During one of my visits to Batuu in Galaxy Edge at Disneyland a friend and myself built Droids, BB units. One of a kind. Utterly unique and utterly invaluable. While amazing on their own, and able to stay upright, I wanted to build a base to keep the unit from rocking around and be able to display the name for him, BB-73.
I started with the idea from the Sphero BB-8 Droid, a crater like base that both holds and charges the Droid. BB-73 runs off AAs so I didn't need to worry about any electronics. An afternoon in Blender and I had a rough idea of what j wanted. With the crater base, a few contact points to hold him up and secure, a recessed ring for some accent around the base, and a location for a name plate. The name plate not only has his name but some more details in the Star Wars' universe Aurbesh alphabet and a serial number. Some research on Wookieepedia showed me that BB units are built in the same factory as R2 units so I included that logo for the manufacturer, Industrial Automaton, as well.
I designed the name plate with the idea of having a friend print it on their resin SLA machine but in the end printed it on my FMD with the standard .4mm nozzle and was very pleased myself at the outcome. After modeling the parts I threw in a model of BB-9E from the last Jedi, who I designed my Droid after. Being a first order Droid I wanted to color the base to match what might be part of the fleet. While starting to print the bases I picked what colors I wanted all the parts of the base to be. The Droid Depot in Batuu only has one style of controller which matches R2-D2 of white, blue, and some red.
I knew I wanted to have the remote match the First Order color schemes so I started disassembling the remote to see how hard it would be to paint as well. Surprisingly with just a handful of basic screws and 2 solder points everything came apart. Following YouTube videos the steps for prepping finished injection molded plastic is to scuff up the exterior first with a brillo pad, then follow up as any other print with a base coat, color spray, and clear coat.
With the remote disassembled and the prints done it was back to the usual post process steps of 3d prints with a grey primer and top coat colors. I picked a stealth grey for the base color which really pops with a gloss clear coat and yellow/blue/red as the buttons for the remote. Those are the 3 primary colors of Imperial Officer rank badges.
The big challenge was the name plate. I wanted a cleaner look than just dry brushing paint over the raised letters and started looking into ways to do just that. The final decision was that I needed to paint the main (background, non letter) color first. I did some light sanding, relying heavy on the primer filler to fix most of the print issues. Following up with the base color terra and clear coat. Now by lightly sanding the raised letters I could remove the clearcoat while keeping the base intact and continue with painting the letters.
Going off weathering tips I've seen before I first tried masking the letters with toothpaste as the medium. Shoving globs of the to basic brand between all the letters the issue popped up of how to properly clean the letters without removing too much if what I wanted to keep. The toothpaste was not viscus enough didn't flow/stay as well as I wanted on the test piece. Following the toothpaste was a fast fail with Bondo that ended up pulling all the paint off the base in place where I even managed to remove it.
Running out of ideas I searched around the local art store and stumbled on watercolor latex masking liquid. It's main purpose is to be painted on canvas so watercolors don't seep into the fabric but here it made sense too, flows onto the mold between the letters easily with a brush or toothpick, dries solid and comes off with 0 residue. Trying it out for the first time on my final piece I was a little paranoid in filling in all the cracks and really coated the latex on. The instructions for water colors is to not let it dry but with a 3d print that's already clear coated I decided it would be good and let it dry overnight before airbrushing it. That thankfully did not cause any issues. Painting different blue/teal shades for the Industrial Automaton logo and black for all the text I let that dry for an hour or so before removing the latex. Once getting the corner peeled back the latex really stuck to itself and itself only coming off the part with 0 effort and not pulling any of the paint with it.
In the meantime I've painted and clear coated the main base, making it ready to attach the name plate on. My original plan was to put magnets in so I could swap them out if needed but I settled on a rod being good enough to hold it in place as the base won't be thrown around anywhere. To try and protect BB-73 a bit I also cut out a few foam squares to place on the raised parts of the base that hold the Droid in. They still provide enough friction to hold the Droid in place while it moves it internals/head without letting the entire body move.
BB-73 was built during the opening weekend of Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland. The one morning me and my friends got backup boarding group 115, which in hex is 73. Our boarding group was never called, but BB-73 is named to keep the memories of the amazing weekend I shared with my friends in Galaxy Edge as we drank at Oga's Cantina and kept an eye out for Kylo Ren!
