Bandai R2D2 and BB8 Newbie WIP

[The Chief Smeg]

So after a very long interlude I have returned to model building; following some great advice from you guys at the forum I have begun my first ever attempt at detail painting and weathering. 

 

I decided to start small and build my confidence and techniques on the tools that come with R2 and BB, so I selected R2's Arc Welder for my first 'victim'

 

 

I'm using Vallejo acrylics and what you see is black base coat, gun metal, silver, blue (mixed to lighten the shade), gold and red from the basic set I bought along with the first layer of black wash. Looking at it I think I should have painted the gun metal sections black and washed with the gun metal or attempted to dry brush it on as I think it looks a little bright, but I aim to tone it all down with a few more dark washes. 

 

More WIP to follow as soon as I find the time to do some more painting!

[Vanoyen]

Looking good so far  I think it has a nice worn, used look.

[The Chief Smeg]

Thanks, the look I'm going for is where it looks like the droid is really 'grafted' with dirt.  It's really an excuse to get to grips with heavy weathering and chipping

[The Chief Smeg]

So, slow progress because I just don't seem to have any spare time at the moment, but I sneaked down to the garage and spent an it more time with the weathering of R2's Arc Welder, I'm finally happy with the look. I had been adding progressive washes of Vallejo black that I had been mixing myself and was not really getting the results I wanted so ended up getting a bottle of Nuln Oil and that was just brilliant:

 

 

now now all I have to do is EVERYTHING ELSE!

[The Chief Smeg]

A little more progress, today I dug out the paint brushes and had a little play:

 

 

i spent a long time adding gold washes to the sensor dish and was getting nowhere so I stripped it off and dry brushed gold over the top of the silver paint and it gave the effect I was looking for. Unfortunately in the photo it looks a lot more 'gold' than in real life, the camera seems to have not included the silver that is still there. 

 

And just to show how obsessive I've been getting with the brushes, here is side 2 of the circular saw

 

 

This is is now all of the tools for R2 completed, I'm now going to work on weathering and painting up the droid (he is built, but without decals or any paint at all so I have a little work to do yet). I want to try to paint every decal instead of using the water slides themselves, but we will all soon see how that turns out. I am also leaving the dome unpainted, mainly because I don't have an airbrush yet to do it properly; the last thing I would want is brush marks. 

So stay tuned for the next instalment tha may include more mad detail painting or possibly my first forays into manually painted chipping.

Edited November 7, 2016 by The Chief Smeg

[The Chief Smeg]

So, This weekend I managed to spend some time with my brushes.

First up was all the parts of the main body that would require Blue decals - it turns out that Vallejo Game Colour Ultramarine Blue is an amazingly good colour match for the blue plastic. It hand painted really well onto the White plastic parts which was a bonus.

 

 

You can also see some early starts on the weathering

 

 

Next up all the fiddly silver items that needed little stickers; again these painted up really nicely

 

 

 

I also took the opportunity to break out the gold paint 

 

 

Here he is partially reassembled

 

 

 

I decided against Painting the silver items - I'm too worried about brush marks (even though the Vallejo Metal Air are supposed to be be very good even for painting).

 

I have also had a go at painting the parts of the dome that needed stickers and decals, the red was very unwilling to adhere, but I got there in the end.

 

 

The 'Slot' feature on the dome with the red paint still needs some more work, I want spot some pink in there to break up the red a little, the green was also very unwilling to stick to the plastic, but I did get there in the end.  I also had a little experiment and painted the inside of the lens with black and I plan to do the same with the remaining two parts that are the same.

 

 

And here he is with his top back on

 

 

Not sure what to tackle next yet, I may try adding a little chipping to some of the blue, but I'll have a practice on the inside of some of the blue dome panels first, if that goes well I'll have a play with the rest of the droid and then properly set about adding some oil staining.

 

The eventual plan is to mount this as a bookend so I also need to plan his pose and diorama - early days for all that though.

 

More updates when I'm next able to sneak off to the garage!

[R0ver]

Looks great so far! Are you painting the white parts or leaving them as is? Think a lot of folks leave the white plastic unpainted as with weathering, etc. one can't tell that it is bare plastic. 

[The Chief Smeg]

Hi R0ver,

 

Thanks for your words of encouragement; in answer to your question, I'm leaving the white parts unpainted, it seems to accept weathering quite nicely - I'm certainly not going to paint the white in the Stormtrooper I have in my stash.

