Custom Kenner RGB Proton Pack Put Together Tutorial

[CaptCyan]

The following is a “no paint” how to on finishing up the Kenner replacement packs I made for this thread:

Uni's Epic PKE meter***updated***

The first pack up will be the “Movie” version (first in line)

Before starting, I clear off my work mat and lay out the tools I will be using. This is good for me, but not so much for you as you may not have some of these items. This was pointed out to me in another thread by enchanted unicorn.

Uni's Epic PKE meter***updated***

So I won’t be using any of the tools depicted below.

Instead, I hiked on over to the local Dollar Store and bought my supplies. Must have items would be the course nail file, the buffer/shine nail file, snap blade knife and the super glue. The manicure tool set was an extra bonus. Crappy scissors, a bendy metal tweasers and so much more. The block buffer combo I didn’t need to buy, but if I hadn’t found the other file sets, I would have sliced the block apart and used the “faces” to do the sanding. All total the “tools” should only cost you $5.00. Items that are not shown but I had lying around the house are wax paper, masking tape and toothpicks.

Here is how the parts come out of the molds after casting.

I try to slice off the large chunks of flash, but sometimes a few pieces get through. I’m using the crappy scissors to trim it down.

The pieces I send you should look more like this.

Let’s get started! First thing to do is to even out the bottoms of the thrower parts: top, bottom and buckle (heat sink). Lay the course file down flat and sand by moving the piece back and forth accross the file. Stop and check the progress every few strokes as it does file down quickly.

Use the scissors or the snap knife to remove any leftover flashing. When using the knife, tilt the blade opposite of normal and use it to scrape, rather than cut the excess off.

Now to round off the barrel bottoms. Use the fine sanding side of the buffer file to shape the barrel bottoms and get rid of any large ridges.

Thrower bottom looks pretty good. Thrower top needs more sanding and rounding off.

Follow the directions on the nail files. Next step is to remove ridges and scratches.

Same thing only different. Keep working on rounding the barrels, stopping every few strokes to check the progress.

You should be able to notice the plastic starting to smooth out to it’s origional color and surface.

Step it up to “step 3” and add the shine.

Having buffed out all the thrower pieces, it’s time to put them together. Test fit the two halves together and do any light sanding as needed to insure they match up without any overhang.

After fitting it’s glue time. Line the halves up on a disposible surface such as wax paper or in this case a square of blue masking tape. Point being, put it on something so the glue doesn’t bond it to your work place if you should get sloppy.

On a 2nd piece of wax paper or masking tape, squeeze out a small portion of super glue.

Hold the thrower halves together, Dip the toothpick in the super glue and run a bead of it accross the seam on the thrower. This takes two hands ( maybe more) to do.I had to fudge the picture, but you get the idea.

I set the thrower on the pack to let the glue set up before any further work on it.

While the glue is setting, it’s time to fit the magnetic plug in the back of the figure

Strange thing is that I found a slight difference in the size of the holes in the backs of my Ray and Louis figures. I don’t know if it was manufacturing or shrinkage due to the age and storage of the plastic. Either way, what fits one does not fit the other. Here we see the magnetic plug it a wee bit to wide.

Sand a little. Test fit. Sand a little. Test fit

Keep doing this until the plug seats correctly which is so that there is a slight bit sticking out of the hole. Then it can be pushed into the figure and should wedge in flush with the back.

Now, back to the thrower. Use the course file to even off the beads of glue on both sides.

Then do the smooth down just like before.

Do the glue thing with the buckle and the thrower should be done. Please note that the buckle used here has 2 defect bubbles in it. The buckles I send out will not.

The next phase would be painting, but if you want the one color toy look and have taken time with the sanding and polishing. It should be good to go.

Please note that this is the macro setting with flash used to take the pictures and so scratches that are not evident under normal lighting conditions show up really well here. It looks better in real life.

Louis is ready to take on any ghost headed his way, or not.

Next tutorial will be on painting.

[CaptCyan]

Here is the first part of the painting portion as promised. Sadly, the Dollar Store was not so much help this time around. Items that I purchased that will make the painting easier are plastic cups and sink wire strainers. The reason these are useful is that they help you clean the brushes between color usage. The small strainer is just large enough to sit on top of the cup.

Items that I normaly use are shown here. You can see the brush cleaning set up is now filled with water, reason being that I’m using acrylic (water based) paints. There’s that small square of blue masking tape again, along with a knife (you could use the snap knife from before) and a straight edge for cutting. The multi colored thing in the middle is a left over piece of styrene that serves as a mixing palette.

I’m using 2 different types of brushes. The first is a 5/0 sable brush that I’ve had forever, it’s one of my favorites for painting small details. I don’t know what they sell for today. The 2nd is a 20/0 fan brush that I bought at Michael’s craft store for about $2.00. This is what I use for the weathering effects on most of my projects.

My paints of choice are the Warhammer Citadel Colour paints. I buy them at the local Gaming store. For those who don’t have one near by, here is a link to their site:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landing.jsp?catId=cat150004&rootCatGameStyle=paints-tools

You can also find them for sale on ebay, just like everything else. The little pots of paint are expensive, going for up to $4.00 each for straight colors and $5.00 for metallics. These aren’t the only paints out there, but they are one of the best for hobby work.

If you find the price is a bit much, I would take a trip to Michaels or some other Art & Craft store to see what Acrylic paints you can dig up. They could be in squeeze bottle or tube. I would recommend taking a color print of a Proton Pack with you so you can match up the colors as best as possible.

Let’s get down to painting. First to go on is some weathering, I know that sounds backwards but It’s what I do. I crack open the pot of “Chainmail” silver and dip in the fan brush.

