banditboykyle

[banditboykyle]

Custom GBA SP

21/06/2020

Recently I bought these GBA SP’s with the idea of modding them to have some one-of-a-kind consoles. Custom colours/paint jobs and the IPS screens from RetroModding is the current plan. One will be for me and the other for my friend Cameron. He doesn’t know I’m doing this and I hope it will make for a neato Christmas present or if I’m done long before then it will just be a present- you don’t need a reason to be nice :)

I’ve never done anything like this before and will have to learn as I go. Should be fun.

I bought them without full knowledge of their condition and functionality. The silver one appears to work 100% but the pink one has a vertical line of what I think are dead pixels down the middle of the screen. This doesn’t matter for now as the IPS screen will be fitted. I’ll hold onto it and maybe repair it if possible some day.

I’ve got to wait now for my shipment to arrive from the states. Could be a few weeks so I’ll have plenty of time to think about things. It’s late and I have work in the morning so this will be it for todays log. N’night  🌙 ✨ 💕

22/06/2020

Today I’ve been thinking about the theme for Cameron’s Gameboy. The name he goes by in games is Koala so that’s definately going to be the main focus for the design. KoalaBoy Advance SP?

I haven’t even thought about how I’ll go about painting it, or even what paint to use but for now I’ll draw out the top of a gameboy and sketch some ideas. If I had a printer I’d print out multiple on a page, it’s what I guess I’d recommend you do if you have one.

I drew around one of my gameboys and after a few real crappy designs I came up with this one, still a lot of work to be done but I can refine it a lot with Adobe Illustrator.

Not much headway made this evening, I’m a terrible procrastinator but an idea to go forward with into tomorrow is at least something.

23/06/2020

Today I’ve been thinking about colour choices. In some ways I’m limited with my choice if I want a consistant theme thoughout the console because of the limited options for aftermarket buttons. I found this photo of an SP someone was selling through Reddit and can’t shake it out of my head. White with teal (instead of the baby blue pictured) buttons/trim/koala graphic is what I’m going with. Hope Cameron likes it.

I transfered the photo of yesterdays sketch into Illustrator and finished with this design. I figure I’ll be making some sort of stensil from the koala head. Still unsure about this though.

Lastly in terms of colours I’ve been trying to find teal rubber screw plugs (the little rubber inserts that cover the screws around the screen) but have had no luck. It’s looking like I’ll have to settle for white ones. Not the worst thing but I’ll keep and eye out for teal..

Friday is my day off work, I’ll be going to a store that day to browse spraypaint options and maybe pick some up if they have what I’m after. Between now and then though I’ll try to learn as much about painting plastic as I can.

28/06/20

On friday I went to the store as planned to get some spray paint and adhesion promoter. Their selection was very minimal so I walked away without anything. Still unsure how to source the supplies. From what I’ve been reading I want to apply as little paint as possible so the details like the select and start text don’t get bunged up and lose distinction. This can be achieved by using adhesion promoter to lessen the number of coats it will take.

Also to help the paint stick I’ll be scoring the plastic with these scouring pads. It’s basically the rough side of a sponge and takes the top layer off the surface without digging into the plastic itself.These two things combo’d will hopefull give me a nice finish.

Here I’ve done the left half with the scouring pad and left the right side untouched so you can see the difference it makes.

That’s all for today, could be a while before the next updat but who knows.