Monday, January 28, 2008

Painting

Before I could start the process of painting, I had to prep the parts. Most of the detail parts are resin, though I do have some aluminum detail parts. The legs and feet are wood.

Prepping the resin required me to sand off some flues/flashing and do some sanding. After that, I needed to wash the parts to remove any mold release that might still be on the parts. This was an important step because if any mold release remained on the part, paint would not stick.


Here are my resin parts after washing as they lay out to thoroughly dry after blotting with paper towels.

After washing, I had to mask places on some parts and sort out which ones were to be painted aluminum color, which were to be painted blue, and which were to have white. Then, everything needed to be primed before I could add the color. When the primer was dry, I started with painting the blue parts. I still have a few detail parts that need painting, and R2's skins need to be painted white, but other than that I am done with painting.


After everything is painted and installed in my R2, I will "weather" the parts so that he doesn't look like he just stepped off the factory assembly line. Weathering will help make him seem more "real".

Dome


(I have the 1st run R&J dome) I haven't gotten far visually on my dome, though I've put a lot of work into it so far:

  • I've cut out all the panels
  • Painted the blue panels
  • Sanded the inner dome...which still needs more sanding.
I'm waiting for warmer weather so I can continue working on the sanding of my dome. I'd rather not get aluminum dust in the house!


Here I am at Star Wars: Celebration 2 with "uber R2" the R2-D2 that was created by ILM for use in Star Wars: Episodes 1, 2, and 3.