That photo of the traction motor sticking out comes from that Electronics Tomorrow article on the droids from 1977.
Yes. That's actually a good point - I've added a bit about the blue dots and dashes. Thing is, I can't find incontrovertible evidence as to what the ESB droids had. I think they actually had those recessed details, only they were painted white.
The Smithsonian one has recesses painted white but dirtied up, and a couple of promo shots seem to show the same thing. I would expect that the fibreglass moulded droids would have the recesses if the part was fibreglass. But I don’t know if the legs were aluminium what they’d haven me
Correct! ESB has white
Another thing I’ve read is only 1 leg was molded in fiberglass.. including the horseshoes at the same time..
This doesn’t help the “buttons front vs back” debate because we never see both sides of the leg at the same time
So on the right side of the fiberglass droids the buttons are front, and the left side is buttons back