Leg Work (Right Leg)

Right, so, let's addres the legs. This has been a nightmare in every possible way. For one the legs needed a lot of attention. The gell coat had many empty zones where air pockets were behind it rendering it extremely fragile and broken or busted through in many areas. this meant there was much body filling required. There was also the detail (like the arms and chest and back) which ranged from no too bad, to completely missing in certain areas, and ultimately the entire scale of the legs makes it long and dirty. Also, the shin entrance system needed work as well because it was pants.

So after breaking the leg down to it's basics I started on the right thigh piece. I started by grinding down the cast-in bolts from around the very top as I wanted to replace these with accurate real bolt heads for greater detail later. Then came the dremelling. The main thigh detail lacked a center line right down the middle, so I replaced that. Some detailing was entirely missing around the large circular hip connector which I replaced, as well as predrilling and mounting real allen-key boltsd in those areas as well. On the inner thigh-lower there was yet more detail just completely missing.So after considering a good few reference shots I replaced these as well. NOT and easy job considering just how THIN this BH fiberglass casting was in places . . . most places . . . okay, everywhere!!. Once all this was finished I sanded her down and shot her with the same amount of primer coats and base coats as I had on all the upper body pieces.



Right thigh. (replaced metal bolts and new details)



Right thigh inner. (replaced details)

Right thigh. Cleaned, primed & base coated.

So, onto the calf and shin piece. Where to begin? I looked at these pieces for a good while before I moved in any particular direction. And that direction was . . . the pub. For another long beard stroking moment of deep thought before I did infact decided to just clean and try to make good what was already there. I had many ideas how I could re-invent that section but quite frankly, I would have been making more and more work for myself by doing so. The join (if it can be called that) between the shin plate and the calf proper was the first on the job list. I knew I was going to have to cast some fibreglass in there and that it was going to be a sloppy little job because of the small area I was going to need to get it in. So, chopped fiber it would be and some poking devices and clay! I walled up inside the calf with normal buff body clay and then spray waxed the shin plate so that it would release from the new fiberglass wall I would be casting around it.

Lower leg. (shin plate and Calf join as it was)

Clalf with clay wall lay up in place.

Shin plate in place after spray wax relase agent application.

I simply used a baby medicine syringe to get the polyester resin into the gap, and then using an old sculpting tool introduced the chopped fibers into that. I continued this messy ass process until the gaps were filled while leaving a couple of millimeters from the top for body filler application later. Now this was really a quick fix, and there are many more elegant (and I am sure efficient) ways I could have approached this, but if I had gone down that road I would have ended up making a whole new leg piece, which would make me then want to make a new high . . . new arms . . . new chest . . . and yep all of it . . . so, no!



Lower leg with resin and chopped fiber being introduced to the gaps.
(looks messy, but it was actually a lot tidier job than you'd think lol)



Lower leg with body filler now in the top 2 mm.

 Once all had set sufficintly, I pulled all the clay out and popped the shin piece out (an easy job as the wax release I use is brilliant and I swear by it) and began the long and dusty job of rubbing down and making good on the joins.


Lower leg after primary sanding.



Lower leg. New edges for shin plate join.

 There were a couple of areas where I didn't like the overall look and or finish, so I took a little bit of license there and fished off with some filler. Once done, I began the dremelling of that piece to get all the detail back to where it should be and then rubbed the whole thing down and once more, shot with primer and base coat as before.


Lower Leg pieces, cleaned, dremelled, primed and base coated.



Lower leg details.



Lower leg with "cheated" detail with new access slot.

 And as always, after these steps had time to harden fully I began with shooting the colour. Again I was constantly refering back to my reference material to try to match the colour patternation.



Lower leg (rear) coloured, laquered. Finished.



Lower leg Finished. (shin plate and knee hinge in place)



Thigh. Finished. (side)



Thigh. Finished. (front)

 So, hope you enjoyed that as the left leg was in an even worse state. That has quite taken it out of me just reliving that, so we'll take a break, leave the left leg for another day :D STAY TUNED!!!

Shooting Colour (upper body armour & arms) Continued.

The Chest and back were shot with colour in exactly the same way as the arms. Using screen grabs and other reference material looking to find the correct colour patternation to make her as screen accurate as possible. I added the screen accurate Hex bolts and fashioned new hoop hinges as well.


