Originally Posted by
Timebender
An interesting and great conversation. I'd like to relate this to two other groups of hobbyists who make movie replicas it costumes. One group, the 501st (and even the Rebel Legion) are super picky when it comes to costuming, having replicas do Stormtroopers and all the common Star Wars characters. In fact if you have one thing that's off or wrong in your costume, you can't be a part of their groups.
Then you have the R2 builders, who I belong to. They're not so picky, and the words "screen accurate" are actually really hard to stick to, as R2D2 from each movie, heck, even scene to scene has some detail that changes, or is missing, or broken, dented, and so on. So you have guys who have fixed 3 leg versions (accurate), 2-3-2 versions (accurate), unpaired rear panel (accurate), painted rear panel, black hp's, silver hp's, fiberglass bodies, wood and metal or plastic bodies, psi's that blink it slide, logics that blink, logics that fade smoothly, and the list goes on with too many changes, no continuity from film to film, and so on. However, if a builder spends time making it look as good ad possible with the budget and time they have (granted if they really care about making R2 recognizable), and know there are some things that aren't perfect- Knicks in the paint, skin panels not perfectly aligned, the dome ring not perfectly spaced, legs a bit too close or far by 1/8th inch... in the end people always say or ask "wow, that looks like the one in the movies exactly!" and "how did you get Lucas to let you use their R2?" and so on. People line up by the dozens to get their picture with him. Yet he's not really screen accurate- and in most cases looks better than the screen used droids.
People don't care. They just know it's R2. Now if it were a complete hack job then I'd never take him out, nor would anyone else hopefully take theirs.
I get your concern as there have been some really crappy "conversions" lime the one in Las Vegas. And I get the whole thing about damaging a D. I'dike to keep my D, when I get it, pristine. But it would be fun to once in a while dress it up for charity. If there's a way to do it without being invasive or damaging, then I'd like to explore that. And it won't be some hack job one way or the other.i want it to be accurate enough so that people will get it, and that I'm proud of it too- but I don't think it needs to be screen accurate down to the littlest detail to get people excited about having one at their event.