60: SS-100 Bumblebee (Rise of the Beasts)
Just in time for the new ROTB trailer, here's my custom ROTB Bumblebee!
UPDATE: With the better reference pictures we have now, I spruced up my paint work by repainting the face, chest, plasma cannon, and some smaller details like the yellow parts on the feet and the red pieces on the alt mode bumper.
- Robot Mode -
For robot mode, I actually started with a base of a new paint - Folkart gunmetal gray. My usual Decoart gunmetal has been out of stock at every place I've visited, but this new paint seems to be identical. After adding the gunmetal base on the arms, legs, and torso, I used both lighter and darker gunmetals to add more contrast between different pieces. The more difficult sections were the stripes on the chest and arms, which required several attempts and some back and forth with painting and scraping to get looking right. The chest was additonally complicated due to the layered pieces Bee has in that section in robot mode, but I'm happy with how I was able to recreate that.
I painted up the plasma cannon in yellow and gunmetal with some dark gunmetal and silver accents (though in hindsight, I should have just removed the gray paint on it instead of painting the yellow), and detailed the arm blade. For the head sculpt, I painted a light gunmetal for the face and around the eyes, painted the Autobot logo (or spot where it used to be) in silver, and added some thin lining around the center of the helmet.
- Alt Mode -
Now looking at Bee's off-road 77 Camaro mode, the first step was to add the black trim around the sides of alt mode. I did this with flat gunmetal, picking out the trim on the sides and back, picking out the rivets on the sides with silver. I repainted the tail lights with a brighter gloss red and silver trim, and continued the stripes on the back of alt mode all the way to the spoiler (from what I've seen of set pics, this appears to be the case on the actual Camaro). Speaking of stripes, I removed the roof stripes using isopropyl alcohol, my first time doing so. It worked really nicely! I then repainted the yellow around the windshield, picked out the lights in silver, and used black paint for the mirrors and door handles. For the front, I repainted the headlights to be slightly more accurate and added the orange reflective pieces.
Paint used:
Testor's enamels:
- Gloss tangerine
- Gloss red
- Metallic silver
- Flat gunmetal
- Flat sunflower
Acrylics:
- Decoart gloss shimmering silver
- Decoart emperor gold
- Decoart gloss yellow
- Folkart metallic blue sapphire + Anita's craft paint metallic turquoise (mixed for repainted eyes)
- Craftsmart gunmetal
Other:
- Krylon gloss coat