Ray:
That sounds quite interesting, Im not a big fan of masking tape, I prefer to have something i can do large designs onto and a big plus would be that i could put it through a Laser Printer and cut it out rather than laying a few strips and making the mask by hand and then cutting it out.
But in saying that, i'll look forward to seeing the pics of the end result, maybe i could give it another try.

Anakist:
Phoned the Hobby shop about the Lexus Mask which was incorrect (they said that HPI would send a full package) and it turns out, they sent the correct STICKER PACK for the Lexus!! These people are INCAPABLE of doing even the simplest of jobs. I also sent the Merc Mask back earlier this morning (the Merc Mask which looked remarkably like a Lotus mask!) and I wrote them a lovely letter letting them know what i thought of there service, and if only i knew they'd messed up that order for the Hobby shop too!!
On the plus side, the shop managed to sell my Pontiac Firebird for £29 (not sure about the Aus$ -> GB£ rates, but a Body costs £18, so a profit of about +60%)

PaulC2K

Hi Ray,
Hope you do well! I use masking tape, can't afford liquid mask yet, plus I do simple designs.

Hi Paul.
It is a bit dodgy! I hope I don't have these problems. I think our dollar is worth about 38p.

Pics of my cars at www.geocities.com/anakist_rc

James

Pics should be working now

Hi Ani,
Just thought i'd let you know, I cant see the lexus idea. It was the same the other day, forgot to go back and check, but today its saying the same:
There was a problem accessing your account.

Please try back again in 10 minutes.
You might want to try logging out and logging back in again.
We apologise for the inconvenience.
Thank you.

PaulC2K

Yeah it is interesting that. It is just a temporary fix at the moment. It should work seen.

James

Hello all, just over a month has passed, and still no posts to read, whats happened to this thread!!

Anakist: Im rather busy at the moment, so the RC site has (yet again!) been put to one side, its currently got 3 of the last 4 cars ive done on there, but only one pic as things stand. Might put the 4th up in a minute as i only recently took some picks of the shell on a chassis & outdoors.
The site is currently hiding in:
http://qazwert.co.uk.nstempintl.com/
Thats just a temp address until i can organise the transfer of my old site (qazwert.co.uk) to the new hosts.

Anyway....

Exciting news!! :D
Just got myself a 'job' working for a guy in Utah! (yep, whole different continent!) They make paint, and im building them a web-site after nattering to the bloke.
I'll be designing the site in exchange for paint, so that keeps me happy :D

I'll post 3 examples of the paint they do, im sure you'll like it!!!!

PaulC2K

Pic No2

Pic No3
Now im not 100% on this, but i THINK its all one paint, but then again, i could be wrong! The 1st & 2nd ones are 1 Paint and you should be able to make out 4 colours: Blue, Teal, Purple & Orange

NON of these are edited to enhance the colours etc, they're all genuine pics of cars in natural sunlight.

BTW, the first 2 pics are HPI Micro Vipers i think, the 3rd is an Alfa.

PaulC2K

Very cool!. Pics of my car are up on at my site. Did you see them? I did the orange and black truck body. First paint job. I was happy with it!! I might have to buy a 'sample' of the paint off you Paul!

James

I entered the painting contest on www.rctech.net and made the top 10. I am currently 2 votes out of first place. If any of you guys would go over there and vote for me(if you like my paint job, of course) it would be greatly appreciated.:D

Finally got the Lexus done. OH MY GOD!! It is awesome. By far the best work I have done ever! Metallic purple, with orange highlights. Looks amazing! I will have pics as soon as I can.

James

Hello everyone....... been a while. Attached a pic of my Micro Viper to let every one know I'm still painting.......

PaulC2K- sounds like you hooked up with HRP- tell Randy I said hello. The Spaz paint is great stuff, and I'm tinkering with it now.hopefully I'll have something finished soon, the glow paint is interesting...........

http://www.jsbodies.com/JSB Viper.jpg

That is awesome JS! Sure beats my effort. What is the best way to get pics? Lighting etc.

James

http://www.geocities.com/anakist_rc/Lexus.jpg

Anikist- I use a Sony 373 digital camera set to "fine" imaging, with no flash. I just use the flourescent shop lights in my paint room for lighting. The camera flash takes away from the neon colors a lot. I do have 2 sets of lights, and turn one off according to the amount of light I need to present the brightest contrast, but there's really nothing special about it. The Camera is great for web pics, but Sony discontinued them a while back.

Oh yeah, the Viper isn't just good looks..... it's loaded!