 

As everybody says, these kits are beautifully engineered and almost fall together; this has been a good reintroduction to model building. 

[The Chief Smeg]

So, finally managed to bag myself some time in the garage to spend learning to weather R2. If I'm brutally honest I'm not very happy with how it's going, but this is the first ever attempt so I suppose I'm not going to make things to the standard of AndyRM101 straight away. 

 

 

 

 

 

I felt I was actually getting somewhere with adding paint chip effects on the blue plastic (remember none of this is painted - just pure kit finish)

 

 

I'm also pleased with how the detail painting I did to the dome went; I ended up not using a single transfer or sticker.  The weathering though has to be done again it Looks rubbish. Tide marks and other badly done areas. So I think I need to strip all of the nuln oil off the body and start over, what do folk recommend on here for doing this?

 

[rockpopandchips]

I think you are going to need something for the weathering to stick to, to stop it looking so brushed on and maybe try using a sponge or a stippling brush. I would also try using a few different colours for the weathering. Im no expert myself just things I would try, the chipping looks great by the way as do all the tools.   

[Andy Moore]

Personally, I think he's looking rather nice. The chipping you've done on the blue, especially around his eye, looks fantastic, and all the tools look suitably grimy and oily. GW washes can be hard to use on large areas, as they always tend to leave tide marks as they dry, especially if they're on a very shiny surface which Bandai plastic is. On mine I left the white unpainted as you've done, but I gave it all a light spray of satin varnish to remove the glossiness, and give the weathering something more to stick too.

For weathering the panels I'd try using regular acrylic paint mixed with a drying retarder like this. If you mix a drop into your paint, it will stop it from drying too fast, and you can blend it at the edges without it leaving tide marks.

[rockpopandchips]

Andy, would a drop of washing up liquid do the same thing?

[oileanach]

Love the blue chipping, Chiefy! Beautifully done. Don't be afraid of the Vallejo metallics; there's loads of pigment in there, you can thin them down to a glaze if you really want to. A few thin layers and there shouldn't be a brush stroke in sight.

[The Chief Smeg]

9 hours ago, rockpopandchips said:

I think you are going to need something for the weathering to stick to, to stop it looking so brushed on and maybe try using a sponge or a stippling brush. I would also try using a few different colours for the weathering. Im no expert myself just things I would try, the chipping looks great by the way as do all the tools.   

 To be honest I had always planned to use a number of different colours, but as soon as the work with the nuln oil started getting away from me all plans went out of the window (I couldn't understand what was going wrong because it had stuck to the tools I'd painted and flowed exactly as I had wanted). I'll try a sponge - would never have thought of that - cheers Rockpop 

 

8 hours ago, AndyRM101 said:

Personally, I think he's looking rather nice. The chipping you've done on the blue, especially around his eye, looks fantastic, and all the tools look suitably grimy and oily. GW washes can be hard to use on large areas, as they always tend to leave tide marks as they dry, especially if they're on a very shiny surface which Bandai plastic is. On mine I left the white unpainted as you've done, but I gave it all a light spray of satin varnish to remove the glossiness, and give the weathering something more to stick too.

For weathering the panels I'd try using regular acrylic paint mixed with a drying retarder like this. If you mix a drop into your paint, it will stop it from drying too fast, and you can blend it at the edges without it leaving tide marks.

Hmm not got myself an airbrush yet Andy, I'll have to see how I can recover things using some of your suggestions - I have some Vallejo flow retarder will that work like the product you suggested or should I go with washing up liquid as suggested by Rockpopandchips?

 

16 minutes ago, oileanach said:

Love the blue chipping, Chiefy! Beautifully done. Don't be afraid of the Vallejo metallics; there's loads of pigment in there, you can thin them down to a glaze if you really want to. A few thin layers and there shouldn't be a brush stroke in sight.

I'll have a good old thin down, the silver I used for the chipping is actually Vallejo metal air white aluminium and once I got used to how it flowed and moved (when I painted the periscope) I managed to get that to work rather well. There is something very satisfying and relaxing about chipping. 

 

Thank you all for your kind words of encouragement; this forum really is a friendly and educational place to hang out, I am learning so much just by reading all of the build threads and ready for inspections!

