The hero of the Star Wars franchise can get down and dirty!
More pics after the fold.
Archive for the ‘Star Wars’ Category
Bandai Star Wars Droids 1/12 Plamo Models – R2-D2 Leave a comment
Bandai Star Wars Droids 1/12 Plamo Models – R2-D2, C-3PO, R5-D4 Leave a comment
Since Disney took over the Star Wars property, it has been a licensing free-for-all, with a massive influx of products from every manufacturer imaginable. The best toy and model products, of course, are coming from Japan. Bandai has been making some excellent new SW toys and models, including these new 1/12 scale plastic kits of some of some of the franchise’s most famous droids. The kits are masterworks of engineering, just like Bandai’s Gundam plamo lines. They are designed to be built without paint, with most parts molded in color and decals for the rest. In C-3PO’s case, the entire kit came with a vacuum-formed chrome finish. I used the kit colors, but obviously couldn’t leave them so crisp and clean. I applied the kit decals, painted the silver bits with a better metallic color (Monster Kolor!), and then hit everything with a coat of satin varnish. 3PO did not need any additional paint except for the wires, belly bit, and his palms. From there, I went to town with the weathering, showing these three after some hard times trudging through the sands of Tatooine. I’ll be posting full galleries of each this week, so check back!
Here’s an extra pic with a cameo appearance by my PRHI 3D Printed Gonk Droid!
3D Printed Space Blasters Wave 2 for use with Star Wars Black 6″ Figures Leave a comment
More PRHI Space Blasters are available now in the PRHI Shapeways Shop! These two should be familiar to anyone that had the original Kenner Star Wars toys. Like Wave 1, these Space Blasters are 3D printed by Shapeways and offered in two materials, White Strong Flexible Polished and Black Strong Flexible. The WSF Polished is better for painting, and is what was used for the painted samples in the promo pic above. The BSF option is better for folks that do not want to paint their guns. Both are durable, with good detail and decent surface finish. These guns will look great being wielded by your favorite 6″ action figure.
3D Printed Space Blasters Wave 1 for use with Star Wars Black 6″ Figures 3 comments
I’ve got some new items up in the PRHI Shapeways Shop, the first wave of Space Blasters! The first batch of blasters are all things that I have received multiple requests for from Star Wars collectors. Two are a set of blasters designed for use with the Star Wars Black 6″ Boba Fett Prototype version, based on photos and video of the early character design. The other is a pistol for use by your SWB6″ Imperials. Each is available in two materials on Shapeways, White Strong Flexible Polished, and Black Strong Flexible. The WSF Polished versions have the best surface finish, and are better for painting (as seen in the promo pic above). The BSF option is for folks that don’t want to paint their guns and they come dyed black from Shapeways, but are not offered with a polished finish. Head on over to the PRHI Shapeways Shop to buy some space blasters at the link below:
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/prhi
Lots more pics of each after the fold:
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PRHI Gonk Droids Wave 1 Archive 3 comments
Here’s all the photos of the 6″ scale Gonk Droids made for the first release.
Green
PRHI 6″ Gonk Droids Coming Saturday, January 17th! 6 comments
My 3D printed Gonk Droids have been a popular item since I posted the first one in 1/6 scale and sent one to Tested.com as fan mail. The 1/6 scale ones take a tremendous amount of time to produce, but I still wanted to come up with a way for folks to add a 3D printed, heavily weathered little Gonk to their collection. A friend of mine suggested I go with 1/12 scale (6″) instead, as has been popularized recently with the Star Wars Black 6″ collection. I’m a big fan of the scale myself from collecting Marvel and 3A Portable figures, so it was an easy fit. I had to make a few tweaks to the legs to make the ball joints more durable in the smaller scale, but for the most part I was able to scale my existing model files down by 50% in the printer software without any problem. After some acetone treatment, Monster Kolor, and a healthy dose of weathering using acrylics, the first batch of 6″ scale Gonk Droids are ready to go. To celebrate the first sale of 2015, the Gonk Droids will also be the inaugural release on the new PRS Store site on Storenvy! Head on over to PRSStore.Storenvy.com at 8PM EST on Saturday, January 17th to pick up a Gonk Droid for $50 plus shipping.
Here’s a shot with 6″ SWB Han Solo for scale…
… and here’s an action shot! More pics after the break.
