I found this model during a search of eBay and had to grab it. I won the bid and got it in the mail and just had to put it together. This is a tough model to find, but I heard that Polar Lights is coming out with the Ecto-1 soon... will have to grab that when they do. I opened the box and was amazed at the detail, but upon further inspection I noticed several little details that they left out of which I will explain later. Please note, that many of the images are smaller to fit on the page and some will allow you to click on them to make them larger so you can see more detail... First things first.

I started out painting the cabin completely flat black. This would help with the laying down of colors later and bring out some of the shadows later on. This was the easiest part of the model.

Next I proceeded to paint the peices on the sprue. Using my reference pics (see References at the top of this page) and freeze framing the movie many times, I came up with the closest colors I could to what I saw on the screen. I then began to work on painting the interior. The biggest problem here is that they didn't show much of the interior at all in the movie. So I had to use my best judgement to come up with what I thought you'd find inside.

There was a computer console with a keyboard (that was easy and for fun I painted on the screen a little bit of text. I wanted it to read "This model was created by Jim Davis" but I couldn't write that small! :) I painted the seats Brown and the floor a Light Gull Gray. I painted all the instruments on the dashboard white with some silver highlights here and there. I think it came out looking pretty good.

While looking thru my reference photos I noticed that in the instructions the rear license plate was suggested to be placed in the center on the back, but upon further inspection of the movie, I noticed that it was located on the left side of the back bumper (notice the arrow in the pic). So I cut out a suitable hole in the bumper and made it the size of the license plate.

Next I started on the signs. The kit came with decals that go on the signs but they were completely wrong. They used a bold print type font and were completely stupid (in my opinion), so using my reference of the movie, I created a few little signs. I was able to see in the movie 4 messages, and 2 more that I can only assume based upon my knowledge of watching the movie. Here's the messages I came up with and how they should look on the signs:

The first problem I had was getting the dots (lights) to be perfect size everytime... virtually impossible with a brush. That is when I discovered the beauty of gel pens. I went to a local art shop and found two gel pens. One was called "Sunburst" and the other was called "Neon Orange". I used the Orange one for the red light and the "Sunburst" for the yellow. When you use them they give a pretty even dot each time. The signs were 7 dots high by 82 dots wide. Using the pens made this task of putting in the dots for each message easy and fast. One problem... the gel pen ink doesn't dry very fast. It can smudge easily. Let it dry completely overnight before touching it. Here's what the signs look like when done: