VIIII:  References

 Just the Facts

The goal of the 3DSF.info Astro-droid Pages is to be as definitive and accurate as possible. So much droidy information out there is pure guesswork. Or it mixes up what happened during one point in Star Wars filmmaking history with another. Or it’s a combination of fact and conjecture.

But there is a historical reality that actually happened, a long time ago.

Is this really that important? Well, no. Obviously. It’s just a bunch of geeky info about an old fantasy movie franchise. But in an age of lies and propaganda, I want even this little pile of nerd information to be definitively factual!

Verifiable primary and secondary sources are key. If something is a reasonable theory, especially with some circumstantial evidence, it will specifically be labelled “conjecture”. Which isn’t a bad thing - a conjecture is a theory or supposition for which there's simply insufficient evidence, and which hasn't yet been proved. Or I'll use words like "probably" or "it seems likely" so it's clear.

I will not make up some random idea and present it as truth. Also, this thing is a live document. Significant chunks of this material been rewritten and corrected as new information comes to light.

And finally, why VIIII rather than IX? Well, the former is arguably not incorrect, as Roman numerals weren't fully standardized. But it's mainly so that this chapter alphabetizes correctly at the end of the table of contents.

What sources do we have?

So what avenues of research are available, decades after the original films were made? Well, there's actually a lot of information out there. In fact, there's more information available to the public today than there's ever been on the topic of our favourite droid.

• Image captures from the movies are the best source, of course. We're researching what the original props looked like on-screen, which is the whole point. High resolution screenshots of cuts unaltered by Special Edition CGI changes (eg: the Despecialized Editions, the 35mm scan projects) are the most reliable sources, though no significant changes to R2-D2 were made in ANH and ESB that I know of. ROTJ's SE features a CGI-modified R2 in the bunker scene when he's shot by a stormtrooper. The 4K releases are, incidentally, particularly impressive in terms of detail: you just need to be aware of what scenes have been altered since the first release.

What we know for sure.

Records from the production period are probably going to be more accurate than reconstructed information noted down years later. However, even in this regard there are many open questions.

For example, when someone refers to the number of droids built, do they count domes? Domes and bodies? Domes with partial bodies? Of course a blueprint midway through production may well be superseded by last-minute undocumented changes. Or, for example, Roger Christian has said in recent interviews that at least one fibreglass R2 body was built without John Stears’ involvement and perhaps even his knowledge, so presumably the Peteric records will not list those.

Another point: many people contributed their labour and talents to the films over the years. And for many of these behind the scenes folks the Star Wars films represent the pinnacle of their careers. Certainly, given the success of the movies, it's something that they can look back at proudly, and rightly so. But sometimes there appears to be a little credit inflation going on. There's an objective difference between "I contributed certain components to the construction of R2-D2" and, "I built R2-D2!"

It also appears that some individuals who worked on ESB and other sequels either hint or state that they worked on ANH, when there is no evidence for this. This may be another case of credit inflation, or it may be that they simply meant “Star Wars” as a franchise whole, rather than the specific film that was released in 1977 under that name.

Finally, it’s entirely possible that people not directly responsible for hands-on work in the shop may only have had a basic understanding of specific numbers or details, even though they had a supervisory role. For instance, in a 1978 interview art director John Barry says that the holoprojectors are made from air vents from a Caravelle. Which isn’t of course technically true - the final droids had reading lights from a Vickers Viscount; another passenger aircraft from roughly the same time period. This kind of thing doesn't matter to most people, but it's the sort of detail that matters if you're obsessively researching the history of an ancient artefact!

What we know from evidence on-film.

• • Multiple droid props can be seen representing R2-D2 and other R-series “astrodroids”.

  • Various R-type bodies were repainted in different colour schemes, and equipped with different heads and domes, to portray a whole droid ecosystem of different models.

  • We can see that a fibreglass R5-D4 was cobbled together as a three-legged rolling droid for the auction scene. This droid has three specific tells that set it apart from the three-legged R2-D2 - the charge bay/zapper door (using ESB/ROTJ naming) framing detail, the long centre ankle, and the fact it has a single large raised wheel on each foot. It also has an outer leg as a middle leg in at least some scenes.

  • We can see from the film that the radio-controlled R2 has numerous semi-concealed screwhead/rivet holes along the front of the body in certain scenes. These holes are most visible in the Blockade Runner sequence that opens the film, which is known to be one of the last parts of the film to be completed in principal photography in England.

  • The same RC-capable droid was shipped to California, and used for most of the Death Valley pickup shots.

