Here we go.
Preface: YES this is another “gimmick” proton pack. If you are averse to these things, go ahead and move along to greener pastures, you philistine. Go on, we’ll wait.
Ok then.
This is something that was devised long ago, and which I only just recently brought to full fruition, just in time to be my “secret” for Dragon*Con 2014. The whole nonsense started when I received a reject fiberglass shell from my pal John Smith (alkaline) which wasn’t good enough for sale, but was pretty damn close to perfect for what I needed (thanks, Smith, you ■■■■■■■!). Since I already had a full GB1 pack (which I’m still constantly upgrading), I wanted to do something on the gimmicky side with it. I just didn’t know what, exactly.
I have nothing against gimmick packs, especially considering I’m often in the presence of the (in)famous Hello Kitty pack that my fellow GBNH’er Jonny owns, but I knew I wanted to do something different than the usual mashup packs that we’ve seen many of (HK, My Little Pony, Iron Man, Joker, Pac Man, etc.). I think those are all fun, but I wanted to do something to stand out from the pack.
Awhile ago, I saw (as many of you probably did) the photos of the girl who did a grayscale Santa Claus outfit/makeup for a Santa Parade, and it blew my mind. Check this out, if you never saw it:
Honest to God, that’s not Photoshop - she did a wig, makeup, suit, everything, so she looks like she’s in a black and white photo. There are a bunch of pictures - go check em out. Mind blowing stuff.
Anyway, back to me: I thought that might make for a really cool GB prop/outfit, but then I realized that what we wear and carry is already pretty stark and non-colorful to begin with, so it wouldn’t work well or look very good, and it would mean I would have to do a full makeup job, which isn’t something I’m very skilled with.
So what would work? Along those lines, an idea came to me - why not do an inverse proton pack or a NEGA-pack, if you will?(don’t say that out loud or too fast. it sounds like something… else…)
I know about the Wii pack that was made awhile back, and I wanted to be careful not to make it too similar, but I wanted to make it as close to an inverted proton pack would look in reality, which means it had to be mostly white.
And so it began - the building of a negative or inverted proton pack.
Here it is, in its full completed glory, with its inverted image:
It didn’t start that way, of course. After some slight Bondo and filling, I got a pretty decent shell out of it, which I painted white:
I started collecting parts, which came from great folks like Vince Nordone and Crix, Throwing Chicken, EJGunth, and others I may be forgetting (sorry). I then immediately began to destroy them with white paint.
I also had to start locating things outside of the usual routes, like tubing in some unusual colors. For instance, the inverse of the green tubing on the thrower is a sort of pink color, and while I was able to track it down in about that shade, I couldn’t buy just a foot or so of it - I had to buy… a LOT of it. Lots. Like, if you ever need some pink tubing, call me. Here’s how it looks on the thrower:
Yeah. That kind of thing sort of tells you a lot about the whole project - finding weird stuff to make it look like the opposite of normal stuff. But it was starting to come together, and I realized it might work. Which made me think even more…
Why not an entire NEGASUIT? Yeah. I went there.
And I knew it could be done, but just as insanely as the pack. So while the pack started coming together, I began the crazy search to find how to make it all work. This included contacting TygerCheex to custom make me some white leather fobs and holsters. This guy not only found the right stuff, but refused to take payment until he made a sample to show me to make sure I was happy - couldn’t have been happier with them, and Tyger - you’re the best, man. Check this out:
So weird. I tracked down some white boots (Dr. Marten’s - not perfect, but close enough), some white chem gloves that went up to my shoulders (trimmed them down), a white PKE shell that I had lying around already, a white calculator watch, and I even made some custom white glasses out of an old pair of mine (I usually wear black rimmed glasses).
I also needed a gizmo to fill in that holster. I turned to my buddy Jonny to help print out some inverse gizmo labels, and he got some awesome ones made for me (he also did most of the labels for the pack as well - thanks man!). I put it together on some 1/8" styrene, added a white telephone cord, and made a daughterboard from the same label. I found some Nixie tubes that had a white tint to the bottom as well, which was another cool coincidental find. My usual gizmo has a set of teal blue lights, so I used red ones for this NEGAGIZMO. It’s a simple circuit made from flashing LEDs and a battery. Check it out, with inverse photos:
Then I needed a suit - the inverse of khaki is difficult to nail down, since in photos, the suits have so many folds and shadows that the values change around a lot, but the closest common color is sort of a dirty teal color. I bought a dark blue TruSpec suit and, having turned one of those into a pretty decent GB2 gray in the past, I went that route, but on the second dye, I used a teal color on top, and it turned out pretty well. I was actually terrified to do this, because once you go down the dyeing/stripping/redyeing hole, things can go bad, pretty fast. I was REALLY lucky here. Jonny also helped pitch in with an awesome NEGA-no ghost shirt for the suit (Jonny, you helped out a ton with this - thanks!) Finally, custom patches were made by Katarra and 8bitspock:
I also needed to modify the PKE a bit, giving it a purple screen to compliment the usual green one:
Meanwhile, the pack was coming together as well. Another contribution from Jonny was a motherboard, which I needed to get the pack all mounted. I painted an ALICE frame white, but then I ran across one of my biggest obstacles - ALICE straps.
Standard straps will not lose their color, and unless you’re dyeing them black, they’re not gonna change. The inverse of that Army green color is a sort of lavender purple (seriously), and that wasn’t gonna happen. Which means I needed custom straps and a kidney pad, which is way beyond my skills. And so I turned things over to my fantastic girlfriend Joy - Joy is a really talented seamstress, and we were able to find the right color materials to whip together some pretty amazing, fully functional, totally from scratch, reproduction ALICE straps. Check these out:
And then it could be worn.
