STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
C-3PO (MODEL KIT) PROJECT #453 CREATED: 2010 "How ugly? Why would one build such unattractive droids?" Ever since Star Wars: Attack of the Clones came out, I had wanted to create my own version of C-3PO as he appeared in that film. The small handful of official Hasbro versions were missing a lot of paint applications and failed to capture the rusted, mismatched, shopworn appearance that he exhibits in the movie. For a while, I was thinking about repainting a 12" Action Collection C-3PO, but I haven't done any other projects from that assortment so it would look weird standing on my display shelf all alone. Then I got the idea to repaint the old MPC model kit, a prospect 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 a new iteration of the character from a film almost 30 years later! At this stage in his career, C-3PO has yet to receive his familiar golden plating, and is wearing old, tarnished body panels that were likely cobled together from multiple droids of varying condition and assorted colors. Well, it's better than being naked, right? I did make some minor physical changes to the design of the kit. His nose was strange and sunken, so I added a piece of plastic to bring it closer to the correct shape. The pistons on his neck were molded details with no depth, so I cut off the original ones and built new ones. There's evidence that C-3PO was wearing a restraining bolt on his chest at one point, but it's not there by the time we see him in Attack of the Clones so I cut it off, painting him to suggest that it had been there previously. Instead of gluing the chrome parts to his midsection, I used the plastic coating from some paper clips to create some new wiring with a more three-dimensional look. C-3PO also has some large screws in his hips (he's missing them in A New Hope but he has them in every other film) so I added those, too. Getting C-3PO's color scheme correct was a little tricky. C-3PO appears in the movie both as a costume worn by actor 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. In painting the model kit, I planned to paint it entirely in silver paint first, going back afterwards and laying down other colors less thoroughly to make it look like his parts were worn down to the bare metal. I sanded down the model in places after the paint was dry, exposing the brownish plastic underneath and also helping to make the paint appear less glossy. I also used a black paint wash, to make it look like his joints had some oil and grime in hard-to-reach places, and some brown drybrushing in places to create the appearance of him being covered in dirt. I used enamel paints for the main colors and acrylics for the final colors and details, so the water-based paint wouldn't affect the oil-based paints I'd already applied. |