Vandy 360

The faceplate came from a good bumper sticker and an hour of careful work with an exactoknife.

The controller was a wee bit more complicated. I started by disassembling my wired controller. I’m not going to go into detail about it because there are much better tutorials out there (google them you lazy ass) . I opted not to remove the triggers. I was having a rough time popping them out of their holders. Seeing as I planned on leaving a smidgen of white around the “V,” I didn’t mind too much leaving the triggers white. I left the “start” and “back” buttons and the left and right bumpers white too to continue the motif of black with white accents.

Next came the hard part. Getting the damn “V” properly on the controller handle area. My first attempt involved sticking a big piece of tape on the front and using a razor blade to cut out a “V.” I thought freehanding a “V” would be easy. Whoops. Not only was the “V” too small (I thought it looked like a cheerleader’s tattoo), but I also scratched the hell out of the plastic (I really should have seen that coming). You can see an outline of it after I pulled off the tape.

I decided to be more serious. I wanted to print out a “V” for stenciling, but the printer decided to suck. So I stuck a piece of paper up to the monitor of my mom’s G4 iMac and traced it myself. I didn’t do too bad either. I copied a fat “V” and a skinny “V.” I didn’t want to scratch my controller again, so I used double sided tape to place the fat “V” on the roll of painter’s tape itself. I used the razor blade to cut out the “V” while it was still part of the roll. I’d much rather destroy a bit of tape than put more scratches in the controller. After a while of careful cutting and peeling, I positioned my taped “V” on the handle. I opted to use the left side to let black paint cover the scratches on the right.

I touched up on the “V” with a few small pieces of tape to straighten some edges and fill in a missing part on the top left. Then I went off to paint. I applied a few good coats of the black plastic paint then took it in the house to finish the “V.” As an aside, this special kind of paint takes a bit longer to dry because it chemically reacts (I think) with the plastic to change its color instead of just coating it. For whatever reason, the paint will look dry after 15 minutes or so, but it won’t be quite dry. You can lightly handle it, but not too rough. Any kind of pressure will mark the drying paint. I accidentally on purpose put my thumbprint on the back because there is a rough spot from where I couldn’t get the entire sticker off. Very personalized.

Unfortunately some black got underneath the tape. I’m not sure what I’ll do about it. Should I scrape it off? Any suggestions on solvents for this kind of paint? A little bit of messed up paint doesn't bother me too much, but I'd rather it be perfect. I quickly tested all the buttons. They work. I’m going to wait a while before I put it through hard use to allow the paint to completely soak in. I'll let you know later how the paint is holding up.

So this is how I’m going to do the next controller. I want the background to be khaki/gold with a black “V.” The hard part will be blocking off the khaki while I paint the “V” black. I learned yesterday that cutting tape off the roll with a razor blade is difficult while pasting a big slab of tape on the controller then cutting off the unwanted portion is damaging (duh). Here’s my solution. I will attach two big portions of tape (large enough to fit the “V”) onto a piece of computer paper. The tape will be stacked. I’m stacking two pieces in order to facilitate peeling off the tape. Tape won’t pull of paper easily, but it pulls off other tape without a problem. I might try to cut the roll to pull off both pieces at the same time, but that’s a minor problem. I can use scissors to cut out a stencil and simply pull off the top tape. Or I might be careful with an exactoknife and only cut the top piece of tape. It’s going to be a trial-and-error process. I’ll post pics when I’m done.