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Robots from the Past

So, here are some garishly colored, cheap little party favor toys called Retrobots. I wonder how many of these awesome little starters have been chucked in the gutter, eaten, set fire to, run over by bicycles, and subjected to other such small child party behaviour..? Well, its time for their revenge as we do a little work to bring out their inherent awesomeness!

For starters, they need based, so I glued them on washers with Loctite indoor glue, my bonding agent of choice for dissimilar craft materials. Then they got a quick coat of Krylon spray primer, which is more expensive than the regular $.99 spraypaint I usually use, but it gives an even surface to anything. Even cheap soft plastic.

Now, this is my special favourite. I take metallic silver craft paint, and mix in just a dot of black (maybe 1:20 ratio). This gives me a tarnished "working" metal look as opposed to very shiny silver (which is good for other things). This technique also works with other colors to get green metal or bronze (with orange), etc. Anyway, they all get a base coat of working metal over the primer.

And now all that is left is a little detailing. Since I ended up with mostly multiples of three in the grouping (I would guess another bag would have a different distro of figs), I colored the eyes in red/yellow/green sets. If I am using fewer 'bots, I can use this to indicate damage state (high/medium/low) or disposition (hostile/unaware/friendly) for the robots. At their price point ($20/50), each set of three is only $1.20 each. And I get at least three different ways to play them out of that.

The reference figures in the pic are some of Bob Murch's Dangerous Dames. My money is on the ladies to win.

Some of the other details I did was to hit the highlights with a silver Sharpie marker to make some metal color contrasts.

I'm not sure whether the 'bots are fighting or partying with Forrest Harris' Knuckleduster figures. I'm not sure there's a big difference between the two...

Here we have a few facing down some Space Marines. I took some leftover weapons I had and upgraded a set of these guys.

The screenheads got a little more upgrade. First, I used some spare beads and tentacles to give a few of them appendages. I am pretty impressed that I was able to pull off the screen thing I wanted for those. I had to apply the white paint with an X-Acto knife, but it not only came out pretty well, but it was mostly what I intended. Since these guys didn't get a R/Y/G for the heads, I gave them 1/2/3 on the antennae.

You didn't think I could do this without some heavier mods, did you? :) Well, I couldn't. I repositioned the arms and heads of the cyclopses. I never really got the design on the bottom ones. So, I made their heads into biohaz containers and put some snake and dino heads I had lying around (doesn't everyone?) on the bodies. I like the terrain pieces and the little guys. Why do space lizards always have to be big?

And here are a couple character figures. Ninjabot happened because I needed to pull one of the cyclopses out to make numbers. R3n3g@d3-X was the only 'bot of his type in the bag. I think that is a GW gun I gave him (I also had to raise his arm).

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