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R5-X2 (Jabba's Gambling Droid)

Who's this character?
Tell me what you think		 3/4 view, third leg retracted.
Full-figure view, actual size.
You have to look fast to spot this droid in The Phantom Menace -- he's with Jabba the Hutt's entourage at the Boonta Eve Podrace, seen on the left side of the screen just as Jabba is first introduced. The body of this figure is simply an R2-R9 (the red astromech figure that was sold with the Queen's Royal Starship playset), but the head is a more complicated matter...

Using a vintage R5-D4 head as a base, I first sanded down the bottom portion of the head so that it matched the size of the R5 unit heads seen in Episode I. The "neck" piece was actually taken from a POTF2 R5-D4 figure, with little hand-drawn stickers providing the panel details. Painting the stripes around the head required a whole new masking technique I developed, both for spraying on the paint intially, and then for sanding the edges to assure a straight line around the head.

This is a close-up of the head.
After trying various types of adhesive tape, I found black electrical tape was most effective for conforming to the curved shape of the head, while at the same time providing an even masking line to work with. First, all but a thin strip along the bottom of the head was masked over, so that the horizontal red stripe could be sprayed on. Next, the stripe itself was masked over, and a light sanding was applied to the head around the masking to remove any excess paint and even out the edge. Finally, matching strips of electrical tape were cut and applied vertically, leaving small even spaces exposed at regular intervals along the stripe. Once the exposed areas were sanded free of paint, the striping pattern matched the R5-X2 paint job in the film.
A reference image from the film.
Various "found objects" were used for the details on the head. The three eyes, for instance, were cut from Lego antenna parts, hollowed out using a small Dremel drill bit, sanded to the right circumference, and then painted silver before being glued to the head.


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The protruding cylindrical shapes around the eyes were cut from speaker wire and painted to match the eyes. The antenna on the top of the head is actually an acupuncture needle, carefully fitted into a 0.5 mm hole drilled into the head and secured with Krazy glue.

Finally, I airbrushed a little smoke gray and light brown over the figure, to give it that sandy Tatooine look, and repainted the white areas of the body so that they stood out clearer against the red surface.