Re: Trooper_trent's R2 build (Finished Dome video on Page 2)
Here's a quick write up for my inexpensive attempt to mimic the look of Artoo's Front and Rear PSI from "A New Hope", as this is the version of the droid I'm currently working on.
For the lighting I'm using Teeces V3 lighting boards as supplied by Joymonkey in his latest kit run
This is the look I want to replicate.
Front PSI
Rear PSI
Starting with the Front PSI, for most of the film, there doesn't appear to be a milky diffuser on the front PSI as the lights are clear and crisp. In many shots, there also appears to be a clean line separating the red half from the blue half. Since the majority of the Artoo shots in ANH show the red half on the left, that's what I'm going for. There are several shots that show the red on the right, and it appears to me that there was some kind of sliding light gel mechanism that moved the blue to either side of the PSI.
Either way, for me, getting a close enough light diffusion and getting a clean line separating them were the only two main concerns.
To replicate this, I bought a 1 1/2" pvc coupler as reccommended by Joymonkey for his kits, and using a couple of small beads of hot glue, affixed a thin piece of pre-cut white styrene inside, separating the halves.
I then lined up and hot glued a section of drop ceiling light panel to one end of it. You can find sheets of this at home depot in the lighting section and insulation section.
I then secured this to the inside of the dome.
This is how it looks from the outside. While I was gluing on the light panel material, I tried to line up the styrene divider with one of the honeycomb pattern lines so that the divider would not be as visible with the lights off. It is much more apparent where the divider is in this photo than in person.
Next, I attached the PSI board to the back of the PVC coupler. I had tested moving the PSI board back and forth to see how the diffused light looked at different depths. I ultimately settled on having the LEDS as far back as they could go in order to saturate the honeycomb material best.
And here it is all put together with the lights off.
compared to a screen used droid (sorry, i had to take a picture of the screen with my camera phone as I don't have any way to take BluRay screen caps)
.
And here's a quick video of the front PSI compared to this screen shot. (it's harder to get a good representation on film as the lights are so bright that they bleed together through my camera lens)
Click here to see the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isS2DPOmKBc
Next, for the Rear PSI, I also noticed there was a honeycomb pattern in this scene, but I thought the lights looked more diffused and there wasn't the appearance of a clean line between halves.
So for this one, I decided to use the standard diffuser disc that came with the joymonkey kit along with the same honeycomb light panel material.
The rear PSI requires a 2x1 1/2" PVC increaser (1 1/2"inches on one side to hold the PSI board, and 2" on the other side to hold the bigger diffuser disc since the rear PSI is larger than the front)
After gluing the diffuser disc and the honeycomb material to the coupler, I attached them to the inside of the dome, same as before.
and here's the final look of the Rear PSI.
And a Comparison to the screen shot.
All in all I know it's not 100% accurate, but this mini project was free because I already had a few spare strips of styrene left and actually found a broken sheet of the honeycomb material and just asked the guy if I could have it. All it cost me was a blank stare and an odd look from the home depot employee.