Arcee

Front View Side View
Rear View Preview Pic (shows the arm and leg frames)

Wow, where to start with this one? When I first started working on her, I really did have no idea where to start. I just went with what I expected to be the easiest, an arm. Then I went onto the main frame of the body, then built one leg, and went from there. She was built to be the size as my other figures, roughly 1/144 Gundam size.

Arms:
I began with a frame made from strip styrene and some polycaps, as seen in the pic above. Epoxy putty was used to build up the shape of the arms, including the shoulders and the elbow "blocks". Most of the detail lines were scribed into the putty. Her gun was built from a Gundam Airmaster rifle.

Body:
The base of the body was built with sheet styrene, and then continually added on. Her shoulder pylons were built from styrene, then built up and shaped with putty. Her pelvis was made from more putty, with some ball joint pegs attached, it was desinged to rotate, but was glued for stability. Her back/car top has a small styrene frame under putty. The window is a small piece of clear plastic, and the seats are made from styrene. Her chest/car nose is a seperate piece altother. It was constructed from styrene, and then given a layer of epoxy to shape it. It snaps into place in robot mode. Again, alot of the detail lines were scribed in.

Legs:
Like the arms they were built using a frame of strip styrene and then built up with epoxy putty. The feet were built around a socket type polycap, epoxy putty was used to build the heel right onto the pc, while the front half was built onto the pegs of the pc, which enabled the front half to rotate down. Unfortunatly, due to her transformation, Arcee's thighs had to be farily large to house her calves. And again, the panel lines were scribed into the putty.

Head:
Oh man, what a job this was, it was entirely sculpted from epoxy putty. I think I had to re-sculpt the entire head twice, and the face about 4 times. I finally setteled on the current one because it was really becoming a pain. I gave up on trying to sculpt lips tiny enough for that head and ended up just drawing her mouth. I still think her chin is too thin...but oh well, it looks like Arcee to me.

Painting:
I primed the whole thing in white first, then painted the final colors on. Her pink is a fairly dark one, with a orange tint to it. I was not going to have a Barbie-pink figure gracing the same shelf as my PG Gundams and my other TF projects, and was originally going to paint her in straight red, but ended added some white and yellow to it. However I did paint her face in a very pale pink. Other colors used were Gundam Grey, Arms grey, and flat black. The detail lines were done with a Gundam marker as usual. Her Autobot logos are from Ravestrike's repro sets.

Transformation:
Remove head and hands(as usual), pop out chest piece and reattach to the polycap via the neck post. Pop off the legs, fold the calfs into thighs, and fold the feet back, now reattach the legs to the rear posts. Position the arms as shown, and she's down.

Vehicle mode:
Top View Side View
Bottom View

As you can see, she has no wheels, partly because I decided my new projects will be more Cybertronian in design, and partly because I couldn't find a good place to put them. I'm fairly satisfied with her Vehicle mode, I must admit it was quite a challange trying to make her transform on top of trying to make her look like her TV counterpart. I also included a pic of the bottom view of her vehicle mode, this lets everyone see how the parts connectec better.

Well there she is, my first full sratchbuild. It was quite a challange, and a lot of work...and I'm releived she's finally done. There was so much more I wanted to do with her, but do to her size limitations, and my own lack of appropriate parts and skill limitations, I simply could not do them. I would have liked for the legs to shift down instead of being removed, as well as have the chest acutally rotate up into position, and have the shoulder pylons slide back a bit in robot mode. Maybe someday I'll make a deluxe version that can do all these, but for now, I'm perfectly happy to have an Arcee at all.