C-3PO

After the Yoda I fell a bit in love with those old Screamin' vinyl kits. Some of them are really hard to get over here and I'm still looking for Vader, Chewbacca and the Stormtrooper for reasonable prices. Imported this one from the US and it looked (and smelled) like it had been stored in a crackhouse for several years. So after I took a couple of photos of the box art and instructions I threw away the box and gave the kit a thorough bubble bath. 

Luckily the kit was unbuilt and complete. 

After cutting the parts and a bit of dry fitting I got impatient and decided I'd give the Vallejo Liquid Metal color a try. Not only did I not like the color, I also remembered that you shouldn't use Laquer or alcohol based paint on vinyl kits because they will not fully cure and get really sticky. So I quickly wiped everything away and put it away for a while to dry off. 

The weather was nice the next day so I headed out and primed most of the body with Vallejo gloss black. I figured it would be the best base for anything chrome like and it would be enough to protect the vinyl from becoming sticky. 

painted his right leg silver with Vallejo Liquid Metal (silver). I also filled up the legs with a mix of plaster and stones, to give it some weight and I was also kinda hoping he would stand on his own despite being poorly balanced. That turned out to not be the case, so this step was rather pointless, unless you want to pretend he's made out of real gold. 

Time to apply some gold. Since the Vallejo wasn't shiny enough for my taste, I bought a cheap chrome spray (if you're in the Netherlands or Germany, you can get them at Action stores). Awesome color, but REALLY REALLY FRAGILE, like basically all chrome like colors.  

The fit in the stomach area was rather bad so I ended up remodeling it a bit using milliput. After everything was coated in shiny chrome gold I let it sit for a couple of days, while my impatience was killing me.  

In the meantime, I decided to make a base using a cheap slate serving plate from the dollar store. Since C3PO was still not able to stand on his own, I added some foam that would support one of his feet to balance everything out. 

After a couple of days I clearcoated the entire figure with Alclad 2 gloss varnish. Not a cheap product but it gets super hard and in my opinon is one of the best varnishes out there. Still, there was a slight reaction and the drying varnish would rip the chrome in 2 places due to shrinkage and the chrome not having much adhesion on it's own. I decided to not fret it and make it part of the weathering. Be aware that any varnish, no matter how glossy, will make chrome more dull. However, this was perfectly fine for this project since I wanted to make him look like he did before he got his oil bath in the movie.  

Due to the fragile nature of the paint, anything solvent was a no go, so I used slightly deluted Vallejo Air paints and a sponge to dab on my weathering. This does work fine but you have to be very deliberate with where you apply stuff as unlike with oils or enamels, it pretty much dries instantly. 

up next was adding real cables, I looked at reference, but the wires are different in every photo, from very tidy to all over the place, so I freestyled it. In hindsight, having CA glue with an activator would have been really helpful.  

Aaaannd that's about it. Calling him done for now, already got an R2 Toy to keep him company, that one still needs dirtying up though. Thanks for looking and see you on the next one 😉