hard to tell in the screen grabs weather they are more of a flat or semi-gloss/satin. Haveing trouble getting paint to set and look right on my pack, getting tired of buying different kinds of paint just to have it do weird ■■■■. Ive had less problems painting cars
Your call. You’re the one owning and wearing it. I’ve seen a lot of people start with semi-gloss only to weather it to a dull, almost flat appearance. Some keep it shiny (satin) with that fresh-out-of-Egon’s lab look. Just depends at what point in the movies (or even game) you’d like to style your pack after.
Good luck! 
Shiny seems to show off flaws all to easily. I go with flat black, personally, or a semi gloss, and then knock that back with light sanding.
I really think flat and weather packs look much more realistic though.
Semi-gloss is the way to go man.
Chris
Satin Black.
I’ve tried painting my pack with several different types of paint. Flat black krylon is my reccomendation.
Here’s the paints I tried:
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Gloss Black Krylon - Way too shiny. Made every mistake visible. Polishing with 0000 steel wool took most of the gloss out and left me with a nice finish on my RGB PKE, but it was still too glossy for a pack, IMO.
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Semi-Gloss Rustoleum - Still too shiny. Looks decent in person, but on camera it comes out too dark, and doesn’t really look metallic enough.
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Rustoleum Professional Flat Black - Way too flat. Has a flocking texture to it which makes it super flat like a wood stove. Sanding or buffing that flocking texture off gave a decent look but was a ton of work.
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Flat Black Krylon - This is real nice. When I post some pics of my pack tonight or tomorrow, you can see how this looks before and after buffing. Maybe it would be a little too flat for you. But the semi-gloss rustoleum is much too glossy IMO. My reccomendation is you paint with this, and then buff it with a scotchbrite pad if you want it to be a little shiny. I just did a test on the back of my booster frame, and you can definitely go from flat to slightly glossy with a little rubbing with the plastic backing on those sponges. It would take a lot more buffing most likely with steel wool, to get all that gloss out of the semi-gloss. The flat black is closer, IMO to what you want for a final look.
I also looked into satin black krylon. I didn’t use it though. Instead, I looked up lots of pics on google of stuff painted with flat and satin krylon paints. I didn’t really like the look of the satin.
As for the cheaper flat black rustoleum, that might be acceptable. I don’t think the cheap stuff has the same flocking texture as the professional stuff. Krylon’s primer though is a darker shade of gray and looks sweet on the elbows, and it’s best to stick with the same primer and paint, so that’s a point in favor of sticking with the krylon.
I used a flat black spray can and a flat black bottle of Testor’s model glue, and found that the model glue still had a darker, shinyer appearance than the spray, so my gun with a flash camera seems to have darker blotchs all over it as well as spots I touched up on the pack with the bottle.
Definately did not match up as well as I had hoped.
If I could go back I’d have tested differant bottles and cans to get them to match better. In the dark you’ll never notice it, but flash photography makes my pack look like ass.
G
To be fair, flash photography makes everything look like ass.
Very true.I hate the way a flash can ruin a pic.
Truer words were never spoken.
I try to back up a distance, and then zoom in using the flash.. it mutes it down some, and usually gives me much better results.
Word, Garee! Look at the differance in the pics of my pack. You can tell when I was way too close and when I was at a good distance from it. It’s night and day between looking believable and looking like a scratch built monstrosity…
Rustoleum makes a textured flat black paint that has the consistency of primer, and looks amazing on a pack. Dries fairly quickly and feels like the real deal. Really sets well on top of primer and doesn’t crack/peel as long as its applied on dry primer. Will never use anything else to paint a pack. I even considered spray on bedliner, soft scale. Might test it out when I do my fiberglass pack.
I tested several finishes on smooth plastic (PVC & Resin) and found that Flat black game closest to the finish seen in the packs (when they are under flash lighting).
Satin is close too, but it’s a little too shiny.
So a flat/satin toss up.
I find that the packs are usually made less well than most people’s packs on here (at least in terms of edges) so the smoother edging and finishing usually picks up more of the glare of the flash - leading people to think the packs are more shiny than they actually are.