Paintwork

Having replaced all the bodywork, the next thing to consider was painting it all. As luck would have it, I was approached by Paul (via GSXRDel) with an offer of air-brushing my bike with some trick paintwork.

After some consideration (all 3 seconds of it) I agreed to let Paul do his thang with my bikes bodywork. All I needed to do was come up with some sort of scheme for him to lay down.

I searched the internet for pictures of a GSXR1000 k2, when I found one I saved it to my hard drive, then removed all the colour from the panels on the bike, leaving me with an effective blank canvas. I printed off about 20 copies and got out my felt-tip pens and crayons and opened a can of beer and sat down for an evening scribbling ideas onto the blanked pictures. I did need some inspiration, I decided that as this bike was becoming more bling than I had originally intended that an American style would be good. So I searched through copies of StreetFighters Magazine searching for photo's of American bikes (features on the AMI HorsePower Shootout proved to be the most useful), but I still wasn't getting a set theme that I wanted to use. So, the next thing to do was sit in front of the telly with a selection of bike DVD's (BikerBoyz, Torque, Crustys Demons Of Dirt, etc.) looking for that inspiration. Coincidentally, American Graffiti was on telly and whilst I was changing disks I was reminded how much I loved flames on those 50's hot-rods.

Flames would be the main theme - not exactly original but still my bike, my choice!! The other idea that I had spotted that I liked was on the ZX12 raced by Dogg in BikerBoyz - the chain across the back of the bike. Although I wanted my chain to run the length of the bike. I also wanted realistic looking flames, as well as the classic "hot-rod" style ones. Which left me with the next problem....how to bring those ideas together.

After a lot of scribbling and colouring-in, I came up with this sketch.

I took the sketch to Paul, along with the bodywork and a copy of StreetFighters Magazine with a picture of a Hayabusa inside at the AMI shootout that had flames similar to my idea, just so Paul could see what I had been thinking.

After about 3 weeks, I got a phone call from Paul, "It's done, do you want to come up and collect it?" I couldn't drive up the M1 fast enough. When I arrived I was totally gob-smacked. Paul told me that he had to modify my idea slightly because, whilst it worked in 2D when laying it down in 3D it just didn't work out very well.

He'd mixed a copper-flake in to the black paint which looks really different from the usual gold or silver metal-flake effects. He'd used the same colour mixed with a green to make a paint-flip on the GSXR logos. This was awesome, but the flames on the belly-pan were absolutely incredible!! I've never seen any flames that look so realistic, catch them in the right light and they seem to flicker like a camp-fire.

The man is a genius with paint, for further evidence have a look at the pics of GSXRDel's bike or Zedhead's Project Slimfast Bandit in Streetfighters Magazine (issue 137 July 2005)