T - B.U.G. - Created June 16, 2009

T - B.U.G. was a project started by Cyberdyne in the year 2029. Decades after the Cybertronian aliens crashed on Earth and brought their war to us the machines have taken over. All that is left of the aliens' war is rubble and parts.

Cyberdyne harvested the remains of one of the aliens to develop a prototype for a transforming Terminator. They wanted something with the capabalities of transforming into a fast moving car, and having all the cabapabilities and more of a Terminator. When Cyberdyne realized that the alien wasn't just mechanical, but an actual sentient being, they realized the limitless potential. So Cyberdyne canabilized the alien into what it called T-B.U.G., standing for Biomechanical Ultimate Guardian, meant to be the last line of defense for Cyberdyne, Skynet, and the Machine War.

Pretty cool backstory huh? Well, I thought it was cool when I thought of it. So anyway, down to business. T-B.U.G. here was created using a Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Bumblebee as the base. I also took a T-R.I.P. figure and cut off random pieces from it and glued it to the surface of all the exterior "car parts" of Bumblebee. Then I cut off one of the gatling guns from a T-1 figure, attached a magnet in the base, and a magnet on the inside of Bumblebee's left "car hood" piece that it attached to his left arm. This way, in robot mode and in car mode you can attach or remove the gun at your liesure without having to worry about an ugly peg hole or something like that. I also cut off the jaw from the T-R.I.P. figure and glued it to Bumblebee's face.

After this I began painting. I painted Bumblebee from head to toe, in every nook and cranny, with Testors Gun Metal. After that I drybrushed some silver over it. As you can tell, I wanted the car surface pieces, the "armor" pieces to be darker that the robotic pieces which I drybrushed with more silver. This resulted in bringing out the detail quite excellently. In some areas, (like his eyes, and some of those nooks I mentioned) I painted a deep red, because well...Terminators have red eyes.

I also changed up the missle he came with. Bumblebee came with a missle that launched from his cannon arm, but I never liked the look of it. It's supposed to be a fireball, but doesn't look like one! So I cut up the fire hand attachments that came with a 3.75 inch Marvel Universe Ms. Marvel, and strategically glued them around the end of the missle, resulting in a fireball that actually looks like...a fireball. The Gatling Gun attachment also fires a missle.

And as you can tell from the photos he still transformers quite nicely even after all the painting and pieces I glued onto the surface. I just thought this would make for a cool and original concept and also be quite a challenge, since I had to cover up all that yellow.