Deadly Computer Blog

So i got my Nintendo Wii 2 weeks ago, and i love it, it’s so awesome and pretty, and beautiful. But, it just looks so…blah and the same, the white casing, the simple design, so i got to me thinking. How can i make this better? The answer, paint it black. Then i thought again, thats still boring, how can i make it even better? The answer, stencil in the Triforce. This is the final product:

That’s right, its dead sexy, don’t you wish your’s looked like that?

If you want to see more of the photos, and how we did it, click the link:

The Triforce WiiSo, like i said, i got this idea one day in class soon after i got the Wii, and i formulated it in my head for a few days before spilling it to my closest of friends. I decided that first, i was going to try the spray paint out on the Wiimote i had simply for the reason that it was easier to take appart (4 screws) and way easier (and cheaper) to replace if i totally destroyed it then the Wii. click on images for full 2592×1944 glory

The controller came appart much easier then we were expecting, and that made us happy. We separated the circuit board, and the buttons, and placed them on the small piece of foam we were working on. We then took the plastic shells, and put them onto another piece of foam, and brought them outside to paint. We let them dry overnight, and put another coat on in the morning. We put it back together, and made sure that it still worked, it did, and this is the finished product:

As you can no doubt tell, me missed a spot along the edges of the Wiimote, but, its ok, i don’t mind it. Also, I opted to paint the B trigger black, looking back, i wouldn’t do that, cause it looks nicer with the white triggers, but, ill save that for the other 3 Wii motes i have. Also, you’ll notice that the is a scratch on the B trigger, that’s from our metal videogame accessory rack, and we didn’t anticipate that, but, fear not, we got some sealant, and hopefully that won’t happen on the Wii.
I also painted the Nunchuck, but this time, i left the triggers white, and i think it looks much better:


We put sealant on the nunchuck, and, because of the not level surface of it, it bubbled, and crackled, and didn’t dry smooth, but, i think it actually makes it look better, and as michelle said, “It looks like leather almost”…almost michelle…
Ok, so, now that we know that the paint doesn’t look like crap, rather, it looks pretty f**king awesome, we’re full steam ahead to do the console. That’s the Wii (with a poorly used flash, but whatever). It’s so plain and boring…In order to take it appart there are a number of obvious, and not so obvious screws hidden under it’s sleek white clothes.
The first two are the most obvious, under the rubber feet:

But, as you can (kinda) tell from the photo, those are not normal screws, they are crazy ass triangle screws, Phillips head don’t fit, and neither did out flat heads. Our solution, “modify” a flat head, and by modify, i mean break, to fit. So with wire cutters in hand, we made our own screwdriver for the Wii.
There were also several more screws hidden beneath the black plastic cover on the Gamecube area, some were triangle, some were phillips, all were easy.

After all the screws were out, we took the front faceplate off first:

That came off easy, and showed the bare mouth of the slot loading disc drive, (if i was smart and turned the flash off, you’d be able to see that, stupid me…)Next we took off the main body, it was scary, would it come off easy, would we break the plastic, would monsters come out and eat us?

It came off easy, and no breaking, or monsters, yay!

Now, i’ll just go through the dismantling of the basics of this, cause, i’m sure you’ve all see it taken appart already, and all this isn’t new to you. If you want to see what the inside of this thing looks like, here is the album of our project

Two things i will point out that are odd are this: One, there are crazy triangle screws holding the casing together, but, once inside, its all standard phillips headed screws. The other thing that no one seems to have mentioned is the massive amounts of thermal paste applied to both the Hollywood and Broadway chips, as well as the Wi-fi chip.

The thermal paste was stuck to the heat sink for the chips, but it was still alot.

Finally, after all the big parts were taken off, this is what it looks like:

Now that the Wii is appart, now comes the fun part. Painting it.
We started with a gold undercoat:

We did the same thing for this as the Wiimote, we painted it, and let it dry overnight. It looked awesome, and we got way more excited.
Next we had to figure out how we were going to stencil in the Triforce. Well, we knew how we wanted to do it, we just didnt know how, if that makes sense. Anyway, mike put some tape on my plastic microwave shield and got the ruler and razor blade out. Each triangle is a 40cm equilateral triangle, which, in theory, should make an 80cm equilateral triangle, in theory…

Then it was just a matter of placing them onto the Wii at the right height. This is where my genius came in. We put the Wii in it’s stand, and put the triangles onto it so that they were parallel with the ground:

Now, this means that when the Wii is placed horizontally, the Triforce will be slightly tilted, my response to that was, so?
So, now that we got the stencil on, its time to paint it black. This is where we got impatient. It was extremely hot this thursday, and by extremely, i mean 60 degrees F in the middle of December. So we thought that the paint would dry quicker, which it did…on the plastic, but not on the foam we used to hold it. So when we turned it over so that we made sure we got all the edges, the rear edge got some foam attached to it. At first it looks like crap, but, its really not that bad, or noticeable anymore, (to me).

(again with the damn flash!)
Well, next we had to peal the masking tape off, to make sure that no black paint bleed through it. We got the razor blade back out, and cut out the edge of the tape, and then went under one corner to pull it off:

Well, that turned out good, and no problems at all, now we repeated the process for the remaining 5 triangles, and finally we got this:

Next, we reassembled it, which wasn’t the most easy process, but, wasn’t hard either. It took about 20 minutes to put back together. I opted not to paint the rubber feet, simply cause i thought it might look cooler like that, and, if it didnt, i could always go over it later, its not hard.

Oh man, doesn’t that just look awesome? I think it does.
We made a bunch of mistakes mostly just impaitance, but, still we think we got the kinks worked out of it.
If anyone is interested in doing this, send us an email:wii.play@deadlycomputer.com and maybe we can work out something. And, as i said above, i have 3 more Wiimotes, that i’m about to paint, so, if you want one NOW, then, send an email faster, and maybe we can work something out.

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UPDATE:

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Here are some new nice photos for all you complainers out there: