By Shannon Sturgis Howard Bates slices a hole in the vinyl sticker for the bus's window. The windows are covered with another material that allows visibility from the inside of the bus.

LITTLE ROCK — In the cavernous, fumed-filled Central Arkansas Transit Authority maintenance building, the curious observer may find many oddities, like a pair of gloves that look as though they’ve been through the river of slime in Ghostbusters II or a copy of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novel Breaking Dawn nonchalantly lying on a workbench. On a recent Monday it was also possible to find a transformation in process, sort of a like an extreme makeover. This was the bus edition.

At the far north end of the building, one Marty Malone of Crystal Springs, Miss., and a crew of five from all over the Southeast were in the process of overhauling the exterior of bus 2107 to prepare for the launch of a new fire safety campaign sponsored by Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Beginning the day as a simple white bus decorated only with the leaping CAT logo, Number 2107 would, by sundown, be covered with images of illustrated smoke alarms, fire escape plans, the hospital’s blue and white logo and an urging to “Practice Fire Safety” in letters as big as … well, as big as a city bus.

From a distance, it looks like an impossible transformation — maybe not Sistine Chapel-like, but impressive nonetheless as the whole bus looks to have been painted (in less than eight hours) to promote fire safety, much as we’ve seen others advertising pharaohs and casinos and whatnot. Even the windows somehow maintain the pattern on the outside but aren’t obstructed from the inside.

But the Michelangelo of the operation explains there’s no paint involved here, only 3M Scotchcal 3555. Or in layman’s terms: vinyl, which has come a long way since the days of 45s.

“Most people think it’s painting,” said Malone, who has been doing vinyl wrapping for decades. “But the technology has gotten so good … digital printing is everywhere now.”

Indeed, said Malone, who got his start doing semi-permanent applications to transport trucks and gas station signs, nowadays you’ll find vinyl wrap on everything from the trashcans at the Superdome pushing Domino's Pizza to a 12-story building in New Orleans, wrapped with an image of Kevin Garnett before last year‘s NBA All Star Game.

“There are different types of vinyl … probably a thousand different types, and special ones for everything,” said Malone, who wrapped buses in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics and performance stages in Salt Lake City for the 2002 games.

For the Children’s Hospital bus, the product is one that is durable enough that it won’t fade or wash off or wear. But the vinyl is also such that, at contract’s end, it can be removed without damaging the paint underneath.

So with a suggestion for local rock radio given and Guns ‘n Roses blaring, Malone and his crew were hard at work last Monday morning matching the strips of vinyl to the pattern printed on a piece of paper to create the desired design — sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. The difference is, these puzzle pieces were 54 inches wide.

And in case you’ve never noticed, the surface of a bus is not flat. Windows aside, there are lights, vents and panels along front, side and back, fixtures that move from bus to bus as models are redesigned through the years (just like cars are). As if on cue, while tacking up two panels so the text lined up straight, Malone found that, though everything looked fine in the design sketch, half the “F” in the word “fire” on one side of the bus was lined up over the wheel well. So every piece on the whole side had to be moved over by about a foot.

What’s more, the vinyl wrap won’t stick to the soft rubber window seals or the doors, so it has to be cut and molded around such obstacles — but without the pattern being lost.

“On a bus like this, there’s easily over a thousand cuts we have to work around,” said Malone, who explained that the margin for error is small as the vinyl doesn’t stretch much, though a blowtorch can be used to heat and shrink it when needed.

But none of that can even start until the bus is pressure washed and then scrubbed down with degreaser and an alcohol and water mixture to take off the grime.

In the end, the finished product looks best from a distance — but of course that’s the way it was designed. Cruising by at 20 mph, you won’t notice the minor bumps where a bolt was sticking out or the logo that had to be moved because of the taillights. And even if the imperfections do come out up close, it can still be said to look like a painting, noted one of Malone’s crew.

“Hey, even Picasso had brush strokes,” he said.