Good morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am finally done with the paint job. Let’s get started!
I had to give in. Spray paints are just too broad of strokes for the delicate eyes. I ended up recruiting my sister to do them with acrylics. On the plus side, they are a slightly closer shade of blue to the original sprites, which I was going for, anyway. I booted up the Pi after the final bits of paint were dry, and confirmed a clear image from the camera. I snagged My father to clean the whole thing with rubbing alcohol and the two of us applied a clear coat.
As of this writing, I have spent an hour or two working at removing that Elmer’s glue mask. I waited too long, and the mask is too thin. If I ever need to mask off another waffle cone like that again, I’ll spend less time using masking tape beforehand than peeling the glue afterword. The Elmer’s glue trick is only for small details!
The paint job is not as perfect as I’d hoped. The white iris has a little bit of blue in it and there’s a little chip in the paint on the back. A bubble or three have grown in a few places about the surface, and the final irises have brush strokes. Even with all these small flaws, it still looks better finished than it did while stuck in development limbo. Overall, I’d say it’s almost what I wanted.
As it stands now, I have most of the glue off, but the rest is either splitting on me or stubbornly sticking to the printed plastic. Fortunately, the holes I taped off remained taped off through the whole ordeal so I didn’t have to go through and find a hook to get blobs of glue out of all the deep crevices.
Looking forward, I hope I don’t need to use an Internet connection to recognize a cat. I honestly don’t know how long it will take to finish with the software side of things, but I will need to first make a “Hello World” program to debug my coding setup. Come to think of it, I likely only have one more “A New Tool” post, as it’s just going to be attaching the board and any little details that pop up.
Final Question: have you ever had a long project finally approach its completion date after crawling along for way too long?