Weathered Droid #1

The day no one thought would ever happen has come. Mike Senna and I weathered droid #1 at his house. Mike has weathered at least 2 R2s, 2 WALL•Es and 2 BB-8s, and knows how to do this right.

Here's one last look at R2 clean.



And the R5 dome and extra center foot shell, which are also getting weathered.



Here are the paints Mike uses. These, along with some water and a drop of dish wash liquid, are the formula that we're going with. I want R2 to look more gray/black than dirt-brown, but Mike says we should have just a small amount of the brown in the mix.




The first step is to take paper towels, dip them into the concoction, and wash over the droid lightly to get the process started. No, I did not cry at this point or any other.




More is applied on the lower areas like the skirt and foot shells.



The back door is pretty much done with its first pass.



The front is coming along as well.



After taking a break for lunch to step away for a bit, it was time to wipe down the middle areas of the panels, leaving more weathering for the panel frame areas and edges.



And we're pretty much done with the body.



And (almost) lastly, the dome. We didn't go too heavy on the dome, just one light pass on the aluminum colored areas and not much on the blue paint.



But that's not all. Time to do R5's dome.




So how'd it turn out? I'm pretty happy with the new look. Here is droid #1 along side droid #2, who is wondering what the heck happened.



And dressed up as R5-D4.



Droid #1 is over 11 years old, and I do have a clean droid #2, so I'm not traumatized. I think it was finally time for him to be weathered, and I like the results.

Tons of thanks to Mike for lending his time and expertise (and materials) to this effort!