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Bandai 1/12 BB-8 and R2-D2


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I very happily got this set as a Christmas present, so I have got on building these pair of droids.

 

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As to be expected from Bandai, these kits are very nice and well detailed, so this should be a nice pleasant build experience. While the kits are molded in color, you can also paint the parts which I opted to do, as the silver plastic looks like......well...….silver plastic.  :doh:You can mix the colors from Gunze paints, but while I had meant to order the colors I needed I did not get to it. Instead I mixed the colors from Tamyia paint I had on hand, Orange, brown white and a touch of yellow were used to make BB-8's orange, while his white called for a drop or two of orange. I used a couple of drops of Tamyia Dark yellow instead, to warm the white up a bit. I also  mixed up some R2 blue from Tamyia white and blue, using one of the blue decals supplied in the kit to achieve the correct color.

 

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So, with the alchemy experiment completed, and three custom paint colors mixed it was off to torture some plastic. The parts were all separated from their sprues and fastened to scraps of cardboard relative to their finished color in preparation for painting. For the silver areas I used AK Xtreame Metal Steel, as the silver appeared to have a darker tone. After the paint was dry a light clear coat was applied to protect the paint during my ham fisted attempts at fitting all the parts together, I did a quick test run to see how the orange looked, it seemed kind of dark, but the white surrounds tend to make it appear lighter, and it matched quite well with the color in many movie stills I looked at, so good enough!

 

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So, with the orange passing the color test I put the rest of the panels together as well as his head. Even though the parts snap together, I do use a drop of cement to hold them together. Of course, this meant that I sloped some onto the paint and had to touch up one area :wall: But that turned out well enough so it proved nothing more than an minor irritant.

 

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So, on to some weathering now......

Edited by Ernie
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Over the weekend I worked on the base. The kit gives you a small generic square base which I filled the slots where it can join to other bases, and a clear plastic base and support to hold BB-8. I epoxied the clear base piece to the square plastic one and build up a desert sand area from Milliput putty. The rippled desert surface was sculpted before the Milliput hardened, and a cap from a can of Tamyia spray paint was used as a "cookie cutter" to form the Milliput into a circle.

 

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After the Milliput hardened it was shot with Tamyia Grey Surface Primer ad then airbrushed with Model Master Sand, given a wash of Lifecolor Italian sand and them drybrushed with Lifecolor Italian White, which is an off-white color.

Looking at photos of BB-8 he had some weathering effects around the  orange panels on his body, sometimes these were quite pronounced, and at other times less conspicuous. I used some dark brown weathering oils to add some subtle staining around his body and on his head following the pictures. I kept these fairly restrained as I didn't want  to make him look like he was all beat to heck, but rather give an impression of how he looked in the movie in general.

 

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I gave BB-8 a test run on the base...…..Shouldn't be too much longer to finish him and the base up!

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I was able to finish BB-8 over the weekend, so work now moves on to R2. All his parts have been cleaned up and prepped for painting. Hopefully I will be able to get the parts through the painting stage this week.

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