*Review* 3A WWR EMGY Dropcloth 1.5

INTRO

ThreeA, to me, has always been about robots. Even now, with all their Tomorrow Kings, Tommy Mission, Zombs and pointy chested, long legged vixens, big ol’ rusty robots are the first thing that pops into my head whenever the toy company comes up. It was in fact a random image of a WWRp Dirty Deeds Bertie that first caught my attention and led me, cash clinched in hand, to ThreeA’s doorstep. A few purchases under my belt later, still wide-eyed and bushy tailed as one tends to be when their toe is first dipped into ThreeA waters, I set out with the seemingly obtainable goal to get one of each kind of bot in my collection. At first, I was keeping to the smaller, more obtainable bots thinking the larger bot were just too expensive for someone like me who planned to only be a casual collector with a tidy, reasonable collection. Ha! If I only knew then what I know now.

A month or so into my earnest collecting, I accidentally purchased a incredibly well priced, WWR Dropcloth Slaughterhouse. At the time, I didn’t have a solid understanding of the various labels 3A tossed on their various lines, so the lack of the letter “p” generally tagged on the end of the “WWR”, escaped my notice. I foolishly believed it to be another 1/12th bot given the reasonable cost.

Foolishly or not, when the dual hatchet wielding, 1/6 bot arrived on my doorstep, I was thrilled. While a WWRp Bertie reeled me in, it was definitely a WWR Droppie that truly sunk it’s hooks in. Dropcloths were and still are my favorite robots from ThreeA’s arsenal of cool toys. They’re just so pose-able and fun to play around with. Also, their reasonable scale makes them easy to collect and display with a variety of other sized figures. I’ve rotated out, bought and sold quite a bit of my collection over the years for one reason or another, but I have one bot that is securely locked into my “if there was a house fire, grab that” mental category, the WWR EMGY Dropcloth.

In my opinion, he’s simply the coolest looking bot I own, standing front and center on my shelf.

The EMGY colorway is understandably popular. In many cases, it’s rarity seems to be the driving point. But for me, it’s the stark use of  rusty yellow paired with dark black, silver and most importantly, red. Since the first EMGY WWRp bertie (speaking of rare), the EGMY color-way has gone through various changes. Newer bots, like Caesar and particularly Armstrong skipped the red accents altogether. It might seem like such a small thing, but in my opinion, it’s absence caused the newer bots to come out looking a lot less exciting than the original. Even the EMGY grunt, which I think is just a sick figure to have, lacks basically any other color accents at all, leaving him with a color scheme an interior designer might refer to as, “the dirty banana”.

When ThreeA teased us with the first Dropcloth follow up back at SDCC 2012, the Dropcloth 1.5, I was pretty excited.  When it was announced that the EMGY color-way would be among the first available, I was even more excited. Once I saw that the paint app would be a return to EMGY glory days (ie: reds, blacks and silvers) I may have fist pumped the air, shouted, “YEAH BABY!” and held that pose for moment, freeze frame style, in true 80’s tradition.

ThreeA once again made the EMGY drop a random “rare” drop, despite it’s popularity. On the plus side, it was a rare drop seemingly far more obtainable than any other I’ve experienced. In fact, the first time I logged onto bambaland during the sale (which featured Peaceday as the regular drop) I saw EGMY up and purchased him with little fuss. Almost every other time I checked the site, he was still there. I like to think that whoever wanted him at the time had a pretty good opportunity to snag him.

With my personal EMGY history deets out of the way, I am thrilled to finally have EMGY 1.5 in my hands. Keep reading to see how well I think  he stacks up to the OG.

Here we go..
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THE WORKSHOP – Custom Brit Squad Dropcloth by KidAkira

Twenty Seven. That’s how many high quality photo’s the mad custom ninja KidAkira sent me to go along step by step with this intensely in-depth  Dropcloth customizing Workshop. On top of that, he chose my favorite bot as his subject matter. I’m absolutely blown away by how many tasty nuggets he packed into this thing. Thanks so much brutha! I hope all you good people learn a ton from it and enjoy!

– Knives

Firstly, Thanks to Knives for inviting me to do a custom tutorial for Rad Toy review. Today I’m going to go through the process of turning a 1/6 DIY Dropcloth figure into a Brit Squad Dropcloth…
The first stage for this custom was to dismantle the Dropcloth (DC) into parts. This makes it much easier to work on each part and doesn’t leave you with any hard to reach areas. DC’s are fairly easy to pull apart, remembering to always be gentle, and the use of a hairdryer to soften the vinyl parts will make it easier still…
The next stage is to mask off each piece for laying down the basic colours. Once ready each section was sprayed with 2 to 3 light coats of paint…
Once these parts are thoroughly dry, the masking tape is removed and a very light layer of clear gloss lacquer is applied. I find the gloss finish helps the decals adhere better to the surface… I won’t go into Decal making and application in this tutorial)… Once the decals are in place and dry all the pieces are given a light coat of clear satin lacquer…
Now to begin the weathering process. For this DC i decided to go for slightly less rust than i have gone for on my previous Brit Squad bots. To achieve this affect is very simple. I use a synthetic sponge torn into small pieces to give a nice uneven texture. By dabbing the sponge into the paint and wiping the excess off, use tissue, hand or jeans; then stipple the sponge onto the areas you want weathered. Apply more or less depending on your desired effect. I used 3 different paints to achieve this finish. Citadel paints Adeptus Battlegrey, for the first layer followed by Tin Bitz and finally Mithril Silver…
The next stage of weathering is using washes. This is probably the easiest part of any custom that requires weathering and is hard to get wrong. The 2 washes I used were again from Citadel paints; Devlan Mud and Ogryn Flesh. Using a soft medium sized brush, apply the first layer of wash liberal over the areas your weathering. In this case, everywhere. Once applied, let sit for a little under a minute, then using a tissue or soft cloth, dab the excess was off. Repeat until the desired effect is achieved then repeat with second colour wash…
Once the washes have dried completely, another layer of clear satin lacquer is applied and your DC should now look like this…
Now it’s time for reassembly. Again, the DC’s are fairly easy to dismantle and put back together but the hairdryer will help if your having trouble. And again remember to be gentle and take your time…
Time now to move onto the soft parts…
Firstly I drew the Bullseye onto each side of the skirt using a compass. I then hand painted each section…
Then I applied a very watered down mix of the Citadel Adeptus Battlegrey paint to the pouches and skirt to give the base weathering layer…
Once dry, I then used the same stippling method as before building up layers of Citadel paints Adeptus Battlegrey, Scorched Brown and Skull White…
Once dry the skirt and pouches were put back on the DC…
And with weapon in hand (in this case Vanilla TQ’s Shotgun), this Brit Squad DC is ready for battle…
Cheers
KidAkira
We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Workshop. Huge thanks again to Kid Akira for putting this fantastic piece together.  Now get out there and customize something!

We’d love to hear from you and check out what kind of customs you’re working on! Send us a shot of your latest custom work with a brief discription to radtoyreview@gmail.com. 

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Until next time!


*REVIEW* WWRp Deplume 2 and 3 pack

*REVIEW* WWRp Deplume 2 and 3 pack

Tonight I’m going to take two separate 3A toy packs and review them both in one fell swoop. The WWRp Deplume 2 and 3 pack went on sale back in April of 2011 and are just making land fall into … Continue reading