Transformers: Machine Wars Mirage

       

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Original Kit:
Road Course Race Car
Made By:
Ertl Collectibles (kit #31720)
Scale:
1/24
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Transformers Machine Wars Mirage
MW Mirage left side MW Mirage right side MW Mirage rear

 
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Back when I bought the kit that became Machine Wars Prowl, I had picked up a second one to turn into his mold mate Mirage. But having the kit in the stash was as far as I got for about two decades. First, I couldn't figure out how I wanted to do the rear spoiler - back then, white printed decals were only possible through silkscreening or via the rare and expensive ALPS printer. While I had successfully printed on white stock color matched to the painted background, that brought me to the second major problem: no paints on the market were a good match to the green plastic Hasbro used on the figure. The first problem was solved during the period when Fireball Modelworks was doing for-hire print work, while the second was finally solved when I discovered that Tamiya had added TS-102 Cobalt Green to their color lineup. Finally, a near-perfect color match was available and I had all the decals ready to go.

I stripped the car back to bare metal, gave it a thorough cleaning, and then a base coat of white primer followed by TS-26 Pure White. After giving that a chance to dry, it was masked off and shot with the TS-102. The results were exactly what I was hoping for, just a few minor touch-ups were needed and then I painted the inside of the body black and hit the seat with a shot of Dullcote. Assembly took all of five minutes, including a dot of superglue at each wing to secure them a little better - poor Prowl rattles a bit as he gets moved around. Once that was done, I added the decals which were a combination of the aforementioned custom print and my own work.

 

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