I got this feeling.. somebody’s watching me.
I just had to Instagram this last picture…
By the way: my username there is askernas, in case you want to follow me on there as well =)
Almost there… (stay on target)
Last night I finally got around to sand off the dome panels and paint them!
I found the secret to get rid of the spin lines quick!
First time around, I tried to just sand them in small circles with 400 grit. This didn’t seem to do anything with the spin lines.
After experimenting a bit, I realized that if I sanded along the spin lines instead of against, it went a lot faster and quicker!
A quick spray with my blue paint, straight on the metal, this is the result after having to wait a full 4 minutes or so for the paint to dry.
I also got around to finally paint my radar eye!
I actually painted it three times.. I painted it once, wasn’t happy with the masking, trued to sand off, and some paint peeled. I sanded off the entire radar eye, and painted again. Still an anomaly I did not like. This time around I sanded off just the front surface and gave it a new paint job. Looked great!
Next step was to mount all the blue panels.. and R2 looked a lot better again!
Since I had painted my second leg, I drilled up the ankle and inserted a metal tube in the pivot point and glued it in place with some E-6000.
I also decided to paint the screws to my battery boxes white, to make them more discrete.
This is the before image
And this is the after
From a little distance, it is nice and discrete!
I then spent a good few hours getting my arms mounted in my arm boxes, and my arm boxes mounted in the frame. It required a fair bit of carving, routing with my dremel, and finally go in with my metal cutter to cut off a big block of styrene inside the droid!
So… what does it look like at the moment? Well … feast your eyes on this!
Still to do:
- Make end caps for second ankle cylinder
- Wrap center ankle cylinders in aluminium tape
- Make two ankle wedges
- Mount Ankle Details
- Mount Under Shoulder Details
- Chamfer Main Foot strips
- Weather Skirt
- Weather Main legs
- Double check new wiring
…. and done!
Weathering the body
I know my fiancée wanted the droid to look clean and brand new, but a weathered droid looks a lot more real!
So, I calculated the odds of she liking the weathered look as opposed to me doing something totally stupid…. and went ahead and did it anyway!
I started with the pristine, clear coated body, now with all pieces mounted..
..and then started greasing up the body.
(the droid’s, not mine!)
So, without further ado, this is my weathered droid!
… got you!
This was only part of phase one. To get the colour and nuances where I wanted them. Next step was to go over the droid with rubbing alcohol (T-Röd for the Swedes reading this) and basically cleaning the droid up.
Not too much, since I still wanted it to look a bit worn, but enough to not look pristine and a bit used!
This is more like it, eh?
I haven’t done the skirt yet, I will flip the droid upside down when going over the skirt..
This is the back…
And finally.. a side detail!
So: two legs left to weather, and some light weathering on the dome!
Comments, please? =)