Thread: How I paint (lots of pictures)

Generally any time I post a thread with stuff that I've painted I get a couple PMs asking about how I do it. Up to this point I've generally replied "Just go try stuff" to try and spur creativity on the chance that someone comes up with something even more awesome.

But this fall I'm entering college, so odds are I won't be able to paint anything for a while, so I thought I'd post this to save the method for posterity and hopefully inspire at least a couple people to try out painting, because it's a lot of fun. I will also include optional steps for painting counterweights.

Keep in mind that there are TONS of other ways to apply liquid paint to plastic yoyo halves. This is just how I usually do it. Please don't think that any one part or even the whole of this guide is absolutely necessary, because you could probably cut it out and get a yoyo that looked just as cool, or better. If you think of something you think might look cool, try it! Right there and then. Worst outcome is that it doesn't look good, and you wipe it off before it even has a chance to dry.

I get the impression that my method is fairly meticulous, so if you find yourself getting frustrated with any part of this guide, take a break then try something else.

So here goes.

PREPARATION

What you'll need






-A clear yoyo - I like FHZs best for this method, but almost anything will work.
-Paint - I use acrylic, but definitely try anything you think will look cool (as long as it says it doesn't harm plastic :P). On this example I will be using neon pink and white.
-Brushes - Just as long as it's not too big it should work, I like ones that are flat.
-Cup/Jar of water - for rinsing your brush
-Rubbing alcohol - for wiping off mistakes
-Paper towels - for wiping off mistakes
-palette - use whatever works
-toothpicks - useful for scratching off little problem spots of paint and doing very minute details
-multi-tool - not necessary, but always handy
-a Dremel - this is important. I'm not sure if a drill will work here, because I get the impression that it needs to be spinning pretty fast.

If you want to paint CWs you'll also need:
-a CW
-a pencil - Black Warriors, as shown, are preferable
-acrylic coat - I used to use Mod Podge (brush applied) as shown in the first picture, but the spray acrylic leaves a much smoother final coat

If you want to wipe your caps you'll also need:
-a Dremel
-a few Qtips
-Dot 3 Brake fluid
-some teflon tape

PAINT IT UP

*note: You're going to end up at some point having to wait for the paint to dry on some part, so it's good to have other parts (other half, caps, CWs, etc) to work on while that's happening.

The Body

Disassemble your yoyo. Chuck up one half, like so:



Using a small glob of paint on your brush, apply small blobs around the tower, like so:



Here's the slightly delicate part. Turn on the dremel, and you should see a colored haze spread out from the center fairly rapidly (you can just see it in the picture). You need to turn off your dremel and stop the yoyo half before the paint flies out of the halves. Just do a few short spins to test how fast the paint goes out. If the paint doesn't go out far enough you can just spin it some more, but if it goes too far you'll have to wipe it with the paper towels and alcohol and start over.



When you're set to go you should have something that looks like this:



Success!

Repeat for the other half.

Now, say you get an ugly looking drip like this:



but you like the other drips around it. You can wait for it to dry, scratch off the drip you don't like with a toothpick, apply new dots of paint around the tower (just in the area you scratched off), then spin again. Since the original drips that you didn't scratch off are dry, they won't move!

Just a hint, but a really wide drip like that means you put too much paint in that spot. When you try again, dab on a smaller portion of paint.

So there you go:



Now just paint in the background. Don't try and make it opaque on the first coat. Use many, thin coats instead so the paint doesn't crack.





Stop when you can look through the other side of the half and are satisfied with the opacity. There are some paints (like the glow paint I've used) that I just could NOT get opaque by themselves. In such a case, just make sure you have an even layer of the non-opaque paint, then paint on an even layer of a similar color (or white) that is opaque.

The Caps

I always end up spending much more time on the caps, but you don't need to. The caps are flatter than the body, so if you like drawing, here's your canvas. You can get a much bigger "viewing area" if you wipe off the logo, but I almost always leave it on. I'm going to be doing a simple star on a different colored background.

First, an optional step. You have a choice to color in the ZERO, Duncan logo, and (R) separately, or just ignore them. Your call. I colored them in in this example. I usually do so with a toothpick just because they're fairly small areas with sharp corners and little room for error if you don't want your friends to think you can't even color inside the lines :P If you do go outside the lines a little, wait for it to dry then push it back with a toothpick.





^ See that little glob under the top part of the Z? Push that back with a toothpick.

For this cap, I drew a star on a piece of paper, put a piece of clear double-sided tape on that, then stuck it on the front of the cap. Then it was easy enough to trace that on the cap with my toothpick paintbrush.



It was pretty hard to get straight lines and even corners, I just let it dry then strategically scraped/pushed and applied paint where necessary. Simple enough.

Then you just paint the background color, and you're done with painting the yoyo. Now you've just got to

CLEAN IT UP

These steps are kinda boring, but important for the final look. The main idea of this section is to wipe any excess paint off of edges that you didn't really intend to get paint on. The flat ring on the back of the cap is one of those edges:

<I think I forgot to take a picture of this part, I'll need to check. It's a little ring that's about 2mm wide and rough, almost like it was beadblasted>

As well as the ring of plastic on the body that the cap sits on:


Ring seen through the body.

