Spiderman 3 by Matt Fielder

Front plate

I wanted the front of the case to be as clean and uncluttered as I could get it, and so that meant a pretty complicated mod job.

I wanted to get rid of 3 of the optical drive bays that wouldn't be used, and also cover up the two floppy bays, the stock switches, and the USB / Front audio ports.

With that many changes, it made sense to just make a new front face panel from scratch. I came up with a design, drew it up in my CAD programme, then took a jigsaw to cut it from 3/16" aluminium (just like the original front plate), before finally putting in a lot of work to bevel the edges. The bevelling required sanding, polishing, more sanding, more sanding and some more polishing.

I also drilled counter-sunk holes for the screws to attach it and polished the screws themselves to keep the clean look going.

The stealthed DVD drive is going to look pimp, but my arms are going to fall off.

Peter parker is very introspective, as is Spiderman. In the S3 trailer, he sees himself in the mirror glass of a skyscraper. I tried to figure out a way to incorporate that feeling of personal introspection, and the front polished to a mirror lets the user look into his own eyes...

Thankfully, it seemed to come out pretty well.

The back plate

I pioneered the effect of the Spidey-skin on the backplate for the case - which, handily, has a removable motherboard tray.

Spray paint and mesh grill as a stencil created a very nice texture.

A little bit of airbrushing later and the backplate looks pretty good, with some spider webs and a red spider motif. The little red spider is the spider that started it all...