# Painting or Staining Plastic Wrap (Stiltbeast) Corpses



## Sipesh (Sep 5, 2004)

After seeing a few mentions around about how hard it is to keep the Stiltbeast plastic wrapped corpses from flaking their paint or stain off, I thought I might make a quick note about how I've gotten it to stay one with great success.

I've used both water-based stains and gel stains and have gotten pretty much 100% adhesion with them. The trick is to keep your heat gun in hand while staining. Warm the plastic in each area before putting the stain on. If you put the water-based stain on an area without heating it first it will bead up just like you'd expect it to do, but when the plastic is hot first, the stain sets into it. Same for the gel stain. A few passes first with the heat gun to warm, then apply the stain, then give a few more passes with the heat gun. It seems to melt the stain into the plastic a bit or bond it together. Really. I have several corpses I've made this way now since it's so darn quick and all of them I can move around and pick up with nothing getting left behind.

As far as paint goes, if you choose to use a spray paint instead of stain, I HIGHLY recommend they Krylon Fusions. It chemically bonds to plastic surfaces. No need to heat with the gun first, just spray on in several light passes and it will fuse to the plastic. Once the Fusions is on, or any plastic primer, there are a few different brands, then you can dry brush with acrylics or whatever you want to detail with and it will stay like a pro.

The pictures of the corpses I'm including in this are both plastic wrap. One was gel stained, the other water-based stain. The nice thing about the water-based stain is that it is easier to clean up and such. Also, because of it's thinner consistency, it really bleeds down into the layers of the plastic and adds some nice detail where it goes over holes in the layers and what not.


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## JustJimAZ (Jul 26, 2010)

Thanks for this tip! Krylon is amazing stuff. Good to have people out there sharing their discoveries and practices!


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