A short time ago in another forum of this country, a national MiniZ hero approached me to tell me that the best thing for the novices is for us to keep quiet because we don´t know anything and therefore don´t have anything to offer. I ´ve never liked arrogant behaviour nor do I like it when people tell me what I have to do, I have written these guidelines in case it may be of some utility for those new fans who want to wade into the rough waters of car body painting. 

What is true is that in my younger years, around the mesozoic era, I spent quite a bit of time making still models, but up until three months ago I have never laid hands on an air brush and more or less around the same time my joy was great when I found out that there were special papers for printing my own outlines, something in which I consider myself to be a novice in these tasks of miniz decoration. 

My objective is to explain the process, step by step, in manual form, from the moment of buying the white car body to the magical moment of placing the car on the race track. Given that it isn´t a short process and in addition I have a tendency to be a bit longwinded when it comes to writing, I have separated this guide into 3 parts:

1.- Pre preparation
2.- Painting jobs
3.- Outlines and final finish

1.- PRE PREPARATION:

If your aim is to proudly show off your your work and that it woul give your friends something to talk about, the work must begin long before beginning to paint and even prior to buying the car body.

1.1.- Choosing the Car Body

The chosing criteria of a car body can be vary from being purely aesthetic to the sincere desire to find a car body that performs well on track.

One has to admit that Kyosho makes it pretty easy for us to choose white car bodies for painting. The shortage of production obligates us in many ways to conform, not with the car body that we would want to have, but rather with that we are able to get our hands on. Even so, there are some elements that the average enthusiast must take into consideration. For example, if our intention is to paint the car body with a single colour and we don´t want to add any designs, then any car body will do. On the contrary, if you wish to put on different colours with clearly defined borders, and / or you want add outlines, then a car body with numerous air intakes (as well as other irregularities on the surface), would be more difficult to decorate, whilst a car body with smooth lines will result to be easier.

To illustrate this guide, I have chosen a Corvette C5-R. The criteria that I have used has been several. First of all the good on-track performance of this car body, on the other hand I must admit that I like the American aesthetics of this model, and although this vehicle has many air intakes on its surface, the decoration that I have in mind shouldn´t create many technical problems. 

1.2- ¿What Decoration Should I use?

An unpainted car body is like a piece of white canvas on which the enthusiast can capture any idea that comes to mind.
A good piece of advice is to check out images on the internet of the chosen model: you can see different decorations, real models, colour combinations etc...which gives us some interesting ideas for our project.
 
Once we have a good idea, it is obvious that the ability of visualizing our idea in images before beginning would turn out to be very intesting. In order to achieve this, the first thing I do is search for certain car blueprints. Once I have found one, the next step is to do a vectorial sketch using the blueprint as a model, for which I use the corel Draw software (there are many types of software that can do this). The motive for doing a vectorial drawing is that is doesn´t loose any quality when we change its scale, and it is precisely for the next step, measurement of the size of the car body that I have purchaced and put my drawing to scale so that I have exactly the same measures, thus greatly facilitating the tasks that follow.     

 




      On this  foundation we can experiment with and abundance of painting outlines and even "post" virtually the outlines to see how they´ll look on our model.  
The decoration that I have chosen is of the "racing" style but the truth is that I am now tired of only seeing foreign brands on our little race cars, so all of the logotypes that have been placed on my car belong to Spanish companies  (at least that it is what I believe, who knows with everything so globalized)

Once it becomes clear that what we have to do with our car leads us to the next section of our guide: the painting.



Regards.