Protocol, Gonk & Mouse droids

[Will Vale]

What a great result. My eyes keep being drawn to those teal wires in the midsection - complementing the rust nicely.

 

Will

[M_Sinclair]

Love the contrast of the overall bright droid with the completely convincing rusty base. You never fail to teach, inspire and entertain me Andy.

 

Cheers.

 

-matt

[Hunter Rose]

That looks bloody awesome! Two thumbs up Andy

[Orangesherbert]

Just needs a bit of graffiti on him now. great great work Andy.

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

 

14 hours ago, Will Vale said:

What a great result. My eyes keep being drawn to those teal wires in the midsection - complementing the rust nicely.

 

Will

 

Thanks Will. The colour of the wires was a happy accident. I painted the mid section before I'd got any real idea what I was going to do with the rest of him. Likewise with the leg stripes. I just picked the colour because I liked it. It hadn't occurred to me that it would match in with the wires.

 

1 hour ago, Orangesherbert said:

Just needs a bit of graffiti on him now. great great work Andy.

 

I did consider scrawling something on him in aurebesh, but I don't think my freehand work is up to it.

 

Andy

[Pete in Lincs]

A marker pen, maybe a price

on the replacement leg?

[The Chief Smeg]

That rusted base is incredible - I would swear it was actually a rusted block of steel if I hadn't seen the unpainted version earlier. Astonishing work Andy.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Superb as ever Andy, I can almost hear those knee joints squeaking!  

[Andy Moore]

So, as I mentioned earlier, I'll extend this build thread for the Gonk and MSE-6 droids. I wasn't intending to start them just yet, but I was sitting at the bench last night and Nigel seemed to just fall in front of me, so I thought I should see if I could do something with him.

There's no real assembly with him, as he's essentially a single resin piece with just the front and rear wheels to add. The casting is nice, although some of the finer details are a little rough here and there. The one area that isn't that well detailed are the two rows of aerials/prongs on the top. All you get in the kit are two lengths of green wire which the instructions tell you to cut into 3mm lengths, then stick into the (not very straight) row of holes on the top

 

Using just the wire would have looked a bit simplified, so I rummaged through a box of old PE bits and found some that would add a little more detail. I'm not trying to replicate the studio model here. This will be my own version of the MSE-6

 

 

 

The other area I want to look at are the wheels. The ones supplied are quite simple, and the casting on the hubs is a bit rough

 

 

I found some return rollers left over from something or other (possibly the Takom AMX-13) and, although they're a little under-scale, the hub detail looks better

 

 

One other interesting thing I noticed; there's a detail part on the top of the Gonk droid that seemed really familiar to me. It was only after rummaging through the spares box while looking for parts for Nigel, that I realised what it was. It's the little connector block that comes with all the Bandai kits to join the base plates together. Somehow seems appropriate that parts from Bandai Star Wars kits are being used as details, just like Tamiya and Airfix parts were used on the original studio models

 

 

Andy

 

[Will Vale]

I wondered what that bit was in your Flickr picture - very amusing!

The casting looks okayish, the grot around the edges of the panels would annoy me but I suspect that it will disappear completely under a weathered finish. Your wheels are a big improvement though.

 

Will

[Hunter Rose]

Thats nice details on the mouse!

[Mike]

Hehhe!

 

When you're assembling Gonk, check your refs, as the instructions show the bottom half one way round, while the boxtop shows the other.  I think on balance, the boxtop is correct   Because the leg cut-out is offset, this also affects the balance of the droid, and if you do it the other way round it will be a very wobbly proposition.  I however, found this out the hard way

 

I'll not be painting mine til after I've seen yours

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

 

On 13/11/2016 at 07:19, Will Vale said:

The casting looks okayish, the grot around the edges of the panels would annoy me but I suspect that it will disappear completely under a weathered finish. Your wheels are a big improvement though.

 

Yes, there are a few rough edges on the castings, and some tell tale signs of how the master was constructed. I think it's a bit exaggerated in these shots as, even in 1/12, Nigel is pretty small. Hopefully the way I'm painting him will hide any imperfections.

 

On 13/11/2016 at 14:18, Mike said:

When you're assembling Gonk, check your refs, as the instructions show the bottom half one way round, while the boxtop shows the other.  I think on balance, the boxtop is correct   Because the leg cut-out is offset, this also affects the balance of the droid, and if you do it the other way round it will be a very wobbly proposition.  I however, found this out the hard way

 

Thanks Mike. I hadn't actually noticed that the leg cut-out was offset, despite staring at the thing for the last few days. As you say, the box top is the correct way round with the longer overhang to the front. I might replace the leg plate on mine, as I think it holds the legs too close together, and stops you putting any turn on the legs without them hitting each other.

