Meet RA-7, the protocol droid, affectionately known as ‘Death Star Droid’ amongst his Imperial friends. When I first became acquainted with this guy many moons ago, he was in very bad shape, more cream than chrome and his limbs were limper than an unstrung marionette.
I am not the fussiest of collectors, however this guy, although vintage would need a major makeover to even semi resemble his former glory. So, in keeping with this model’s renowned unpleasant personality trait, he wasn’t entirely happy being relegated to the ranks of spares and repairs fodder until inspiration took root.
Following my recent article covering customised Astromechs, I was delighted by the final result of my blue R5 re-chromed collar. I still had my new Molotow liquid chrome marker pens – which I discovered viewing Dean Major’s recent AT80’s restoration video – and was eager to use them again on another customising project.
But before we get onto customising, a little disclaimer. As I’ve mentioned previously on many occasions, I am not keen on customising any vintage figure unless they are in disrepair, which, with much vacuum metalizing long gone and his lack lustred state, this guy was certainly ripe for some much needed TLC.
First action was to apply a trick I learned from Dave at Toy-Polloi, I whipped some plumbers PVC tape around the joints of each limb and neck. Next came the opportunity to break the seal on my new 4mm Molotow chrome marker. Working around the figure touching up worn areas and finishing with the 1mm marker for finer details.
There was a couple of mishaps handling the figure before completely dry which resulted in a breast plate thumb print. Another couple of better paced coats put things back on course.
While waiting for the last application to cure before applying black paint, I had an idea. In the UK, Palitoy produced Star Wars figures under licence, they also produced one of my other childhood favourites, Action Force. I was going to turn this repaired Death Star Droid into a Palitoy crossover from Star Wars to Action Force.
In keeping with his character and antagonistic allegiances, it seemed appropriate that he would join Action Force’s Red Shadow ranks. With this in mind I applied a couple of coats of Tamiya clear red acrylic. In keeping with his Star Wars origins, his photoreceptors and shoulders were painted using Revel Aqua color black matt acrylic. Similar to the chest of Action Force’s main bad guy, Baron Ironblood, I used some narrow Tamiya masking tape to section a V shape which was painted with the same matt black.
I originally painted around RA-7’s shoulder edges with Revel Aqua color white matt acrylic echoing the Redshadow’s design but looking at this while drying I decided that, as a droid with a metal based body, chrome would look better.
I then used the 1mm chrome pen to edge his chest plate and mark his skull and cross bones. When I was sure the chrome had taken, I finished the figure with a Tamiya clear varnish on the matt black areas except for his photoreceptors.