Custom 3D Printed Jeff in Carbonite Leave a comment
Brownnoize and I were recently approached by a friend of ours looking to surprise her partner, Jeff, with an awesome Star Wars-related gift for Christmas. She had recently had the opportunity to have his head 3D scanned and had a great idea for how to incorporate that into a gift he would appreciate. She asked me if there was any way to make a figure of Jeff frozen in carbonite like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. I knew it could be done, and that it would require me to learn a new piece of 3D modeling software that I did not have an experience with, Blender, so I jumped at the opportunity. Brownnoize helped with the initial concept and logistics, and then I did the final modeling, printing, and finishing. Learning to use Blender was very different from the Creo that I’m used to, but thanks to some terrific video tutorials I was up and running much quicker than I expected. From there, it was just a matter of transplanting Jeff’s head onto the model, and engineering the model for detail and affordability using a combination of high-detail SLA printing from Shapeways and good ol’ FFF printing for the larger, less detailed parts. The result came together better than I had hoped, and after some paint work based on the original film prop, Jeff in Carbonite was ready to go. I provided the figure and display stand, and my friend produced a custom backer card in the vintage Kenner style of the original Star Wars line. By all accounts it was a slam dunk on Christmas day, and I am happy to have helped!
I also had a really good time with the photo shoot for this project, so read on for many more fun pics!
3D Printed 1/6 Scale Gonk Droid for Tested.com 6 comments
This guy finally made it across the country to the guys at Tested.com so I can show him off. I’ve been a fan of the Tested crew for years, so I wanted to send them something as a small thanks for all their years of awesome content. Fortunately they are fans of making stuff, 3D printing, and Star Wars. All things I can contribute! Thanks to the Tested guys for the awesome mailbag vid and website shout out.
This Gonk Droid features a few tweaks over the first green one I did that help with printability, as well as some better detail on the (not printed) leg wires. I also took the opportunity to try out something I’ve been thinking would work, a 3D printed paint mask! Testedcles is the old Tested logo, and I really wanted to work him onto the droid for them. I traced the logo in my modeling software and made it a cutout in a thin slab of plastic that worked perfectly as a spray mask. After a few different coats of weathering, any remaining sins, and my orange Gonk Droid was good to go!
3D Printed Reproduction Mini Blockade Runner for use with Kenner Star Wars diecast Star Destroyer 9 comments
Most people today only remember the venerable 3 3/4″ Star Wars action figure and vehicle line from Kenner, but one of their cooler non-figure toys was the diecast Star Destroyer. The seven inch long hunk of Imperial might featured an opening hangar for storing an itty bitty <1″ long Tantine IV Rebel Blockade Runner miniature. The little Correlian Corvette is often missing, robbing the awesome Star Destroyer of a great play feature. Thanks to 3D printing, and a vintage sample for reference provided by a fellow collector, Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries is pleased to announce a reproduction ship available through Shapeways, as detailed above. Before we get into the details, I want to make it clear upfront that the reproduction parts feature a distinguishing mark so as not to be confused with the original items. I know repro parts can be a tough subject with vintage collectors, and it was important to me not to make collecting more difficult for my fellow vintage-minded peers. Rather, the PRHI Mini Blockade Runner is meant to provide an affordable alternative to the original part, as well as a few novelty items.
Head on over to the Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries Shapeways Store to purchase your reproduction Blockade Runners today!
3D Printed Replacement Wing Lever for Hasbro Star Wars X-wing 11 comments
I’ve been collecting a lot of Star Wars toys lately, and one of the things I was most excited to get was the latest version of Hasbro’s big X-wing. Amazingly enough, the modern X-wing mold’s origin can still be traced back to 1998’s Power of the Jedi 2 Electronic Power F/X X-wing mold. I remember seeing TV commercials for the Power F/X toy back in the day, but never had one. The mold has gone through a number of revisions, but the bones are still the same in today’s X-wing toy. I was thrilled to get a big new X-wing toy, but I was incredible disappointed by the S-foil deployment gimmick when I finally put the toy together. Out of the box, the wings are saggy, loose, and do not deploy evenly. I figured the mechanism could not be that complicated, so I cracked open my new X-wing and got to work. The jist of the mechanism is a lever that depresses a spring-loaded plunger that deploys the wings. The level slides to the side to lock in place, but when slide to the side the lever does not depress the plunger evenly or far enough, so the wings are uneven and floppy. I fired up the computer and designed a new piece and printed it on my 3D printer, going through a half dozen iterations in a weekend until I had a new piece that held the plunger all the way down evenly when locked in place. The ABS plastic part printed on my UP Mini was good enough for me, but not something I was interested in making a number of for others. Instead, I ordered a couple of test prints from Shapeways and found the best one, which is available now in my new Prometheus Rising Heavy Industries Shapeways Store! I may use Shapeways to offer some of my own toys in the future, but for now it is the home of my first third-party toy add-on part. Keep reading after the jump for details on the development, installation, and end result of my X-wing bar.
Prometheus Rising Studios 