 

Mouse droids are usually dark grey or black, but I wanted to have a more worn look for Nigel, so I've tried a variation on pre-shading which wasn't entirely successful. To start with I gave him a base coat of Gunze Steel

 

 

I then painted a mishmash of tones and colours over the surface. It all looks a complete mess, which it is, but the general idea is to cover this with a thin misted top coat, leaving just the remnants of this finish showing through leaving, hopefully, an overall colour but with some randomness and patchiness to it

 

 

 

Then came the top coat. I didn't want to use straight black, so I went with Tamiya Rubber Black and I mixed it about 50/50 with Tam Smoke to increase the transparency. I thinned it quite heavily too, again to keep it fairly transparent, then misted it over the pre-shading/colouring. The result is okay but hardly spectacular. Even though the paint was thin, the undercoat didn't show through as much as I was expecting, but it did add some degree of patchiness to the finish, mainly though differences in reflectivity rather than tone or colour (something that doesn't show that well in the photos)

 

 

 

When I've seen this technique done before, the shading's been over a much paler base coat, which gives much more contrast to the effect, and helps it show up more under the top coat. I think the steel base coat was just too dark. I'll probably do something similar on the gonk, but use a pale grey base coat. Hopefully when it's on a bigger surface area it will be more noticeable.

 

Anyway, I didn't want to leave the finish at that. I felt he needed something to help him stand out from the average mouse droid. After a bit of thought I decided a simple go faster stripe would suit Nigel, so he's now got a yellow streak (and some wheels too)

 

 

 

And, as little Nigel was unhappy about getting no attention, he's had to make an appearance

 

 

Andy

 

 

[Madmonk]

Love the go faster stripe Andy.  What scale is Lil' Nigel as I know how small Big Nigel is!

[Mike]

I've found some detailed pics of the greeblies on top of Nigel's head, and it seems that they're old banks of valves, which they smashed the glass off because they didn't think they'd survive shipping.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to replicate these on mine, but I'll give it a try

[Madmonk]

 

 

Quote

 it seems that they're old banks of valves

What's a valve, old timer!!

[Hunter Rose]

Nice work with the paint, the stripe is cool, looks like a mouse droid Han would hace on the Falcon!

[Mike]

1 hour ago, Madmonk said:

What's a valve, old timer!!

 

I was just repeating what I'd heard   You're about 3 months older than me anyway, so

[Pete in Lincs]

Nice Nigel!

Love it.

[Andy Moore]

Cheers guys,

 

9 hours ago, Madmonk said:

Love the go faster stripe Andy.  What scale is Lil' Nigel as I know how small Big Nigel is!

 

Wee Nige is (very approximately) 1/72, just a smidge over 4mm in length. He made his debut during the X-Wing build. There's also Bigger-Than-Wee-Nige-But-Not-As-Big-As-Big-Nige-Nige, who was the first in the Nigel line, and appeared during the Snowspeeder build.

 

9 hours ago, Mike said:

I've found some detailed pics of the greeblies on top of Nigel's head, and it seems that they're old banks of valves, which they smashed the glass off because they didn't think they'd survive shipping.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to replicate these on mine, but I'll give it a try

 

Yes, that's what they appear to be. There's a few builds of full size MSE-6's on RPF, and they all seem to use valve bases. I would have thought a bit of Albion Alloys micro tubing would work, with some thin tube or rod for the other bits. I took the easy way out, so it would be nice to see someone pull off an accurate one

 

 

I've added some oil washes to him tonight, and I think I'm going to leave him at that for now. He's a bit too small for any intense weathering. I might return to him when the Gonk is done if I feel he needs any more work

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, now I come to look at the photos, I think an oil dribble might be needed, maybe from that little circular gubbins I put on the back

 

Andy

[Mike]

Those bits on the sides are microchips too on the "real" ones.  They really did just chuck anything into the mixer, but they did a cracking job of it   I think the RC chassis was a Tamiya Datsun 280X or something... wonder if they used the stock wheels?

 

3 minutes ago, AndyRM101 said:

I would have thought a bit of Albion Alloys micro tubing would work

 

I didn't bother picking any up at the weekend because I didn't know what sizes I wanted, and wish I had now

[Andy Moore]

26 minutes ago, Mike said:

I didn't bother picking any up at the weekend because I didn't know what sizes I wanted, and wish I had now

 

I've just had a quick look and I'd say either 0.6mm or 0.8mm for the main valve bases. I think the .8 would space out better comparing it to the prop photo.

.6 on the left  and .8 on the right in the photo

 

 

Apparently the original plan for them was to have the one with the valve detail act as a 'loco' and pull a train of other mice, but the idea was dropped before filming

 

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

[Mike]

I'll have a rummage through my existing stocks (which contains mostly larger sizes) and hope I'm not off to eBay I saw that pic on my travels.  Not sure that Health & Safety would have approved

[Sgt.Squarehead]

That cirgular gubbins definitely looks leaky to me.....Something green perchance? 

 

Really impressed with the way your latest layer of weathering has tied all the earlier efforts together.....That's a real skill, all on it's own IMHO. 

[Will Vale]

The pale oil weathering makes a great difference to the previous pics, softening the stripe a bit and bringing it all together. I liked the underpainting too, you can definitely see the effect on the sides.

 

Cheers,

 

Will