[ryan]

I ordered a couple of Shapeways kits recently, and have finished painting up two of them, thought I'd share pictures.

This is the TF Prime FE Starscream kit by fakebusker at TFW2005. It includes replacements for the stupid-soft knee bits and head crest, which as you can tell I haven't installed in this picture, four arm missiles (2 singles, and 2 sets of 3), and the big arm blaster. He also has the arm blaster available by itself in a left hand variety, which I also picked up.

I only have Arms Micron Skywarp, so I ordered this kit in Black Strong Flexible, which means Shapeways dyed it black for me, then I used a $3 purple paint marker from Walmart, which matches up surprisingly well (more so in person). I think had I been applying it on the white plastic it would be a dead on match, instead of being just slightly darker, but then I would have had to paint all the black myself.



The only problem with kitting this kit for AM Skywarp is that he doesn't have the right mounting points on the wings, he has some drop pods or something, which have two micron ports, but it means I can't use any of the weapons in jet mode. I didn't realize this before ordering, I thought I could pull those pieces off, but so far I have been unable to. But they look nice in bot mode, and I'll probably get the Dark Energon set with the Skywarp looking translucent Starscream, Or if I can find another cheap AM Skywarp on Mandarake I'll try harder to pop the pods off.


Additionally, I ordered the TFP Cliffjumper Stranzer kit, by TreadshotA1, a weapon set meant for RID Cliffjumper. I wanted the sword blades to look kinda energon-ish, without paying the price to get it in one of the translucent materials and painting it with clear paint, so I ordered it in Red Strong Flexible. The red is a perfect match for both FE and RID Cliffjumper, and is only slightly lighter than the red paint marker from Walmart, which I ended up going over the entire blade with, which darkened it up just a bit. The black and silver are also $3 paint markers from Walmart. The silver in particular is great, as it's thicker than the regular colors and can help mask the grainy texture of the Strong Flexible material.

Here it is with RID Cliffjumper (the main reasons it's 'for' him is the knife piece can mount in one of his calves, and the block the swords/knife plug into can be stored on his back) in dual-bladed sword mode.



Dual swords, with the extra block and knife, on FE Cliffjumper.



And crossbow mode, again, FE Cliffy.



After painting, all pieces were sprayed with several layers of a plastic-safe clear coat, which helps aleviate the grainy texture of the Strong Flexible material, and adds a nice glossiness to them.

All in all, I highly recommend both of these sets, they're great addons, and not actually too expensive, in the SF.

And finally, I ordered, The Snitch, a WFC inspired bird-like thing that can fold up to fit in WFC Soundwave's chest, also by fakebusker, in Red Strong Flexible, but I haven't worked on it yet.