The Official Transformers Customiser Field Guide

WARNING:  This blog is in no way an official guide to Transformers of any kind, and features just one reference to fields.  Two if you include that reference.

There has been an awful lot said about the world of Transformers customisation over the last few years.  Some people blame it for the rise of the third party toy, some people love them for the ingenuity, some people think the Radicon section is nowadays little more than a link to Shapeways stores or ebay pages, to others it’s a hobby and the only way to get that all important niche figure.  Well a few things are for certain, it’s an ingrained part of the TF hobby and it’s not going anywhere fast.

Like most fanboy hobbies, there has always been a hardcore segment of the fan base that links to tinker.  Either arguing that something wasn’t done right in the first place, of that their thousands of hours painting miniature goblins and orks instead of chasing girls when they were young can be applied to a different hobby, and that they can do it better than Hasbro can.
As the hobby has grown on - and Hasbros continual desire to alienate their hardcore audience who meant that they still had a franchise to develop into a billion dollar brand – more and more fans have taken up the mantle of customiser in an attempt to Quantum Leap their Transformer collection and finally finish that all important CHUG 1984 line-up.  Or they just really need a pink Outback.

There are several types of customiser, and they can be identified using this handy-dandy guide:

The “My Mum says I’m talented”

Motto:  Now I can make everyone look like Hooligan!

"I'm special"

What these guys lack in talent, they make up for with enthusiasm.  They’ve got the toy and a picture of how it could look in their head, and very little else.  No disassembly, no base coat, heavy brush strokes, no real materials except what was kicking about under their bed with that Enterprise model kit they never quite got around to starting (modified Enterprise D with the extra warp nacelle from "All Good Things..." for those that care).  The finished product never quite looks like they imagined it would, but they still think it’s the most awesome thing in the world ever and insist on showing it to everyone they know in the world.  

Both of whom like it.

The Warrior

Motto: Dude!!!!!!!!!! Battle damage?

For the customiser with the love of random repaints, usually a stoner, who love tweaking toys but are not so good at giving it the perfect finish.  No, it’s much easier to filthy up the toy and claim it was intentional.  Slip with a scalpel?  War wound.  Shitty paint job?  Duh, off road 4x4 pick up mud, dumb-ass.  Burnt a hole with the soldering iron?  Carbon scorring dude!  It’s battle damage, right? 

Yeah, no.  Fuck off.  I’m sure they’ll blend right in to your official toy collection looking like that.

The Combiner Harvester

Motto:  Hmm, a spare Unicron body?

They're renaming the episode
"Grimlocks Big Wallet"

Many a Transformers fan first noticed that Transformers customs could be more than repainting every Starscream black or blue with the proliferation of Devastator and other combiners that Hasbro decide don’t have a place in their market.  With three or four Hasbro Transformers and a little imagination (or lack thereof), and a spare Unicron or two, anyone can paint a few constructicon vehicles green, stick them on a Unicron and voila, Sort-of-Devastator.  Another popular custom idea is to get a few cars, paint them Stunticon colours, fasten them to a Unicron body and voila, instant Sort-of-Menasor.

Okay, that might be undermining a lot of peoples attempts, and certainly it downplays the amount of work that goes into these custom, which still fetch a huge price on eBay even with the recent uprising of third party companies.  As this ebay sale of the recently sold King Octox Computron (pictured) can attest to, with a hefty final sale of $1,575, when they're done well, they're done very well.

For many people, this was the intro and endgame to customising, but TFC’s definitive Hercules toy has left  a million Unicron torsos unloved, soon to be filling a major landfill site near ET for the Atari 2600.

The Cheapskate

Motto:  How much?

And I only had to make all the white black
and all the black white.  EASY!

Hasbro / Takara announce a toy.  An exclusive toy.  An expensive exclusive toy.

The Cheapskate can make that toy, and dude, it will only cost ten bucks, which is way more than they should have to pay for a god-damned deluxe in the first place, and they remember when a basic would cost £7, all the trees were fields and all these buildings had businesses being all industry in them and men were men and nothing had warning labels and politicians were bastards but they were our bastards and...

Yeah, the cheapskate can make that toy, cheaper than Hasbro can make it.  And they only spent £10 on the toy.  Win.

Although, they did spend £12 on paints, £6 on brushes, £2 on white spirit, £49 replacing the table in the front room they stripped the lacquer off with white spirit before the wife sees it, and two days off work to make the figure / rebuild the flat-pack table (probably minimum wage, say £48 a day).  Yeah, they're “winners” alright.

