Friday, February 2, 2007

Entry for February 02, 2007

[Originally published on Yahoo! 360°]

Three things to say today....

1) I decided that the Black On Yellow color I chose for R6 is not that great a look after all. I haven't decided exactly how I'll change it yet except that one of the colors will be a highly polished neon color. I'll probably make the head panels (and anything else of that same color) the neon color. What do you think?


2) I was browsing my boat load of Internet bookmarks today when I found a yahoo group I forgot I had joined. It's the T3-M4 Builders Club. It's just like the R2-D2 Builders Club except they build T3-M4.
Who is T3-M4? Well you can stop searching the movies because he ain't there. He's what's called an Expanded Universe character meaning he comes from a Star Wars source other than the movies. In T3's case, he's from a two-part LucasArts RPG video game called "Knights of the Old Republic" and "Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords," or KotOR and KotOR II for short. These are great games about the Jedi Knights during the war with the Sith, set several hundred years before any of the movies. One of the supporting characters is a "utility" droid (not to be confused with an astromech droid like R2-D2, though similar) named T3-M4. He can "slice" (or hack) into computers, can repair various types of machines, and can even be equipped with a blaster and armor. He gets around on four legs so he's much more stable than the astromechs.
This group isn't very active yet because no one has built one yet. The closest thing we have is partly built prototypes and some rough drawings and that's about it. But I would really like to build one myself so R2-T4 is now third in line and T3-M4 is now next on my list after R6-C9.

I'll upload some pictures of T3-M4 soon....


3) Remember in my last post how I mentioned that guy with the tilting R2-D2? Well I got thinking and one thing no droid does is wobble left and right like R2-D2 does in the original trilogy. It would be a hard thing to engineer but I think I'm up to the challenge. I'll be putting in R6-C9 if I'm able to make a working prototype of the wobble system. In the movies, actor Kenny Baker made R2 wobble but I'll have to find a way to do it mechanically.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more updates....and maybe some building progress if I'm lucky, he he.

John