Thanks. I took a heap of photo's of mine and the came out awful. I will remember that. What advice can you give me as to painting? Take a look at the Lexus and say what you think please. And, welcome Back!\

James

Anikist- can't get to your Lexus pic- post it here or e-mail it to me at jshobbies@aol.com........ it's good to be back, I hope to stay a while, lol......

There we go.

James

Hello All
Nobody told me people had been nattering, no Email :confused:

JSB, thats sweet!!
I've not spoke to anyone at HRP, im doing the SpazStix.com site at the moment, but apparently they're interested im me doing the site for HRP too on the same sort of deal, where i get stock in exchange for my time.

I just got 8 old HPI shells this week for a bargin £40 (+ £6 P&P) (about $72!) saddly only 1 has masking & Stickers, but still a bargin.
I got....
3 Ferrari 355's (OH MY GOD ARE THEY BEAUTIFUL!!!!)
1 Corvette
1 Dodge Viper LM (apparently identical to GTR version, just came with different decals)
1 Honda NSX
1 Porsche 911 GT1 (w/ decals & Mask)
1 Nissan Skyline

and ive had a few requests to do bodyshells for people so the house is filled with bodyshells, around 14 and mormally i have 1 maybe 2 waiting to be done!
But the annoying thing is that the other day i was shifting rubbish around while helping to build a new Racetrack and when lifting a radiator to be put into a skip, the others let go before i did and it was squashed by the radiator & the bricks underneath, and of all fingers, it was my LMB and Airbrushing finger!!!
VERY annoyong :cry: :cry:

PC2K

JSB:
How do you come up with such complicated designs?
I can do pretty simple ideas, but i dont know where you get the idea for some of them, I get to a point where i think any more will just look cluttered, but you seem to manage it and in style too!

On top of that, even once you've done the design, how do you get your head around the painting? Ive found that sometimes you have to leave dark colours till last whether your supposed to or not, but i'd get lost too easy and do something out of order, how do you manage it??

PC2K

Hi Paul.
Probably just experience. I am sticking to one or two colours so far. Nothing too extravagant. Well done landing the job. I wish I could get stuff like that. What do you think of the Lexus? If it didn't show up, www.geocities.com/anakist_rc then go to the rc cars page, the the FSR page.

James

Ani:
That looks pretty darn Funky to me!!
Love the way its worked out, was that planed, cos the bonnet looks stunning, but i wouldn't have thought you could have planned it to do that. Well done either way!!

PC2K

Thanks Paul!
No it wasn't planned. It was supposed to look like that pic you emailed me, but I put too many coats of purple on and it was opaque for a lot higher than I thought. I am pretty happy with it though. I used Tamiya PS Metallic Purple in a can and it really shines. Thanks again Paul, when will we see some of this new paint?

James

Paulc2k-

I grew up painting, my dad used to paint signs the old way
(with lettering brushes) and I picked up my first brush at the age of 5. Sign painting helped develop the steady hand I need now.The Lord just really blessed me though- with a natural artistic ability to draw,percieve colors and designs as I have no trouble invisioning a design, and what will look like when finished. Long before I got into painting r/c cars I did a lot of illustration and fantasy type artwork along with model building, using a airbrush quite often. Those 3 things together really helped gel my r/c painting skills. I just draw my designs and artwork on the car most of the time,and use tracing paper to save some of the designs for later use. Liquid mask is my friend! It's like frisket paper for lexan, lol....... most of the stuff I paint would be difficult to do with masking tape

Oh yeah, thanks for the compliment Paul! I get a lot of inspiration for my work from full size auto's. Check out Mini-truckin magazine, and any other magazine devoted to custom show trucks, import cars, and motorcycles. You can also find a lot of stuff on the web, search for "mini-trucks". If I can visualize it, I can paint it, and reference materials help a lot!

Originally posted by TimWeber1
T3rookie-here's what I do, been working for me for many years-put a brand new blade in your Xacto knife, and just scribe around the body where you want to cut it out. Don't cut it all the way through. Then start the tear by folding it along the scribe mark back and forth. (usually in a straight area between the wheelwells) Then you should be able to tear the body along the scribe mark, I almost always take the excess lexan off in one piece. experiment on a scrap piece of lexan first, and once you get the technique, there will be no stopping you. They do make curved scissors especially for cutting out lexan bodies, available through most hobby dealers, but I prefer just to scribe it out, along the bottom of the body and around the wheelwells. Just be sure to use a new blade! Tip-you'll be able to scribe along a straight line better if you keep your blade at a shallow angle.

Tim

What a great tip this is......... I just happened onto it on page 3 of this thread. I've been racing and painting my own for 15 years and never knew about this scribing trick.