The Toy Goth

Motto:  Do you do that in black? 

I like toys.  I have some.  I’d like more.  I’ll buy it again.  What colour to paint it?  Hmm, black goes with anything.  No seriously, anything.

Guilty as charged on this one, but I blame Takara for launching a million black repaints before I even though about picking up dye or spray. 

Yeah, it’s lazy, yeah, it’s unimaginative.  But damn, do they look good?  And how well do black base coats turn out.  CHUG Black Tracks?  Check.  G2 Drag-strip?  Check.  Black G1 Overlord…well, give me time.

The Shapeways Whore

Motto:  Dude, when you get a second can you make me…

Damn, I identify with these guys as well.

We all know that one guy who is fucking awesome, and has recently taken the plunge to full 3D design.  Maybe he has a Shapeways account like Calloway Customs, maybe you can convince him that it’s really about time Needlenose had an accurate modern day interpretation and he needs to make the head.

The best thing about knowing one of these guys is anything is possible.

The best thing about being one of these guys is anything is possible if there were just a few more hours in the day.

The worst thing about both, is that anything is possible.  Every single toy released could do with a new head and a paint job to be that guy, or a new set of wings and a gun, or a new engine block and a strap-on.  Suddenly, the hours go by, the orders mount up, costs go through the roof and WIP projects keep being put on hold waiting for that one new part which will make it perfect.  The only way to make it work is to become…

The Mold Master

Dare to be $11 per add-on?

Motto:  It’s in the post.  I sent it yesterday.

These guys have taken the love of their hobby and turned it into a way of making a nice little extra on the side, with add-on kits.  Maiden Japan and Venkstas Renderform are my favourite of these little entrepreneurs.  Ingenuity and knowing your market are the name of the game here, competing against other add-on kits and third party companies. 
Maybe your troop builders need a little more variety, maybe you need to be able to recreate a 3D diorama of “The Carwash of Doom” for next Botcon (Fuck that noise, I’m copywriting this idea now!), maybe these guys secretly have stashes of shit Hasbro toys they picked up at clearance and are trying to raise the market value on RTS Bumblebees???  Hmmm…

The Factory Finish

Motto:  Well, I would have done it like this…

I see the flaws...pilgrim.

Nothing is every good enough for these guys, and I try to subscribe to their theory of getting the figure as close to a Hasbro factory finish as perfect but without becoming a massive asshole along the way.  I like a clean surface, no visible brush strokes, no chipping, clean lines on the dremel, full preparation including washing, isopropyl decal / tampograph removal, another wash, pins removed, tyres removed, masking tape applied, base coat ready…
I don't like doing this, but it's a means to an end, as I like my custom toys to blend into my shelves with the other hundreds of Transformers as seamlessly as possible.

Never ask to show them your toy, as all they will see is the flaws.  Sure, they might be able to do it better, but they spend so long talking about it they sometimes forget to do it, or by the time they almost have the project finished, Hasbro announce an imminent release of RTS Grapple.  Yeah, been there, done that.

It’s all in the preparation for these guys, but if you get it right, the end result is well worth it.  The only problem with these guys is they can grow into something much more sinister…

The Nemesis Sabrina Frenzy Rumble King X

Motto:  Kill me, please…

Look closer, it's not as cool as first glimpse suggests.

Before you say, “I wish I had their job, they just paint toys all day”, re-read their motto.

These guys were trail breaking entrepreneur pilgrims annoying metaphorical early adopters of customising, and they were fucking good at it too, quickly realising their skill was a real money maker.  These guys can make anything out of a junker Cy-Kill, half a Firecon and your Mums washing machine, they're THAT good.  And they know it.

The trouble is, everyone knows it, and everyone wants one of their pieces of work, so people approach and try to commission a piece.  The customizer (with a “z” this time as most of the big names seem to be from the Americas) knows they have too much work on so they just quote an insanely high price.  Knowing their worth is worth it, the customisee agrees, maybe gives a deposit or pays some up front and gets a rough date of when to expect the toy.

The trouble is, the toy is nearly always going to take longer than quoted, and there is now a huge amount of money at stake for all involved.  This “fun way of monetising a hobby” has now become a job: Miserable hard work with deadlines, repetitiveness and someone constantly on your back to finish your piece of “art”. 

Way to go dude, you just killed your hobby.  And the notion of fun.  And your soul.

So there you have it, we all conform to one or more of these archetypes, which will be explored in more detail in Joesph Campbells first posthumously written book about mythology; "Dissecting the Nerd, Kitbashing the Brain".