 

right, where is that little sponge...

[Andy Moore]

On 12/12/2016 at 18:07, rockpopandchips said:

Andy, would a drop of washing up liquid do the same thing?

 

On 12/12/2016 at 22:42, The Chief Smeg said:

Hmm not got myself an airbrush yet Andy, I'll have to see how I can recover things using some of your suggestions - I have some Vallejo flow retarder will that work like the product you suggested or should I go with washing up liquid as suggested by Rockpopandchips?

 

Washing up liquid would certainly help break the surface tension of the paint. I don't know if it would extend the drying time but you could give it a try. I personally prefer to use the proprietary liquids since they're designed for the job.

 

There are various products from different manufacturers that all do essentially the same thing. It might be flow enhancer or drying retarder or glaze medium or some other name, but you use them all the same way. Add a small drop to your paint mix and it will make the paint more blend-able and slower to dry.

 

If you want to give the kit a satin or matt coat before weathering, you could do it with a spray can if you don't have an airbrush.

 

Andy

[The Chief Smeg]

 

17 hours ago, AndyRM101 said:

 

If you want to give the kit a satin or matt coat before weathering, you could do it with a spray can if you don't have an airbrush.

 

Andy

I can't believe I never thought to look for a rattle can option!  I'm still going to get myself an airbrush though, there are too many things it will make so much easier. 

 

I'm going to mix some other washes of my own and try to undo some of the worst of what I did. 

Obviously the reason I was having a lot of success with the GW wash earlier is because it was in small areas and they were also painted. I'll chalk this one up to experience. 

 

Thank you you all for your advice, I'll get back on with R2 and perfect my technique a little more before I attempt to touch BB8. 

 

Leigh

Edited December 15, 2016 by The Chief Smeg

[The Chief Smeg]

SO, after listening to all of your advice (thank you all), I believe I have managed to recover R2!

 

I stared by rubbing him all over with some kitchen roll which actually removed the worst of the nuln oil tide marks, so reinvigorated I set to applying a wash of my own creation (I got some proper Vallejo thinning agent). This was a total disaster as it was far far too heavy, but rather than try to thin it properly I decided to try dry brushing with it first. This was a lot better so I just started building up layer after layer:

 

 

Once I finally get an airbrush then dust washes etc will be easier, but I figure I have to learn the basics first, so I'm calling this done!  I'll chuck a thread in RFI when I get a chance later. 

 

Thanks for looking

 

Leigh

[Andy Moore]

Looks great to me. I really like the way you've built up heavier layers of weathering around the feet.

 

Andy

[The Chief Smeg]

4 minutes ago, AndyRM101 said:

Looks great to me. I really like the way you've built up heavier layers of weathering around the feet.

 

Andy

 

Cheers Andy, I listened to what you all said (and do in your build threads) about layering and so I started and it just quickly came alive - it was rather like spraying a fade effect using a full size spray gun where I just got steadily higher with the same thickness of paint, the lower sections just got more layers and got darker. I also slightly darkened the later layers too. 

[Vanoyen]

He looks very cool   

 

[rockpopandchips]

He looks great, and the colour changes in the weathering are great and the lower half of him particular look very good. 

[The Chief Smeg]

So, time for a really quick update. 

Im bouncing around between a couple of projects but managed to snatch some time in the garage today to start work on one of the items for my R2 display:

 

 

Yes, yes it is a bicycle frame. It is one of a number of things I'm beginning to scratch build for the bookend diorama that R2 is going to be interacting with...

 

it it is a bit rough and ready, but it's my first ever scratch build so I'm really learning as I go along here. I need to get better before I build the toaster (and yes, you did read that right). 

[The Chief Smeg]

So, just completed the gluing of the 1/12 scale bicycle frame

 

 

Just needs a lot of filling and sanding before paint. Then I'll be creating more 'junk' items for the garbage pile that R2 will be sorting through (Talkie Toaster is probably next).

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by The Chief Smeg

[DalekCheese]

Any more since then? (I wanna see talkie toaster!)

[The Chief Smeg]

Hi there,

 

unfortunately work is is getting in the way of garage time so everything has been on hold for far too long. I’m still hunting for bits for talkie as I want to build both versions. It’s likely to be a long wait though; I’ve not even decalled R2 yet!

Edited May 17, 2019 by The Chief Smeg