I was thinking of 3d printing a L0LA droid, but after seeing the cheap Hasbro toy (the more accurately scaled non-animatronic one), I figured a repaint would do the trick!
Here it is straight out of the box:
The great thing about this toy is it's super easy to take apart, with standard screws and a simple construction. I started with the bottom which is all grey:
Firstly roughed up the surface with a scouring pad (this step isn't super necessary, but it does help adhesion):
Spray paint with gloss black:
Added graphite powder (applied with a make-up sponge) directly to the dry, but still tacky, paint:
Rinse and repeat with remaining bottom parts... and then reassembled:
And now for the top! Still easy to take apart:
One thing I knew I wanted to replace was the plastic antenna since it was too chunky and well... plastic. So I decided to keep the base and the tip and replace the main shaft with a nail:
Drilling the two remaining plastic parts was a bit of a challenge, but got there in the end:
First thing to do on the lid was to drill out the yellow dot next to the main "eye" since the original has a much deeper recess.
There isn't a lot of room left beneath the new hole and the housing for the electronics inside, so I just glued in a piece of yellow card:
Next, I masked off the exposed "metal" parts on the back, and used the same graphite powder procedure as above. Some of the graphite rubbed off onto the red painted parts and it gave a nice "exhaust" look to it.
Graphite powder on the inside of the "wings" (or are they "ears"?)... and then hand painted the off-white parts with acrylic:
Masked off the areas around the "eye" and more graphite!
Finally, I added some brown acrylic washes on the top and feet for distressing as well as some silver Rub 'n Buff along the edges to simulate paint chipping off.
Side-by-side before-and-after:
Final beauty shot:
This has GOT to be the cheapest 1:1 scale prop SW droid you can get!
Kind regards,
Magnoli
Here it is straight out of the box:
The great thing about this toy is it's super easy to take apart, with standard screws and a simple construction. I started with the bottom which is all grey:
Firstly roughed up the surface with a scouring pad (this step isn't super necessary, but it does help adhesion):
Spray paint with gloss black:
Added graphite powder (applied with a make-up sponge) directly to the dry, but still tacky, paint:
Rinse and repeat with remaining bottom parts... and then reassembled:
And now for the top! Still easy to take apart:
One thing I knew I wanted to replace was the plastic antenna since it was too chunky and well... plastic. So I decided to keep the base and the tip and replace the main shaft with a nail:
Drilling the two remaining plastic parts was a bit of a challenge, but got there in the end:
First thing to do on the lid was to drill out the yellow dot next to the main "eye" since the original has a much deeper recess.
There isn't a lot of room left beneath the new hole and the housing for the electronics inside, so I just glued in a piece of yellow card:
Next, I masked off the exposed "metal" parts on the back, and used the same graphite powder procedure as above. Some of the graphite rubbed off onto the red painted parts and it gave a nice "exhaust" look to it.
Graphite powder on the inside of the "wings" (or are they "ears"?)... and then hand painted the off-white parts with acrylic:
Masked off the areas around the "eye" and more graphite!
Finally, I added some brown acrylic washes on the top and feet for distressing as well as some silver Rub 'n Buff along the edges to simulate paint chipping off.
Side-by-side before-and-after:
Final beauty shot:
This has GOT to be the cheapest 1:1 scale prop SW droid you can get!
Kind regards,
Magnoli
