Painting:

I tapped off the Monitors glass again, as well as the plastic bubble. I placed some extra paper overtop of the keypad, and tapped some paper behind the faceplate, so I don't accidentally spray through the ventilation holes at the LC 475. That would be... bad. ;)

I spraypainted the entire exterior of the unit Black with a Styrofoam-safe Latex Paint. As with all spraypaints, do this in a well ventalated area. You're not going to die if you do it in you're basement... in the winter... like I did. However, you will sneeze black latex stuff afterward.

After letting it airdry for the night, I patched up any areas where the foam had absorbed the paint, or I had missed the night earlier.
I then brought out my arsenel of art tools that I would use to create a brushed/rusted metal effect with. Under my bathroom counter I didn't find a seasponge (like I had hoped, to apply the metalic paint with) but a grey, stiff plastic bristled old comb.

Using a paint brush, I applied paint directly to the bush, and went about in strange patterns, adding the effect to the faceplate of the Terminal.
Before I did this, I spray painted a sample piece of foam, let it dry for an hour. I then tried my tecnique on it before I attempted it on the finished surface.
I had the printout of the Terminal to guide me (the light and dark areas, density of the black, etc), so it wasn't too difficult. At some points, I sprayed the black paint in with some of the metalic paint to get a darker metalic color. I also occasionally applied the Black spray paint (from far away) to get that speckled black parts on the terminal. After removing all the stickers that protected the monitor/keypad, I added the finishing touch.
I had printed out hordes of the "Frog Blast the Ventcore - www.bungie.org" stickers for the Scifi-Anime convention I went to during the summer of 2002.
I canabalized one of those, cutting it from its surrounding sticker, colored the white on the sticker with a pencil, and stuck it on the lower-left hand corner of the terminal's raised surface. I went over it with a half-dried paintbrush that had some of the metalic paint on it to blend it into the surrounding surface.

Some may be wondering why the keypad is lacking the Ghostly-neongreen button-graphic. It's created, and in a photoshop file on my Mac currently.
Due to time constraints, I was unable to get it printed off on clear plastic at my local copyshop. Something that will get done in the next few weeks. Hopefully I'll get some pictures taken then.
A video will be taken of myself actually using the terminal/paging through it once I get it to my school. I'll post the video and notify everyone on the Marathon Story Forum and at http://bs.bungie.org once its done.

I have to say, this was one of the most enjoyable art projects I've ever undertaken. I welcome anyones comments or questions. Need any clarification on what I've done, etc?

Just ask me at ernie@bungie.org.

Cheers,
-Ernie
(Blayne Scott)