From The Hard Drive Vault - R2-D2 Building

Hello there

I'd earmarked today as an Encore! post, but then realised that what I was going to post had never actually been posted on Patreon before.

I believe that all the pictures in this little story were only ever on social media, as this build came before Patreon.  The taller, golder, partner droid was built on here, over a long period of time (and that will be an Encore! post, when we condense that build into one instalment) but this one was in the olden days.

I've got to the point now, where I sometimes come into my office, do whatever it is I do in here, and leave without even acknowledging that the two droids are stood in the corner.  When I overthink that, it's crazy, given that these were very much "grail" items for me (ie. the things I some day desperately wanted in my collection, Holy Grail stuff). It had been the case since seeing the (retrospectively awful) 1:1 scale statues of these characters at Blackpool Illuminations in the seventies (I went in a time machine there), and the better replicas in the corner window of London's erstwhile Planet Hollywood in the early nineties (when I was one years old or whatever the maths is). 

Of course, I thought one day I'd just be able to buy them...then 'one day' arrived and I definitely couldn't. Still couldn't in fact.  I'll never be able to. So I took matters into my own hands when I came across a hooky seller who was shifting unfinished, rough, fibreglass casts of R2-D2.  I actually think the ones I bought were only second generation, so they had been cast off an original build.  The ones you see, very occasionally, now online are - I would guess - maybe fifth or sixth.  They're also a lot more money than the £170 quid I paid for mine. 

I've oft had people bemoan the fact that when I want something, I tend to find a way to buy it.  This sort of thing is the reason why.  I think I have a decent eye for when things will be available for a short period before either disappearing forever or rocketing in price, and am too scared to miss the window.  I have never regretted getting these parts, none of the parts I've used to build Star Wars replicas for my house are easily available any more.

The other day, during a Rocky Robot meeting, the person from the production company showed me a small scale Millennium Falcon replica they had on their desk.  They knew I liked Star Wars stuff, and it was a gesture of solidarity.  I - of course - could have just said "Woah, ace", but I didn't.  I spun my webcam round to show the two droids.  The webcam at the other end wasn't a wide enough lens to show the bottom of his jaw, and I sat with a very ungracious big smile.  He then asked me if I did commissions but I explained I probably haven't got the time left in my life to make another. He did, however, still accept Rocky Robot as a development project for his production company, but more about that another time.

The other aspect to this is I had never done anything like this before.  It was hugely ambitious and a very steep learning curve.  If I'd have bought these a few years earlier, I would currently have an embarrassing effort of an R2 replica in my house.  Or it would have already gone the tip.  This took me a long time to do (it was definitely over a year), and I was determined to do it slow and properly, to really take care over it. I never rushed it, and I think it was the first time that had been the case with an art project.

So without further ado, let's take a trip down memory lane (or you can see them for the first time if you didn't see them six years ago), and have a look at my first proper big build.

The prep before even building anything for this was ludicrous.  Every single piece was unfinished fibreglass, so had frayed edges, often overspill fibreglass, and many of them were broken too.  These were the first pieces I sanded down.

They were all like that.  

I actually made an early error with the body piece, as I cut that lip from the very top.  Later on I rebuild the entire circumference of it, as the body was too short without it. You can definitely see from the picture though that it looked like it was meant to come off...

This was my first time using a Dremel.  I actually started this build using a tiny little non-branded rotary tool which was only suitable for very small-scale projects but learnt very quickly I would need something more heavy duty.  I learned that when the small one burnt out in about five minutes, and all the attachments snapped within a moment of touching the fibreglass. It was a pretty straightforward lesson.

There's the legs too.  The one closest has been finished, and the one behind hasn't. It's honestly harder than it perhaps looks.

These are inside the dome and body, and were meant for me to attach a lazy Susan style swivel effect but my efforts in this area were pretty much unsuccessful.  I'm not ruling out one day going back in to see if stuff I've learnt in the interim time will enable me to do it, but for the moment these work purely as support.

Peeling off the massive masking tape job I did on the dome, to see the rough shapes of the blue come out, was one of the most exciting moments of my life.  I really thought at that point that I could do this well.  This image was so permeated into my psyche, that to see if in front of me was mind-blowing.  The blue on R2-D2 is a very specific mix of colour.  In actual fact it is a blurple colour, starting with a metallic blue base, hazing over a mist of metallic purple and then repeating with the metallic blue. 

Tidying the edges was a mix of applying silver Rub'n'buff (which honestly lasts for ages - I still have the tiny little tube I did this with, and it appears to be never ending), and rather meticulous weathering (not like I do now where I slap it on - this was a tiny paint brush, as you can see, painting every intricate "flaw")

On to the legs...

Again, the excitement at seeing these things take shape was ludicrous.  If you look closely I was doing this on my birthday too...

This doesn't even begin to do justice to how long it took me to get this support into the body.  I had to keep sanding it down, as well as trying to soften the fibreglass.  I didn't have a heat gun at this point, so it was with a hairdryer.  It was hours and hours and hours, and that's when I realised the body was now too short.  So I rebuilt it by an inch.  I think it's the proudest part of the whole build for me, that I was able to work it out...

I basically put two smaller supports on top of each other and built the body wall with polyfilla, adding an inch to the whole thing. I just looked across at the long finished thing in the corner of my office, and there's not a clue this ever happened.

With all the component parts sanded, primed and painted, I made all the requisite holes in the body itself.

At this stage I was alternating between the legs/feet and the body.  Basically as one was drying, I worked on the other.  After my success with the extra inch (not like that), I was using polyfilla a lot at this stage. The parts in the body were set using this, preventing there from being any gaps.

With everything in place, this was the first time I precariously balanced it all together...

As you can see, there's nothing holding those legs to the body.  This was all just balanced on the kitchen table. Still, can you even imagine how I went to bed that night?  Knowing that the next day was going to be sanding to tidy, weathering and fixing it all together.

And with a silver tube through the whole body, this was the first time he ever stood up on his own...

And with a short build of the third leg, this is the first time he stood on three legs (and only time - It's still not secure enough to have it like that, plus it takes up considerably more space)

Perspective of the photo has made that middle leg look too small, but it isn't in real life. And yes, admittedly one of the foot boxes had momentarily fallen off (since repaired), and the lights came much later (through a couple of incarnations that went from me making dreadful shadow box lights to my electrics dude Ben making me proper brilliant ones), but that's the story of how I made my own full size R2-D2.

Not a solitary second of the process was wasted.  AND I'D DO IT AGAIN, you hear me?! 

Hope you are having a wonderful week so far.

Sending all the love your way

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx