Goblin-Class Fighter 83

One of my first ships ever was a Monogram Panzer IV turret with sheet styrene for wings and automobile engine/trans for guns. It graced the front cover of the premiere issue of Amazing Cinema and appeared in the first television commercial for Lone Star Comics, filmed by Dune SFX director Ernie Farino. It was such a no-brainer, design-wise, that I'd never been tempted to build it again. Until I saw this production photo from the new Transformers movie.

Basically, it's a box with forward stretched arms and lots of floating panels all over. I remembered having an all-but-finished Tamiya Panzer II model that I'd even gone to the trouble of battle-damaging the toolchest on the back of the turret. Yes, that does complicate things considerably. I had to grind-off a lot of that corner and add a sensor thingie to disguise it. I used mech legs for the arms. Normally, the arms would end in guns but this time I added propulsion jets to the ends. The hole in the turret's bottom was covered by a 1/72 Opel truck cab.

Painting was a fiasco. First, I wanted green, so I painted it green. Then I remembered once painting a robot black and airbrushing a wash of red over it to make brown. Well, I can make green by washing blue over yellow, so I painted it... Not yellow, but orange. The wash didn't work out, so... Back to a coat of green.

I always liked green and purple so I painted some purple panels on it. I added still more color with red dragon rub-on decals from a pinecar decal set, and train engine warning stripes.