Thank you TimWeber1

...so glad I could help someone. I discovered that years ago (30!) cutting out slot car bodies. If you check back into this thread, there are other people who elaborated on my idea further, but I prefer to do it jut as I documented. I do quite a bit of tech writing at work (assembly processes for rbotic equipment) so I've learned to be descriptive so that anyone can understand what I'm trying to get across.

How's everyone's painting out there? Sort of had to stop to find time to scratch and claw to keep my head above water financially, but I think I'm ready to take in a few paintjobs again, so wish me luck!!!
Tim

Tim- your back! sweet! I'm slinging paint full time again myself and will be around her a lot more often myself ( I hope ). good to see your still around dude!

Does anyone know which yellow (race yellow, lemon yellow, etc) is the Corvette C5-R?

I am making a #3 C5-R Dale Earnhardt, Earnhardt Jr, O'Connell and Pilgrim drove. :)

I believe the pactra r/c finish is "daytona yellow". I'm not sure if you'll be able to find the exact color for lexan bodies, but try slixx graphics for styrene models.

thanks JS, maybe I shall also try mixing the color, maybe yellow plus a tad of red, hmmm.

JSB:
The SpazStix Paint turned up today, and the stuff looks brilliant in the bottle let alone on a bodyshell! Ive done a few sample bits on excess lexan from an old bodyshell and they look great. We dont have laqaer (spelling?) based paints over here which is a real shame cos they look so good and the metalics are so strong compared to any airbrushable paints over here. Ive already got a HPI Mercedes CLK DTM masked up and raring to go, and i'll post pics as soon as im done!

Also, heres a few pics of my last few cars, quite pleased with them.

http://www.spazstix.com/Images/Mixed/Mixed1.jpg
http://www.spazstix.com/Images/Mixed/Mixed2.jpg
The First Picture is my Flame Vectra w/ a BMW M3 in the same style and a Stratus which is a (poor!) copycat of a HPI Team driver (turned out to be one of the HPI Europe Bosses, oops! :D)
The second is My car with a Better (and suprisingly earlier) attempt at the same car with a Merc AMG shell, and a 406 which almost ended up in the bin after a spilage of Alclad Purple-Blue Flip but was saved by some quick thinking, just threw loads of Faschange Blue on there to hide the mess and backed it with black to bring out the colour.
And yes, the 3rd car in the pics is just a shell with wheels, no Chassis! :p

PaulC2K
(5th time lucky with the pics!!:D)

Looking good Paul.

I am thinking of advertising to do painting for people here. What is a fair price? I am thinking just for starters, the cost of the body, $10 per colour (cans are $9 each), and shipping. Maybe just for a while, then I will do it for real money when I have a reputation.

James

Thanks Ani,

Ive been asking for £18 for the paint job (same cost as a bodyshell over here) and people have been quite happy to pay that much. The Local modelshop where i just drop my own creations off and wait for them to sell have been selling for £29, so in some cases im getting a pretty good profit as ive been doing 200mm and theres a few cheap ones knocking around at the moment (for £10). And the ones im leaving with them are my own creations not someone requesting something that'll take 24hrs to mask!
I'd like to charge quite a bit more for the Flip stuff as im limited to the No of bottles ive got (2 of each) so it'd be a shame to use it all up on others, but then if the money is good, why complain!
Should have finished pics up for Sunday too.
Also, that website ive been saying i'll get done... finally got something together, nothing much at the moment, just somewhere tidy to show of the bodyshells and what ive got planed (about 12 "Coming soon"'s on there!)
http://qazwert.com/rc/gallery.htm

PaulC2K

Cool. I will have to see. Give us a yell when they are up.

James

Well the car was finished on Friday night, but the weather has been poor and haven't had chance to take a picture. Sadly the colours were too similar and the pattern isnt distingusable unless its at the right angle on within a reasonable distance to be able to define the pattern. Still looks lovely because the colour is so strong and sharp.

Also found out why i've not been getting any emails from here, its cos my site have stopped there email forwarding service, so it was never arriving at my mailbox, Now using my Spaz-Stix email account.

PaulC2K

Paul- looking good! I have seen those style flames before, just couldn't place them till now. I hope to play around with the spaz-stix
paint myself this week, it's been sitting around here for a month I think? Keep us posted on what ya come up with!


James- give it a try man! I may pick up a little business from here occasionally but not much. Everyone has a price range they wish to stay in so the market always has room for another painter. Keep your designs limited to what your comfortable with painting and can turn out in a short amount of time. If you have a lot of confidence in a couple designs and know you can aways paint them well, start there first. The first thing ( and most certain )I found out is that the customer likes quality, and they want it fast........ kinda like fast food....lol. Also, pre-pay is always a good idea if you have to furnish the body up front. It commits the customer to your order,it's not always easy to get rid of some body styles if the customer backs out. If the customer sends you a body, they are already commited to the order and there are usually no problems. Also, accept only money orders,cashiers checks or pay-pal to begin with. Nothing stings worse than a check that bounces!

