TFTM Autobot Ironhide

Ironhide was another instance of a simple repaint, a fixer-upper of a toy that I like but that had a crappy paint job. You can see an unpainted gallery of the figure as it looks out of the box HERE.

The exterior truck mode was left mostly alone, only adding a thin flat black wash all over the truck body. Also, darkened the windows a little more, for a bit more of a tinted look. Was careful to avoid painting over the 4×4 decal so as I wouldn’t have to replace it. After that, I gave the exterior a couple sprays of TESTORS FLAT DULLCOTE, because I thought it’d look better flat. And finally, I went in and touched up all the silver areas, the grill and smokestacks, rims on the tires etc, doing that last as not to have the acetone in the dullcote dillute the silver.

Bot-mode I went off, painting every inch with a metallic blue base, even under the truck parts you can’t see, and then building up with various coats of other metallics from there. From silver to gunmetal to bronzes, and even a gloss black in a few spots, all over as needed/desired. The head was especially important to get right I thought, as the stock paintjob was pretty lackluster, and didn’t really bring out all the details in the mold (which is actually surprisingly more movie accurate than you’d think at first look). From there, I did a slight dry-brushing with various custom platinum colors, but only very slight as I’m not the biggest drybrushing fan.

Topped it all off with multiple layers of blue-tinted coats of clear acylic/Future Floor Polish. Probably at least 10 coats all in all - this thing practically sparkles, which I thought was a good contrast to the flat areas of Ironhide’s truck mode which it stands next to.

Enough talking, time for pics! (PS: Yes, I realize his shoulders/the truck grill is slightly mistransformed, but I did it that way on purpose because I think it looks better, thank you very much. NERDS!)