65: SS-GE01 Bumblebee (WFC)
While the Bayverse is by far my favorite part of Transformers, I really enjoy the Cybertron games too! I had WFC Autobots on my DS back in the day and played it a ton, and eventually got to play Fall of Cybertron on the Xbox 360. I'm not sure how many figures from this line I'll be picking up, but I had to get Bee!
- Robot Mode -
Working with WFC Bee is a little different from most of my customs since there wasn't as much greebling and detail as the designs I'm more used to. There was still a lot of satisying details I got to add though, such as the red striping on the wheels and the gunmetal sections on the legs!
I also removed the black paint on the front section, since this section is yellow on the game model. One neat detail I'm really happy I picked out is the little bit of one of the alt mode flaps that sticks out under the chest, I painted it in gunmetal with some red bits to make it look like Bee's lower abdomen! I think it helps the figure's proportions a little bit, too.
You'll notice that I covered up the original red lines on the "headlight" sections with black, this was done intentionally as these stripes are details that are present in robot mode on the video game model, but not in vehicle mode. I liked the look without the red stripes in alt mode more than the look of robot mode with them, so I omitted that detailing.
The weapons saw the same detailing as bot mode with a gunmetal base, yellow sections, red energon markings, and weathering. The sword was trickier, and after at least 3 different attempts, I found a shade of pink with a paler central glow that I liked.
The bots in War for Cybertron are all fairly weathered, so I made sure to pick that out with Bee, using model wash and dry brushing to simulate that worn and damaged appearance.
- Alt mode -
In alt mode, my chief concern was the rear window, which is unpainted on the original figure. I painted the area in black, then added the thin red striping. For the Autobot logo, I initially used a sticker I got from a ShowZ order, but the symbol didn't show up very well on the dark background. I ended up painting over the sticker, which actually went much more smoothly than I thought it would! Definitely wasier than the Decepticon logo I painted on Mixmaster a while ago.
Besides the back window, I repainted the outer sections of the wheels (from the red bands outwards), removed the aforementioned black paint on the front, and made sure there wasn't any exposed yellow plastic on the side window sections. Weathering concluded my work on this mode!
Paint used:
Testor's enamels:
- Gloss red
- Gloss tangerine
Acrylics:
- Craftsmart Gunmetal
- Craftsmart gloss red + Decoart gloss white (mixed for pink color on sword)
- Decoart gloss shimmering silver
- Decoart metallic copper
- Decoart gloss yellow + orange (mixed with a small amount of black for yellow color)
- Decoart gloss white + black (mixed for gray color)
- Folkart metallic blue sapphire + Anita's craft paint metallic turquoise (mixed for repainted eyes)
- Folkart gloss black