Introduction: Gameboy Sculpting: "Bricking" Your DMG

By Thretris

Ever wanted to do something to your DMG besides paint it? Me too, so I busted out my sculpting tools today and some Aves Apoxie Sculpt and went to town. My original idea was to just do some red Mario style bricks, but in tradition of the DMG's nickname "Grey Brick" I decided to do just that.

Step 1: Prepping

I got this old DMG-01 from the goodwill for 4 bucks, so I wasn't going to be bummed if I screwed up somehow. Take your GB apart (assuming you know how and already own a tri-wing screwdriver) all the way down to just the face plate. Then carefully pop off the screen (good time to replaced your screen cover if need be). After you have it all stripped give it a light sanding (I had to go nuts since my $4 DMG was crapily spray painted black)

Step 2: Applying Sculpt

Next I just evenly applied the sculpt all over the face plate, smoothing it out bast I could as I went (wearing gloved helps). Dont worry about the over hang and sloppy parts, you can take of them later and it will be easier as the sculpt sets up a bit more. I let it sit for about 15 minutes while it gets firmer and no so sticky.

Step 3: Clean Up Sculpt

Now that the sculpt is a bit firmer we can trim it up and its more like soft wax and less like sticky play-doh. Trim around all the edges (I also chose to carve out the contrast pot) and also make sure you trim out a nice edge for your screen to go back on as well as nice smooth holes for you buttons. If its not perfect don't worry you can also re-work some ares after your cured.

Step 4: Starting Your Brick Pattern

Now for the fun part, sculpting your brick (on your brick _ ). I have fancy sculpting tools, but I didn't even use them, the back of butter knife from the kitchen works very well. Just cradle the blade across the face to get those straight lines, thats it, just make sure they are evenly spaced.

After that, you do your vertical lines, we all know what brick pattern is so i wont break it down.

Step 5: Texturing

This is when you ad texture to the brick and add realism while also making your lines look cleaner. See that Dremel bit hanging out of my D-Pad? I used that to roll around on the sculpt to add grain, you can also just use some gritty sandpaper or anything similar. Make sure you change direction and patterns a lot so you don't have in repetition in your texture.

Step 6: Painting

Now your painting your DMG, I paint everything by hand cause I like to use my Vallejo Game Color Acrylic paint. Do the whole face plate it a solid dark Grey color (see image to the left)

Then your doing to dry-brush a lighter grey on to it. Dry-brushing is like dusting with a small amount of paint on your brush so it only picks up on texture. This technique will make the brick come alive!

Step 7: Optional Step

Last but not least, we drill the hole for the "pro sound" Mod which only cost about 3 bucks to do

Step 8: ALL DONE

Here is some completed images of the DMG, the buttons are from a NES controller (the A,B, and D-pad buttons all fit right in with no mods)