WIP: Wavebird Painting (warning - lots of pics)

[toadhall]

Hi there!

It's the holidays right now where I am so I thought I'd go about painting a ratty old Wavebird I purchased over eBay recently and share with you my progress. Now before you tut-tut and frown at my indiscretion of even *thinking* of painting a Wavebird, let me assure you this Wavebird really did look quite bad.



It's a platinum Wavebird but the paint had since been worn off by whoever the previous owner was and the analogue sticks looked like they had been chewed on.





The battery cover looked like it had been dragged down a road. I'm guessing the Wavebird was a victim in a case of thrown controllers after bad SSBM/SSBB matches.



I decided to paint the bottom casing of the Wavebird a dark green and went with Krylon Fusion's "Hunter Green".



Had to mask off the battery compartment. Didn't want to paint over the battery contacts!



For the upper casing, I decided to go with a lighter green (Krylon Fusion's "Spring Green").



And this is what I ended up with:




Lastly, I did a Triforce stencil, which I plan to go over with some bright yellow paint on where the GameCube logo used to be.



Still not happy with it. Maybe I'll redo the stencil but I'm not too good with blades so I'm not sure if the result will be better.

Anyways, I'm still not done with the Wavebird. Turns out the choice to go with "Hunter Green" for the bottom casing is something I'm not entirely happy with. The paint seems to be a matte paint (I wanted glossy) and it has some sort of grain in it which I don't like for the feel of the controller. Looks like I'll have to sand it and redo the part with another colour. I'm thinking I'll go with brown, seeing as that will fit the theme more (you *did* notice I was going for a Link theme right?)

If you're wondering, yes I'll be going over with it with a clear coating once I am done.

So what do you guys think so far?

[noiseredux]

Zelda kicks ass. Wavebird kicks ass. Put them together, and you've got some kickass shit.

[toadhall]

I just hope I don't mess it up or I'll just end up with shit.

...Pretty sure I won't do a Budsmoka though.

[noiseredux]

...Pretty sure I won't do a Budsmoka though.

hahaha

[Ziggy]

...Pretty sure I won't do a Budsmoka though.

If you manage to get any where close, you should turn yourself into the police.

Doesn't look too bad at all. I'm not a fan of gloss, I usually use Kyrlon Fusion satin finishes. But whatever floats your boat. And by the way, you don't have to do clear coats. That is, unless you wanna make a good shine or something. As long as you applied the Krylon Fusion good (made sure the surface was super clean and whatnot) and let it fully cure then it's pretty solid. I have a few things that I sprayed with Fusion without a clear coat and they've all held up.

[toadhall]

Ah, thanks for the tip. Now that has me rethinking on whether to do the clear coat or not.

I was wondering about the satin finish. I saw the can at the hardware store and was wondering what it looked like (I'm a noob to paints).

[Ziggy]

It depends what you're going for. To me, if you just use a glossy spray paint it looks bad. Unless you're totally going for a glossy look, and you go all out on the finish. Like Jeffro's Genesis controller (his procedure can be found here) or this dude's NES. The satin finishes looks just like normal plastic when it's done, it never appears to be painted. That's what I like about it.



I actually sprayed that Gamecube with Krylon Fusion satin black. The picture quality kinda sucks, but it's not too bad. I use to have a pic of it side by side a real black Cube, and you couldn't tell the difference.

[toadhall]

Thanks for the links! I've actually visited the last two links but the one with Jeffro's Genesis controller is new to me.

So satin is just Krylon's term for matte huh? Went to the hardware store this morning and finally noticed there's actually a difference in the coloured caps on the Krylon Fusion cans between satin and non-satin version of the same colour!

I like matte too actually and I'll probably consider a matte finish for a future project (thinking of painting a PSone). In the meantime, this controller is meant to be a sort of showcase controller, some thing to wow my friends, so it needs to be SHINY SHINY SHINY. It won't get played with much, so worry of constant wiping down fingerprints should be kept to a minimum (I hope).

Nice Gamecube, btw! Really does look like a real black Gamecube. Lemme guess. Originally indigo?

[Ziggy]

Lol, yeah, it was an indigo Cube.

Yeah, the cap on spray paints usually donates the color AND finish.

[toadhall]

Aw man, I totally messed up!

So I made another stencil using masking tape, which came out perfect (I surprised even myself) and stuck it on the top casing of the Wavebird. I sprayed it and...

...the Triforce came out slanted and skewed to the left!!! GAHHH

So I've resanded it and I'm waiting for some free time to respray. In the meantime, I guess I need to work on my stencil AND stencil applying skills

I'd post pics but I'm at work and the files are at home, plus home internet is being screwy at the moment.

On the plus side, seeing the Triforce on the Wavebird looked awesome, slanting aside.