot :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm not very much into Transformers, but those make me really drool!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can't apologize enough for my late reply to everyone who commented here. August has been a crazy month and I didn't do much hobby wise.
    Sorry (with a bow) and thank you for the many comments!
    I really loved painting these 'not Transformers' (we're forbidden to use the word and many others on Facebook to avoid an IP lawsuit), but I'm a bit a loss regarding the opposition. They're more bland and don't really spark my imagination. Guess I simply have to whip myself back into action.

    They're not Decepticons by the way Javi, these are appropriately called the 'Deceivers' in the game. A force I'm actually thinking of picking up for myself 😉. https://tradersgalaxy.com.au/product/deceivers-army-deal-crowdfund/

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Wouter hope this message finds you well as haven't seen you around on the blogosphere for a while now

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey mate, yeah I know. It's been a while since I last posted anything here. The main reason being that blogge does not work really well on my phone (which is like my primary platform for social media). So I have moved on to Instagram and Facebook (on which I just send you a friendship request). Are you on Instagram as well?

      Delete
    2. Not currently on instagram, but my daughter is going to set that up over Christmas hopefully, and accepted the friend request as soon as I spotted it.
      Know what you mean about the new version of Blogger, it has been a difficult transition.

      Delete