As much as I love seeing recreations of our cast, it’s pretty neat seeing variations of them, too. It’d be a hoot if people did their own “OB” creations and put those up. We have these particular established characters because of the original Brains’ DIY, shoestring, catch-as-catch-can aesthetic. So it’s still truthful to the spirit of the show to continue that with new robot designs of one’s own.
Some MSTies are good at the handicrafts and scavenging required to source parts, modify them and build bots the old-fashioned way.
But many MSTies aren’t, and would be deliriously happy to shell out for a decent self-assembly kit, even if it didn’t give so much leeway for individual variation.
There’s a valid place for both approaches.
If they are 3D printing the parts there are certainly people with 3D printers that wouldn’t mind buying the STL files so they can print them themselves.
They don’t have access to the paint; the last two tours have been hell on the tour bot wranglers as they went around even with, at as many stops as they could, checking nearby shops for anything they could get their hands on. It will soon have to be custom mixes to get close again unless Testors finally get their domes out of their hoverskirts. I’ve sprayed samples out of my last few dozen cans to have ‘just in case’, should it come to it.
This is just factually incorrect. Yeah, the $100 3D printers will usually produce crap but a good quality well tuned 3D printer can produce very, very good parts particularly if one is willing to touch of clean-up work after-the-fact. That being said, it’s not a good fit for many of the bot pieces. They are simply large enough that other methods would work better. Vacuforming would be a much better, cheaper, and faster way to go for most of the parts involved.
Vacufoming and printing will not get the surface texture that most of the telltale parts have, and I do’t know many modelers, frankly outside of myself, who have the patience and info to accurately reproduce the parts with their needed dims and angles, edges and correctly resolving mating surfaces.
My old model-building instructor worked on Jedi, and among other tasks painted the Imperial Guards. When it came time for him to re-paint his Ferrari, he noted that the paint on the guards was very close to Ferrari red, Racing Red, and so… and he loved it.
So yeah, if it’s a color you dig. But if you want to match the Servos on the show, then…
Yup, it’s a 6 of one, half a dozen of the other thing? Considering that it’s doubtful that anyone outside my immediate family and a handful of SCCA friends will ever see it, having it match the image in my head is the most important for me… but, understand that many would want their robo life mates to match the real ones as closely as possible.