9. Deathstar Droid/Bugdroid
Golden Armor's Death Star Droid project was started in 2002. The people behind the project cut their teeth on special effects, prop making, and the like for everyone from Sony Entertainment to David Copperfield. With some time on their hands, and realizing a project like this had never been done, they got to work on designing and building the life-size replica. They even offer raw kits, should you happen to want one of your very own. And what fan wouldn't? And here's how they built it, direct from the source: "The bugdroid was sculpted from MEDIUM grade chavant clay, on a foam armature that was coated with wax. The entire sculpt took about 3 weeks from start to finish. A silicon rubber mold was made of the sculpt and then the first resin copy was cast. This casting was then trimmed, and hand-sanded to be perfectly smooth. The resulting master pattern was molded yet again to make the 'master mold'. Next, I took a plaster casting of the eyes to be able to able to make a separate visor plate. The small details were milled in wood, then molded. The forehead medallion was drawn in CAD software, it was cut in acrylic, assembled, then molded to make a copy. The Gold Chrome version (seen in some of the photos) was achieved through COSMICHROMING, then it was antiqued using acrylics." A big, hearty thank you to Cristofer Adrian for taking the time out to give me background and technical information.