Both of those two areas tend to get magnified when the yoyo is assembled due to the curvature of the plastic, so make sure they look straight and even. I prefer to leave them blank, but you could also just paint them solid. I don't really like to do that though because it could possibly make the caps an unnecessarily tight fit and/or partially scrape off as you press the cap in leaving you back with an uneven coat.

So that's basically it. Now you've got something like this:



and you're itching to get it all together and play with it. But before you do that, PLEASE, take the 15 minutes to tune it Buzzon style. It will make it much smoother (especially given that the paint probably wasn't applied perfectly symmetrically, so this helps even that out). You won't want to take it apart after assembly, otherwise you risk scratching the paint on the caps.

Then just snap those caps in and BOOM!



Counterweight painting

Stick it on the end of a pencil like so, and clean it off with rubbing alcohol. You can scrape it up with sandpaper before you clean it if you want the paint to stick a little better.



Then just apply paint (spray paint works better than brush applied paint as shown here) allowing time between layers for the paint to dry completely.



Then do whatever details you need with a toothpick. To do the pips, I usually get a fairly large glob of paint on the toothpick, then lower that directly into the pip. It fills up the recess pretty much completely, but after the paint dries its volume goes down considerably.




Then just apply the clear coat. As I said at the start, mod podge will work okay if it's all you can find, but spray acrylic is much much better. In the below picture I did the character die with both spray paint and spray acrylic (the regular die was brush applied acrylic paint and spray acrylic), and you can see how much better it looks.




Now go play with it

WIPE CAPS

Wiping the logo off of your caps gives a large "canvas" area for anyone who likes to draw. Qtips w/ Dot3 brake fluid by hand takes me *forever*. I thought to try "mechanizing" the process a little, and it worked brilliantly.

Cut a Qtip in half. I wrapped a bit of teflon tape around the stick to make it a little tighter so it'd stick in the Dremel chuck better.





Then just apply a little Dot 3 to the cap and wipe away!

IMPORTANT: Make sure to keep the bit moving. Hold it in one spot for too long and you'll start to melt the cap, leaving an unsightly blemish that basically can't be removed.



If you need larger versions of the pictures, PM me and I'll hook you up.
Questions? Comments?

Frackin awesome guide! Your paints always look so clean, dude. I really like that part about how to do a star. I never would have imagined using a toothpic as a brush would work so well. But I definitely knew that they're a life saver to clean up lines when they're not sharp enough by scraping away the paint you dont want. That's good stuff to share. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I hope to see a bunch of other people trying their hand at painting now.

And I'm especially looking forward to the CW part. Lots of tight work to do on those.

sticky.

That looks REALLY good!

Some great guides coming out at the moment folks, keep it up :)

Nice write up. thanks.

Originally Posted by Luke Vader

I never would have imagined using a toothpic as a brush would work so well.

I've used them to touch up scratches on the car. Better than a brush in a lot of cases.

CW part up!

Yeah, toothpicks are one of my main tools, haha. I said it was meticulous :) It's mainly just getting better acquainted with the properties (viscosity, cohesion, drying, etc) of acrylic paint.

Dremmel eh? I wonder if my slow lathe will be fast enough. I must try now that I have a clear zero!

I also wonder about model paint. I have never used any but since its for plastic models It should be fine. Question is, is the viscocity thick enough?

The combination of thin model paint and slow lathe might actually work out (if it doesn't you might try a strategic partial drying of a small sample of paint then try that). I've always meant to experiment with different spinning methods/paints but never found the time/resources.

Well maybe I'll try a few out for you.

Model paint probably wont be as easy to "fix" and clean up as acrylic is. It'd be cool if it does work out alright though because there's alot of really nice colors of model car paint. Good luck!

i got an idea, what if used the splatter affect, then put crackel medium on, then a different color, then the origional color again...
hm, i'll have to get an FHZ or 2 and try this, i'm curious now...

That looks familiar!! I'm glad my FHZ was used for this write up.

The paint job looks awesome, and it plays uber smooth!

AndoCommando why did you change your name?

Nice guide dude, classy work.

I'd do a guide for my camo but its to easy lol.

P.S. I still have that pink polka dotted speeder that you dyed hehe. It still rocks the house.

Changed my username because I got confused with John a lot, Ghazi is much shorter (and my actual name), and being called "Ando" irl was like fingernails on a chalkboard, heh. But good to know the Speeder is being loved.

Section with my method on how to quickly and cleanly wipe caps added!



But what will I be using those wiped caps on, hmm...?

Melt it with a Q-tip? Haha, if I hadn't used the felt brush on my dremel before, I wouldn't have believed it. How about the Duncan wiener?
~yo! shi!

Originally Posted by Yo_shi

Melt it with a Q-tip? Haha, if I hadn't used the felt brush on my dremel before, I wouldn't have believed it. How about the Duncan wiener?
~yo! shi!

It's not flowing away, but you're (mostly) irreparably deforming the surface. High rpm's + pressure = friction = heat. Keeping the "bit" moving keeps the local cap temperature from getting too high.

Duncan wiener?

Originally Posted by Ghazi

It's not flowing away, but you're (mostly) irreparably deforming the surface. High rpm's + pressure = friction = heat. Keeping the "bit" moving keeps the local cap temperature from getting too high.

Duncan wiener?

The little Duncan logo. Looks like a hotdog.

~yo! shi!

Ohhhh. Hah. I left it there for S-T-Y-L-E. style.