This is the Screamin rebox of the Kaiyodo 1/6 Vinyl C-3PO kit. I picked this up years ago at a Hobby Shop, and sent it to the closet of unbuilts for many years. Recently I had the urge to build and finish a kit in rapid time, tired of looking at the all the partial builds on the workbench, that still needed many hours to complete. This is a perfect kit for a weekend project. I built this one over the course of 4 days, start to finish.

I'll go through my process of building the kit in the paragraphs below.

 

 

I started by laying out all the parts, and making sure everything was there (I've purchased a couple of kits that were missing parts, and have borrowed parts from other modelers to make duplicate replacements). A quick look over the instructions shows everything is there. I also glance over the instructions to see if there is anything of particular importance. This kit is pretty straight forward, only the little resin pieces presented any concern. At this point I started trimming all the excess vinyl, and test fitting the various pieces.

 

 

Here you can see all the pieces have been trimmed, and stuffed with newspaper. I added lead shot to the bottom of the feet, securing them in place with superglue. This adds weight to the feet, and helps the kit stay bottom heavy. There are some who think the newspaper stuffing a unnecessary step, that there is little danger of the vinyl warping over time. While I have never had any warpage problems, I do feel the paper helps give the thin vinyl pieces some extra support, and adds a little bulk to the kit.

 

After some thought as to how I was going to paint the kit, I started assembly. I glued together various subassemblies for easier painting. The upper and lower torso, with the upper arms in place, and the upper and lower legs glued together. My favorite technique for gluing vinyl is to heat one piece so that it is soft, and apply glue to the other unheated piece, and press together. The heat softened piece will conform to the unheated piece, leaving little or no gap. The rest of the pieces were left as is. The upper arms would be rotated into the up postiton for painting.

 

 

The sub assemblies are primed, and ready to paint. I use an automotive lacquer based sanding primer. Works great on vinyl and resin. I don't have any problems using enamels, or any other kind of paint on top of this primer. It dries extremely fast, and can be sanded in less than 10 minutes.

 

 

All parts are basecoated with a satin black. You can see them stuck on the ends of pencils, and old brush handles. Which in turn are stuck in a block of foam. This allows for hands free painting. I put a couple of light coats of black on, waiting about 10 minutes between coats.

 

I used a gold from a spray can for the overall body color. I sprayed it into a jar, and thinned it with lacquer thinner to help it dry faster. I also wanted it to go on thin, and build up to allow the black to show through in areas. The silver leg was drybrushed on, and then lightly sprayed on to even it out. Once all the color was finished being applied, and left to dry overnight, I applied a wash of an acrylic "smoked black" (a transparent black) over the entire model. This was repeated a couple of time to produce the desired effect. Thinned testors "chrome yellow" was flowed into the eyes. This was also repeated a couple of times to make them opaque. All the pieces were then assembled, and I began painting the wires on the torso. I mixed up some reds/yellows/blues/greens, etc, and painted them with a fine tip brush. With that, he is all done, and awaiting a base to display him on.