C2-B5 Revisited

Having been left to my own devices to create an Imperial Astromech for Rogue One I created what was eventually named C2-B5. I cannot find record of the name I gave it but it wasn’t that! The droid itself received much coverage for the promotion of Rogue One which later led to dissapointment once viewers saw the lack of C2-B5 in the film. Well….. Pretty much everything we shot was used in the film! The toy companies must have just been keen to release a new Astromech toy.

The first time we used him was shooting overnight at Canary Wharf Underground Station which was a fun nightshoot, waiting to decend on the platform as the last train left and convert it into a Star Wars film set. We shot through the night and then packed away and disappeared before the first train arrived in the morning! Amazing gorilla style filming on a massive scale!

The second, and only other time we shot C2-B5 was during the weekend of Star Wars Celebration at the Excel Centre in London in July 2016. The reason I mention Celebration is the footage we shot was an additional scene which was added to the end of filming. All the stages at Pinewood were in use so we shot the scene in a disused carpet warehouse literally a mile down the road from the Excel Centre.

There are a few builds in existance which I am honoured by, knowing that people like my creation enough to reproduce it. One of the first I was made aware of was a fully 3D Printed version by Craig Pay. Maybe even one of the first fully 3D Printed Astromechs in the UK, or even maybe the World?

Anyway, on with my own personal build. It had to be done……..

I had these fibreglass legs which have been moulded from my R2-D2 legs. They’re a nice and simple/affordable way of getting all-in-one legs for your build. I was fortunate to have access to facilities to produce these. They do have a major disadvantage to the usual approach of Astromech legs which I will go into detail further down this page. The body is a wooden frame with my aluminium skins.

The centre foot is also fibreglass. I have a large quantity of heavy duty castor brackets which I have been waiting to try out in a droid. With these wheels off Amazon and a small amount of cutting and drilling I’ve ended up with something quite promising.

The aluminium skins were sanded, degreased and sprayed with acid etch primer, a must for all metals. This prepared a good base coat for the Matt Black which I also painted inside the body. I’m always aware of fellow builders looking inside builders droids so decided to tidy the inside up a little.

I had nothing to mount the motors on to so made up a plywood frame which I glassed into the fibreglass footshell. This not only acts as the motor mount holder but also strengthens the footshell which can get a lot of knocks in this area. The motor mount is from HolmeMade Parts which I drilled and mounted into my plywood frame.

The Q85 dropped into the mounts after a small alteration to the plywood frame. This now enables me to easily drop the motors in and out of the footshells. That’s the beauty of the Q85 motors.

The dome was done many months before I decided to do this blog so unfortunately this is my progress. Pretty much ‘dome done’ once I can source the lights.

This is the disadvantage of one piece fibreglass legs. The masking takes hours and hours! Seven hours to be precise!

But the hours of work is always worth it. Look at these beauties!!

The day after MCM Birmingham and having attended the event and seen so many great builds I had a huge rush of ‘builders adrenalin’. Having spent a full day on C2-B5 I’m now at this stage.