| C-3PO MODEL KIT
(ATTACK OF THE CLONES)
PROJECT #453 "How ugly! Why would one build such unattractive droids?" Preamble: I've been wanting to do a version of C-3PO as he appears in Episode II for a long time, since the one or two official Hasbro versions are missing a lot of paint applications and don't quite capture the rusted, mismatched, shopworn appearance of the protocol droid as he appears in the movie. For a while I was thinking about doing something with my extra 12" scale C-3PO, since a larger figure would give me a chance to really show off the detail, but for some reason I've been really hesitant to do it. Maybe it's because I haven't done work on any of the other Action Collection figures so it would look really out of place on my display shelf? Then I got the idea to get another version of the vintage MPC scale model kit, a prospect that was just so deliciously wrong that I absolutely had to do it. Nobody in their right mind could have dreamed that a model kit produced in the 1970's would be used to represent an iteration of the character who appeared in film over 30 years later! Construction: Including the one I did when I was six years old, this is the third version of this model kit I've assembled. (I won't bore you with the details, but you can read about the C-3PO model kit I did previously if you want to know more about the actual kit itself.) The kit is molded in gold plastic, since the manufacturers intended you to spray it with clear lacquer and call it good, but obviously that wasn't going to fly with this project. C-3PO as he appears in Attack of the Clones has yet to receive his standard gold plating, so at this stage in his life cycle, he's wearing old, tarnished body panels that have likely been cobbled together from multiple droids of varying condition and assorted colors. Well, it's better than being naked, right? When I did my last C-3PO model kit in 2002, I was largely content to just assemble it and paint it. This time I wanted to make some minor cosmetic changes to its design, because there were a handful of sculpting issues I wanted to address. His nose was strange and sunken, so I added a piece of plastic to bring it closer to the right shape. The pistons on his neck were molded details that lacked detail (they really should have been separate parts), so I cut the original ones off and built new ones. There's evidence that C-3PO wore a restraining bolt at one point, but it's not there by the time we see him in Attack of the Clones so I cut off the one on his chest (I did leave a spot to serve as a guide where I later painted around it). I also skipped the chrome parts that are meant to go on his midsection, opting instead to use the plastic coating from some paper clips to create some new wiring with a more three-dimensional look. C-3PO also has a couple of large screws in his hips (he's missing them in A New Hope but he's got them in every other film) so I added a pair of those. Finally, the model kit is designed with a removable back cover that reveals circuitry, but the kit I bought was actually missing the piece to hold the internal components, so I cut the pull tabs off the back cover and just glued it in place. In painting the model kit, I decided to coat the project with silver paint first, planning to go back over it less thoroughly with other colors so it looked like his parts were worn down to the bare metal. Two interesting things happened when I did this, though—the first was that after I thinned down some grey paint with paint thinner, it acted as a solvent and wore off the silver paint in places, exposing the brownish plastic of the model kit. Also, the palate I was using to mix my paints wasn't completely clean, so it started taking the characteristics of the last batch of paint, tainting it yellow, and also adding tiny flecks of dry paint into the mix. For any other project this would have been a disaster, but in this case it was a happy accident that really went a long way to making C-3PO look even more weathered. I used acrylic paints for the final colors and details, because I knew water-based paints wouldn't affect the oil-based paints I'd already laid down. For the parts where it looks like his paint is worn off, I applied a coat of color and then sanded it off to expose the silver base coat, lending it an air of authentic wear and tear. Sanding the paint also had the added benefit of destroying its glossy sheen, making him look even more tarnished. I used a number of different painting techniques to achieve the final look, including a black paint wash and some brown drybrushing. Comments: Getting the color scheme right was a little tricky, since C-3PO appears in the movie as both a physical costume worn by Anthony Daniels as well as a CGI version for the scenes in the droid factory, and the colors aren't completely consistent with each other. (The DVD release for Attack of the Clones is specially coded to only work with a proprietary media player on my computer which prevents me from taking screen shots, so that didn't help matters.) |
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This Page Created 7/17/2010
Last Update: 8/1/2010
©2010 Inspiration Studios
C-3PO™ is the property of Lucasfilm.
Humans making humans.
How perverse!