I take the brush and wipe it on the palette to remove as much of the paint as possible. So much so that the brush will seem dry. That’s where they got the term “drybrushing”.

Here is the untouched pack.

Starting from the bottom and working up, I use just the tips of the brush to hit the edges of the pack. A few strokes should start to leave some silver on the outside corners of the pack, starting to define some of the edges.

If you find the brush is laying down too much paint, Wipe the pack off with a damp paper towel (this is the reason for using acrylic paints) dry the brush off a little more and try again. The idea here is to build up the color a bit at a time. A few strokes right to left, a few strokes left to right, some going from top to bottom and it should look like this. The edges all around defined with a touch of metal showing.

Same treatment for the thrower, here it is before.

Here it is after.

We are done with the fan brush, so it gets a scrubbing in the strainer.

From here on out it’s small brush work. My advice is to not to load up the brush with a lot of paint as you can always go back and add more, but removing excess is a bit tricky as I will show later. Holding the brush almost parallel to the surface you wish to paint helps control where the paint ends up.

Solid silver on the thrower tips, bumper shock, cable clamp, hose, clippard end and crank.

Now we start to work our way around the rainbow. Don’t forget to scrub out the brush between colors. Besides keeping the colors pure, it also keeps the bristles from becoming stiff and unworkable.

For the next color we need to do some taping first. Using the straight edge and whichever knife you have, slice a strip or two about 1/8 of a inch wide.

This will be used to block out the label on the bumper.

Pat the brush into the exposed area rather than stroking as this will help keep excess paint from finding it’s way beneath the tape, especially if you didn’t press it down hard enough to get a good seal.

Pull up the tape and you should have a crisply edged sticker on the bumper.

White gets the same treatment.

So does red.

Now, let flip it over and take a look at the back of the pack.

The natural finish of the resin is a high gloss. Some flat black will help match it to the rest of the pack.

If you have been careful and taken your time with each color, you should be ready to stick the packs on their backs and bust some ghosts.

If you noticed in the close-up pictures that the cyclotron paint is a bit sloppy (not that noticable in real life) there is a fix for that coming up in part 2.

[CaptCyan]

Part 2 is about clean-up and detail. Special tools needed are some sort of magnifying glass. I use this “linen counter” magnifyer so I can use both hands on the project I’m painting.

The other item would be that block nail file I purchased at the start of this tutorial. Looks like I did need to buy it after all.

Using the snap knife, I slice the facings off of the foam block.

I then slice the slice down to a smaller size to fit the area I’m working on. I’m going to use this piece to remove the excess paint from around the cyclotron “lights” so about 1/8 of an inch should do.

For small places I usually wrap the sanding medium around a toothpick for support. As i used the last one for gluing the thrower together, I’ll just use fingers. Sand a little, take a look. Sand a little, take a look. Take your time with this and try not to remove the silver paint you dry brushed on the edges

Speaking of silver, if you think you over did the dry brushing on some of the surfaces, this is also the way to tone it back down. Here I’m removing some of the dry brush silver from the thrower barrels to contrast them from the tips and the body.

Here we see the results. The edges look pretty good, but the wire harness seems a bit too bright for the rest of the pack.

To dirty it down a bit, I’ll use a wash of black paint. First a few brush fulls of water.

Then a small dab of black thats added to the water.

The diluted mix is brushed on over top of the painted harness. The wash will tone down the brightness of the colors and settle into the recesses of the detail to define it better. Any excess can be blotted up with a piece of paper towel.

This is an additive process and subject to what you think looks good. Repeat untill you are pleased with the results.

Here we have Ray with the very first pack cast( I painted it up quickly to see what it would look like) and Louis with the one I just painted for the tutorial.

Next up will be the “Cartoon” packs.

[CaptCyan]

Moving on to the “Cartoon” Packs. The process for building and painting these are basicaly the same as for the "Movie "Packs, so I will skip along to some of the differences. Here we have the parts, the assembled pack and painted pack

Sand smooth the shiny side of the thrower “heat sink” and remove the flash from the hole in the center.

The heat sink should be a nice tight fit. If needed, scrape more of the flashing away with the tip of the snap knife.

Once it’s on, slide it to the middle of the thrower barrel, square it up with the thrower body and glue it into place using Superglue and a toothpick as with the "Movie "packs.

Line up and glue the thrower halves together, give it a sanding down and get ready to paint.

I’m using the images provided by joeghostbuster for painting and color reference.

Everyone has different painting styles and the norm would be to paint from dark to light. For my own amusement, I painted this from light to dark. First things first, I need some blue tape to make a nice clean divide on the thrower barrel.

The yellow and black combo looks very striking, I may paint a set just like that. Oh well, on with the rainbow.

I painted the back of this pack with the grey. It could also have been painted with the next color.

Here I have Winston with the proto type pack and Peter with the one I just painted. I’ve taken these pictures with my camers in the 'macro" mode. It shows all the overlaps and missed sections of paint that are not as obvious to the naked (or glasses wearing) eye. Taking a few snaps like these are a good way to check your work. Looks like I have a few spots to touch up.

Here you can see that I fixed the height issue with the thrower sitting on the pack.

Last section will be all about the “Rack” Packs for the Ecto.

[venkman1982]

Thanks for this tutorial i am trying to do some packs as we speak. This helped

[Vincenzo330]

lol @ snot green paint

[venkman1982]

@Vincenzo330

lol @ snot green paint

l lmao

[belmont78]

thats some insane detail work!

[CaptCyan]

@Belmont78

thats some insane detail work!

Thanks!

If you add decals, a few more bits and wires to the Movie Pack, it’l look even closer to the origional.

http://www.gbfans.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=25270