Chest showing added hex bolts and hoop hinges.



Chest from front.

 The back, already mounted with all it's new greeblies was finished, once more from as much reference material as I could lay my hands on. Something I will point out, and I am sure something that anyone who has done this type of work before will completely understand and have encountered. As far as reference material goes, it almost always seems to be one area that is always favoured. One pose or shot, that crops up everywhere. so there will be an abundance of material on say the robochest for example, yet if you really need to get a good look at the bottom right quater of the left arm, oh no chance!!! so you do need to be Sherlock Holmes at some point in these types of builds and really, really dig deep for your information. The best way of going about this are others who share the "obsession" in the same field. There are great places like The RPF for example, which is just a Willy Wonka's chocolate factory of joys for the prop builder. it has an absolute wealth of information and quite frankly, if it hasn't been built and put on the RPF, then in hasn't actually been built lol. In this instance I became a member of The Robocop Archive. A brilliant forum and site with loads of great people who are happy to help. Never be scared to ask for help or information. there is always someone out there that might have that one picture or piece of knowledge that might help you finish a project OR help you make something more accurate than you thought.


Back finished (shown with arms)



Back finished (shown with arms)

 So, with all these bits now finished to my liking (I think as many will agree you never really feel finished. there is always a want or wish to correct or make better, to have the time to obsess over every little detail, but we have to draw the line or the project will never end) it is clearly time to move onto the legs. So I think a very, very deep breath is required as this, out of all the jobs so far has been the longest and the most pain in the ass. For one, they are very large and 2, they also needed the most work. so please stay tuned as next we move onto the legs.

Shooting Colour (upper body armour & arms)

Shooting the colour. We'll come back to the legs as they really are and were a complete pain and much more involved than any of the other jobs have been thus far. So for now we will move onto shooting all the upper body pieces and the arms with colour. For this I had to actually decide and MAKE the paints myself. This was quite a challenge as I am going for a part 1 Robocop colour scheme and although most people kinda look at him and assume he is merely a metal / silver colour, there really are A LOT of tones in there. In many ways, when light hits the clear laquer on Robo, he almost appears to have a Flip, or pearlesence in his colour. After many watches of the BluRay and some help from images of a surviving suit I settled on a Metalic Blue, a Metalic Green and a Metalic Purple. These would be my ROBOCOLOURS. I did infact also mix a Metalic Gold but it turned out that I wouldn't need it, but we'll come back to that later.


The Hand mixed ROBOCOLOURS

 The issue with mixing the paints was to find the tone colour that would work well for the robotones and not "swamp" the base silver on the armour, but that would also look accurate to the tonality in the film. For this I had to take into account a good many things. First of all I had to consider the age of the film and the film stock used at the time in the 80's. These were all gamma corrected and colour balanced in post production to attain a desired look the director wanted. This of course would change the real life look on the colours in robo. There is also aggressive lighting in Robocop to produce the shines on him to make him look more like solid metal in the film. This would have inevitably bleach much of the tones away as well.  So, once I had settled and chosen my base tones I then needed to metalasize the paint. For this I added a base metalic silver to the colour. This made the colour a little more translucent and also gave a common partner between the colours and the base silver, allowing for a much better blend when airbrushing.


ROBOBLUE with silver added for blending.

 Now this is where the real headache (brown trouser moments) started, because if I screwed up the airbrushing of the tones I would have to rub down and start cleaning and priming the pieces all over again. So I was sweating like mad with terror and stressed to my highest point during this stage and I shall point out that I still have more to go so please spare me a thought for my pain hahahah. I started on the forearms with the ROBOBLUE having as much reference material around as possible in the hope of matching where these colours are laid down, as they are not simply all over it  but rather in very specific places. You can rationalise a lot of the colours in the armour if you have ever heated metals or machined metal or die pressed metal. As metal heats and cools many will give off rainbow colour patterns, or blocks of colour (purple say) in the worked area, a self patina if you will. You can see this approach has been taken with the original Robocop paint scheme as whereever his heat vents are on the suit you will notice a high percentage of purples in that area showing where the metal is heating and cooling. With all this on board, I nervously began shooting colour.


Right forearm piece shot with ROBOBLUE under artificial light.