Good luck!

Thanks JS. I am just going to do it locally for a while, and maybe on a couple of aussie boards. Thanks for the tips.

James

Hi Gang,
Ive got a rather pretty picture for yall (although i see im gonna have to shrink it to fit on here!!)
Its a HPI Ferrari F355 and its drop dead gorgeous!
Spaz Stix Change Color Paint - Gold to Red
and Alclad Chrome on the lights.

SpazStix have just created a new paint, which is Hologramatic, so it kinda has the same color effect that you see on the back of a CD, it changes Through Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange & Red. Should look pretty cool. Sadly it looks like the paint looks best when backed with Black (like all flips) as it would have been really cool backed with Chrome! 40mph CD anyone? :D

Just started on a Skyline which will be Gold - Green, this gold is so strong and yellowie compared to the Gold-Red which is Golden in an evening sun kinda way, more orangy. So this should be much brighter and im gonna use more of the Flip before backing it.

PaulC2K

Really looks good Paul! Keep up the good work. Any chance of a "sample" of some of that paint :p

James

Hey Paul- very nice! Have you tried the glow paint yet? i have a body prepped to paint using the chromalusion and glow paints together along with a bit of chrome perhaps. will post a pic if I ever get it finished! I've had these paints for about 2 months now lol.......

James- forgot you lived down under......... even though it's rare, I sometimes get requests from your way and will refer them to you as they come about. most over seas customers don't want to pay the extra shipping and such.

Hi!
May I know if there are stickers available for the headlights in the picture, or are they painted on? Thank you!

http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/49255trf414m_wcr_pre/top_e.jpg

Regards,
Alvin

Yep- they are painted on..........

JSB:
I've sprayed a Wing in Power Green and then backed it with Chrome, Black & White, that showed on all but the Black, I did that Ferrari with Flip Red-Gold then Glow Orange and then Black. The test i did on a strip of lexan worked well with Orange backed with Black, and it was looking good before i put the black onto the car, but that and the flip must have been too much, the current Glow Orange isnt very strong, but a new one is out on Monday i beleive which is much stonger ('Radioactive Glow Orange' i beleive its called) but i'd try it with Green or one of the blues for maximum glow effect.

I've got a Viper which im gonna be spraying Glow Green and then backing with chrome (Turns to silver as the reflective quality is gone) that's just a test shell which i'll be selling off cheap.

I'll look forward to seeing your finished bodyshell!

PC2K

Hey guys,

I just thought i'd contribute some paintjobs here...http://socal.rcracing.com/Images//newtribal.jpg

Charlie, You D' Man!
Missed your contributions to the HPI site, not seen you post for some time now. I love anything tribal and thats stunning as usual!
Would you object if i blatantly copied that using different colours etc? I know for a fact i couldnt come close to doing that but i'd sure like to give it a go!

After that bit of flattery, im gonna suprise you by saying shocking decal application! I usually cut the window decals out completely, then start at the top and make a cut in the top center of the decal (making sure the top row is aligned correctly first) then start to make my way around the window, if theres a part which doesn't meet up, then give the decal a little stretch and MAKE it fit, and then keep going round, i usually end up having an extra 5-10mm of window frame left, and just trip it off. Now, i know im stupidly giving tips to the great Charlie_b but you never know ??

Charlie, what's the chances of you giving the Spaz-Stix paints a try? I'd love to see what the greats could come up with, with you and JSB using the stuff, that would be quite an honour at such an early stage in developements. Let me know what you think, and i'll see what i can do.

PaulC2K

Paul, i'd gladly try the stuff...i donno where to get them though. As for the windows...i know i cheesed on them,..i wanted to get it out there fast(midterms was last week) and you know how time and school just doesn't seem to get along very well. It has been a while since i have posted, but i have been getting more jobs doing my concept character artwork for some of the game studios. As soon as this dies down, i can go back to my 1st love...RC!

charlie b

Wow JS. That would be awesome thanks.

Looks good CharlieB

James

Is there anyone who paints 1/10 scale nascar themes without decals ??:confused: :confused: :confused:

bat try dirk dumma. i don't think any one paints the small stuff for around the front render. i could also hook you up with someone else but we would need to talk anbout that one. you can email me or call.

I used to get them from dirk he says he's too busy now.I'll ask again through bill bombard.Sponsor decals aren't a problem,I just can't find anyone who paints them like he did.

e-mail me your phone # or call
MZ :wave: