When my best friend, Kristina, asked me if I could make a custom xbox for her boyfriends birthday, I was like "Uuum... have you seen my Deceptacon xbox? What do you want?". "Los Angeles Dogers, I'll give you $150". "When do you need it?". "Day After Tomorrow..." All I needed to buy for this project was paint, primer and sand paper... I had everything else ready to go.
I started with a regular old, run of the mill softmodded console. She didn't want Media Center, or anything else... Just emulators and roms, so I went with UnleashX.
Since this xbox was in excellent condition, I did not need to sand before priming. I did, however, need to give it a good wipe-down with isoprophyl alcohol to get all of the grease and dirt off.
I primed all of the pieces that needed to be painted, inside and out. I wanted this thing to look like it was actually made by Micro$oft.
I painted the lid, base and button guard blue. I painted the faceplate and DVD bezel white.
This shot is with the shielding, fan and controller ports in place. The contrast of the blue against the chrome is brilliant. Better that that dingy old blackish green.
I masked off the faceplate and DVD bezel, then I gave it a quick shot of blue. While I was at it, I shot the button assembly with white. So far, so good... Then I put the faceplate back together.
Next up was to cut out the "LA" logo from the lid...
I printed out the logo to the apropriate size...
Then I masked the fins and taped the logo down where I thought would be nothing less than perfect.
I cut the logo out, pushing the x-acto knife into the lid a little harder that I normally would to sort of "trace" or "etch" the logo into the lid.
Then I took my novelty, battery powered, Dremel (do not buy one of these, they absolutely suck) and drilled a series of holes around the inside perimeter of the logo on the low setting. After that was complete I kicked it up to the high setting and drug the bit from hole to hole, making sure to keep track of the inside of the "A".
Then I used nail files (dollar store) and my x-acto knife to clean up the edges and make the corners sharp.
After I was satisfied, I took the lid out back to be sprayed with 3 thin coats of white, letting it dry for about 15 minutes between each coat.
I let the final coat dry for about 2 hours. Long enough for me to change the P/E (power / eject) lights from green to blue and wire up all of the indicator lights. (network connected, network activity and HDD (hard drive) activity. I was also able to test the machine to make sure everything was perfect.
After the paint was completely dry, I removed the masking.
Then I cut a piece of "frosted" Lexan (plexi-glass) to back the "LA" logo. I simply hot glued it in place on the under-side of the lid. I attached the inner piece of the "A", again, with hot glue.
Originally I had planned to clear the jewel and light it up with blue LED's. Kristina came by to see where I was at in the project and asked me how long that would take. She needed it sooner than later, so we opted to just paint the jewel blue to match the rest. And the Dodger Xbox was born.
Kristina took Brad to a Dodgers game the next day and brought the xbox with them. When they were getting their coats out of the trunk of the car she asked him to get something from "that box". He opened the box, saw the xbox and, from what I was told, almost fainted. He loved it.
My work here is done...
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