Right forearm piece shot with ROBOBLUE in natural light.

 Once I started to relax a little and the panic subsided enough where I didn't think I was going to ruin the paint job and promply drown myself in a vat of polyester resin I move on to the upper arms with the ROBOBLUE also, again working slowly from as much reference material as possible.



Upper arms shot with ROBOBLUE under artificial light.

 Once this had all dried (rather quickly in fact as these were my own colours and i was using my IWATA airbrush) i moved swiftly, and rather excitedly onto the ROBOPURPLE and finally ROBOGREEN. HOWEVER something I cannot stress enough here is this kind of colour lay up onto a car body colour like the Vauxhal Metalic Silver No#31 when dry is very, very delicate. It  will scratch off in the blink of an eye. It will scar like you cannot imagine, and in some worst cases, can rub off with touching if aggressive with your handling. It will remain this way until shot with clear acrylic laquer. If you ever do this method please HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE AT ALL TIMES. As you will see I have mine resting on bath towels to help protect them from scratching on the floor.


Both forearms now shot with ROBOPURPLE & ROBOGREEN.



Right arm upper shot with ROBOPURPLE & ROBOGREEN.



Left arm upper shot with ROBOPURPLE & ROBOGREEN.

 With all four of these pieces now shot with colour I was ready for the clear acrylic laquer. I cannot stress how glad I was to start getting the laquer on as I was really pantsing it with fear that I would mar or scratch all the work I had already done. Now I will quickly get back to something I mentioned earlier. The ROBOGOLD. When you watch the film and look at reference materials there is definitely a gold hint here and there but what I found was, when the puple and green are shot on, as that blends in with the other colours and the base coat, natural gold tones just appear anyway. It's like it gains a flip in it's colour all of it's own. Happy accident I know, but hey, who knows, maybe that's how Rob Bottin and his crew attainted their gold eh?


Right forearm shot with 3 coats of clear acrylic laquer.



Right upper arm shot with 3 coats of clear acrylic laquer.

 Once I had laquered all of the arm pieces I left them to sit off for about 3 days to fully harden and then shot the bottom-most part of the forearms with Simoniz gloss black. That was effectively the arms finished. I did paint one more thing, the insides matt acrylic black (by hand) so that the insides would just look nicer, and a lot tidier. So, from here I was about to feel my first achivement high by putting the arms back together and seeing the first FINISHED pieces of my Robocop Refit Refurbishment project.


Right arm FINISHED.



Both arms, with gloves.

 Stay tuned, the next installment will be the back and chest!! Thanks for reading. Hope you're enjoying my project so far.

Cleaning and Painting The Armour.

With the replacement greeblies now made and moulded, I began the long task of dremelling and cleaing all the lines and detail on the armour. In many cases having to completely redo detail that had either been lost through time and wear or simple neglect. Once the greeblies were on the back securely with some nice tiny brass bolts I finished the clean and shot it with four coats of grey Simoniz primer. On to this for my base silver I chose Vaxhaul Metalic Silver No# 31. It's certainly close enough for me and best of all I could get it in profusion which was what I really wanted. It would have been a nightmare to get, say two thirds the way in on the build only to find I would have to use ANOTHER base tone.



Back armour cleaned, primed and base coated.



Front chest armour cleaned, primed and base coated
(a new pectoral grill has been made cast and added here as well as accurate real bolts as well)



Font and back together.

At this stage I left both pieces for around a week for all paint to truely harden while I began on the arms. The process was the same. First I stripped them down completely and then whilst researching online for images of any surviving suits AND other peoples builds and using screen caps from the BluRay I once more realised there were elements that were either fading with time OR comepletely missing. So back to the lathe and more turning and casting. More moulding and then more dremelling (you will notice that this is a MAJOR theme throughout this refurbishment LOL) once again, and I was good to tackle the arms directly.

Left arm cleaned and primed.

Missing rear greeblie made, cast and replaced on Left arm.



Left forearm shot with base coat.



Font, back, and both arms with forearms cleaned, primed and base coated.

With the exception of the helmet, the upper sections of armour were now ready to be shot with colour, but again, I felt it would be best to leave them a nice period to really harden off before I worked on them some more. This of course gave me the opportunity to begin working on the legs and any number of the 12 million other jobs that this project had created!