greedo
Well-Known Member
So this is what you do when you're running out of things to build.......
I won't go into detail about the whole process, but I'll post a bunch of photos to show the journey. I researched this for a few weeks before building and didn't see anyone who had made this version of our British butler friend.
So this is entirely scratch built from PVC, wood, acrylic and bondo. The neck is connected to a servo and there are speakers mounted in the head. The animatronics will come later after I research Arduino a bit more.
I'll start with the end:
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
Now here's how we got there.....
I took the visual dictionary and traced the outline of the head/torso area onto tracing paper. Took it to Kinkos and enlarged it until the eye sockets were 1-5/8" in diameter. Then I knew I had the scale I needed.
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
The skeleton for this is a 4" PVC "T". I then took 1/8" acrylic to mold the main shape of the outer area you see. To bend it, I put it in the oven at 300 degrees for five minutes. You've then got about 10 seconds to shape it into pretty much anything you want.
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
Then used layers of bondo to create the final shape.
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
Out of the three weeks of research, most of it was spent trying to find an actual reference shot of the back. There really isn't a good screen cap ( Trust me... I looked through 18 thousand photos of this horrible movie ), so I ended up using the action figure and a tiny bit of creative liberty.
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
Then primer and paint
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
I used heated acrylic to make the face. Just used an existing 3PO head as my mold and pressed it up against it until it set
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
3PO by chris stephens, on Flickr
And done...
Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr
I won't go into detail about the whole process, but I'll post a bunch of photos to show the journey. I researched this for a few weeks before building and didn't see anyone who had made this version of our British butler friend.
So this is entirely scratch built from PVC, wood, acrylic and bondo. The neck is connected to a servo and there are speakers mounted in the head. The animatronics will come later after I research Arduino a bit more.
I'll start with the end:
Now here's how we got there.....
I took the visual dictionary and traced the outline of the head/torso area onto tracing paper. Took it to Kinkos and enlarged it until the eye sockets were 1-5/8" in diameter. Then I knew I had the scale I needed.
The skeleton for this is a 4" PVC "T". I then took 1/8" acrylic to mold the main shape of the outer area you see. To bend it, I put it in the oven at 300 degrees for five minutes. You've then got about 10 seconds to shape it into pretty much anything you want.
Then used layers of bondo to create the final shape.
Out of the three weeks of research, most of it was spent trying to find an actual reference shot of the back. There really isn't a good screen cap ( Trust me... I looked through 18 thousand photos of this horrible movie ), so I ended up using the action figure and a tiny bit of creative liberty.
Then primer and paint
I used heated acrylic to make the face. Just used an existing 3PO head as my mold and pressed it up against it until it set
And done...
