Custom RC paint job

Here I'll be going over the custom paint job I recently gave one of my cars.

 This here is a xmod 1:28 rc xmod with a Nissan gtr body.

The goal is to turn it into an istasha.

why? becuase I'm board as all fucking hell and don't have anything better to do.

 so first up, taping off the parts I don't want painted.

There's a little GTR decal on the back that I didn't really want to lose but it couldn't be helped.

tapping it off is simple enough, just apply tape, push in a bit around the edges to make a indent, then use something to cut that with and peel away the extra bits.

I'd have taken out some of the parts such as the windshield and headlights, but they're stuck on pretty good with melted plastic over the tabs holding them in, besides, it would have made the area under the headlights hard to work with, there's also the trim around the windshields I didn't want to paint over.

I did however remove the rear view mirrors and taillights, along with the chassis.

after taping it up, it was time to give it a good coat of primer.

At this point I'm gonna go ahead and stop pretending I know what I'm doing. k?

don't mind the other parts there, just figured while I was at it, I'd give them their own pass over with the primer.

after the primer drys, time to start painting.

here I used a base coat of black.

 air brushing can be fun.

I had some left over while paint from another project and figured, rather than waste it, I'd start some of the stars.

I tried using a sharpened toothpick at first, but that wasn't looking right with the thing's soft tip, so I grabbed one them bracket things that parts come attached to, broke off a piece and sharped the end of that, then started poking the hell out of the car. it was a bit hard to stop once I started.

 after a ton of dip poke dip poke dip poke, I tried experimenting with a brush.

I think it looked pretty shitty to be honest, as if I rolled the car around in a bag of flower.

luckily however, most of that wouldn't show up in the end, along with most of the starts I wasted time poking.

so I got some dark navy blue and gave the sides a few pass overs, trying to give it a bit of a gradient.

 after the navy blue, I dip/poked a crap ton more little white dots onto the car, and got some much brighter blue ready after realizing I didn't need to keep upping the shade of blue if it's watered down, the paint would barely be visible after the first pass, you'd need to paint the same area repeatedly before noticing the change in color.

 

so after giving the car a good coat of the light blue paint and still having some left over, I grabbed some rims I'd probably never use and decided to paint them as well.

gave it a tad bit of paint then realized they needs primer for the paint to stick properly.

besides, they're yellow, without the primer they might come out looking green after the paint or something (in some areas they actually sorta did.)

had to use toothpicks to keep them in place becuase the airbrush kept blowing them away.

 so yeah, rims painted, stars and stuff added.

at this point it was really starting to look like something alright...

at this point I gave it some simple little details, mainly paining the door handles black.

 Had a old can of clear coat gloss laying around, tested it out on the rims first, which came out okay so I gave the car some as well.

right after applying the clear coat I started to remove the tape, becuase I remembered when I left the rims to dry, they got stuck to the cardboard like superglue and I had to rip them off, lucky that was just the back sides though.

don't seem right to remove the tape while it drys, but I didn't want the tape to get stuck on there.

 So here it is after assembly.

I wasn't very happy with the clear coat texture left, as you can see, it's kinda dumpy and uneven overall.

 so I taped the car's windows up again and emptied out the can onto the car.

 I was kinda on the fence with which rims to use while painting it, per some one's recommendation I tried the chrome ones and they look a fair bit better.

the bolt certainly stands out a lot less.

I don't think the edges where it was taped off look that good, especially at the front of the roof lip, where you can see much of the original color.

 I added in some extra leds in the back, by default the led kits for xmods just have two white and two red, but this clearly needed four red.

I think I might add some blue leds under the body for a nice glowing effect, once I get some.

could have probably used more clear coat, but I don't think it's that bad.

Adding the stars after each major coat of paint gave many of them a dimmer and more faded look, which doesn't look half bad, being all, uneven, and stuff...

Just a reminder, I'm no expert, and haven't really done much of this sort of thing.

 I'd like to consider this just the first part really, I do plan on adding decals latter, but becuase I plan on doing custom decals, I'm gonna to get some supplys first, mainly ink for my printer (or get a new printer) and printable decal paper. but as a neet, it'll probably be a while until I gather up the money for that.
so with that, this ends PART 1