Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Maintenance Droid

This large maintenance droid is typical of those used on frontier worlds.  Its robust construction is resistant to knocks and scrapes and the walking motive configuration handles a range of different terrain with ease.  Flexible manipulator arms enable it to perform surprisingly delicate maintenance work and a built in power source provides a handy plug-in point for power tools and other equipment.  You can't always rely on an established power grid on the younger colony worlds!


This particular droid is in use on the planet Hope in the Virtue star system..  Terraforming is still in progress on Hope.  Although the atmosphere is now breathable, it has not yet reached the level where strenuous work is possible without help from a breath mask.  Here you see the droid alongside a terraforming technician with his oxygen mask.

With a human for scale...

I'm sure most of you will have recognised the Star Wars power droid I used as the basis for this model!  I cleaned up the flash and mould lines before drilling a couple of holes in the front and adding the guitar string manipulator arms.  The base was trimmed down and it was re-mounted on the same size base as my other larger figures (eg. armoured fighting suits and weapons teams).

A good view of the droid's manipulator arms.

The tech is from GZG's pack SG15-V04 Techs and Crew.  He's had a head swap from SG15-XH2 conversion heads pack B.

Rear view - note power sockets (under grey flaps) on rear of droid.

Not much to say about the painting - after a good layer of white undercoat, the droid is GW sunburst yellow with a Vallejo sepia wash.  Tech is Humbrol 24 matt blue with a Vallejo black wash, then drybrushed with base colour and highlighted with base colour + white.  Stonewall grey for the belt and tool bag.
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7 comments:

  1. Simon Quinton 16 October 2012 at 20:09

    Thats a cool reuse of a droid nice work

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  2. MIK16 October 2012 at 20:52

    Repurposed in 15mm you kind of overlooked the gonkness of it. Love the paintjob, he looks cool.

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    1. Paul16 October 2012 at 23:02

      I was worried how gonky it would look at the start which was why I added the tentacles!

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    2. MIK19 October 2012 at 19:34

      Heh, the tentacles were so 'natural' I didn't even notice they weren't original.

      And, ahem, my mistake, I meant to say, "One overLOOKS the gonkness of it" as in...you can't even tell it's a gonk!

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  3. Gunrunner16 October 2012 at 21:21

    Love the droid! It's been a while, Paul- glad to see you posting again!

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  4. Chris K.16 October 2012 at 22:45

    Very nice work. It looks like it could hold an operator if you wanted it to be something other than a droid.

    I just found a few boxes of old 80s Star Wars toys in my garage. They're too beat up to sell, so I'm going to start hacking and slashing to make vehicles and terrain out of the lot.

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    Replies
    1. Paul16 October 2012 at 23:01

      Sounds like an excellent idea! I think some of the old "Mini-rig" vehicles could be an especially useful source of parts - plenty of nice body shells, engine pods and the like for converting.

      Delete

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