• • R2's head never appears to rotate via remote control on a three-legged body anywhere in ANH. However, the three-legged RC unit definitely could rotate its head once filming was complete, since it's seen rolling around freely, and turning its head at the same time, in media appearances as early as mid 1977. Footage exists of this happening, and there are references to public appearances requiring two operators - one to drive and to turn the head. ILM's Bill Shourt is credited with this mechanical overhaul.

  • Obviously the ESB and ROTJ three-leggers were head-rotation capable - this is seen throughout the films.

  • Nobody is specifically credited with working on the droids in the original credits for Star Wars. John Stears is credited as "Special Production & Mechanical Effects Supervisor".

  • The two people credited with "Robot Fabrication and Supervision" in The Empire Strikes Back were Andrew Kelly and Ron Hone. They were listed in the Production and Mechanical Effects Unit.

  • The White Horse Toy Company was credited as "R2 Bodies Fabricated by" in the ESB end credits.

  • ROTJ has no mention of droids in its end credits. It credits Kit West as "Mechanical Effects Supervision."

Known factual records and statements, 1977-80

• • There is a planning drawing by John Stears which shows 6 full “alloy” droids, and 1 upper half droid, to be built by “Petric” (sic). This is a reference to Peteric Engineering.

  • The same document also refers to at least some of the feet being made from fibreglass.

  • In an interview with BBC Arena in 1978, producer Gary Kurtz says that “there were 8 or 9 different ones. They all did different things because of the technical requirements of the script.” “2 or 3 of them were made out of fibreglass which was easier for him (Kenny Baker) to deal with.”

  • An internal memo discussing transportation of equipment to Tunisia refers to 10 R robots.

  • Photos from the droid auction set in Tunisia clearly show one aluminium RC droid, two Kenny droids, and one unpainted fibreglass droid body being worked on.

  • One of the making-of photos shows two R5 heads during the setup of the droid auction scene.

  • ESB unit publicist Alan Arnold wrote in 1980 that eight droid bodies were built by the White Horse Toy Company.

Specific facts from Electronics Today, Electronics Tomorrow, and Interface Age.

These were three publications that came out in 1977/78 that covered the construction of the droids in notable detail. Here are some specific facts and claims drawn directly from the magazines.

The three-leg R2

• • Unit can move forward, but has no reverse capabilities.

  • Motor drive is via two "traction motors" or "twin high torque motors"; one located in each foot.

  • Each motor is a vertical black cylinder. It protrudes very slightly from what fans call the "battery boxes", which are the rounded enclosures located on the inside of each foot.

  • It appears that the three-legged units had the same battery boxes as those on the two-legged units; where the latter had to have cutouts for Kenny Baker's feet. The cutouts were used on the three-legged units to allow the traction motor to protrude outwards. Photos show that the motor was then painted white for the areas that would be exposed. A thin sheet metal plate, notched to allow the motor to stick out, was then put over the battery box hole to cover it up.

  • Each of the motors drove a pair of wheels inside the foot. The two wheels were linked by a chain.

  • According to both Electronics Today and the R2 manual that Stears wrote, R2 had three fixed driving speeds. These were determined by the input voltage - 12, 24, and 36 volts. For some reason Stears, in Interface Age, later contradicts this statement, saying that R2 had "infinite speed up to 7 mph".

  • The diagram refers to a "speed control servo". This refers to using a standard radio control mechanism with a servomotor for speed. In other words, incoming radio commands are used to move mechanical switches which adjust the power levels sent to the drive motors.

  • The middle foot contains a "proportional self-centring servo unit" for steering purposes. It also says that "the twin wheels in the steering foot remain parallel to the other wheels during turns". Sadly the RC R2 is only really ever seen changing direction a couple of times in the whole film. The start of the droid auction scene is one.

  • No mention is made of head rotation capabilities. It seems pretty clear that the RC R2 could not rotate its head when it was initially built.

  • Electronics Tomorrow states that the middle foot can be retracted. This statement is only correct if you interpret it to mean that technicians can push the foot back into the body by hand.

  • Reference is made to "body tilt tension springs" and a "leg drop solenoid". These mechanical and electromechanical components are part of the complex assembly that allows R2 to tilt back and lower his middle leg. Photos show rows of internal springs inside the body for the leg drop mechanism. A hydraulic "dashpot" made by Kinetrol served as a damping device, and was used to slow the foot at the end of travel. Springs were used both for the body tilt mechanism and the leg drop mechanism.

  • Incidentally if you're interested, the dashpot is still made and sold today! It was a Kinetrol KD-A1-DD. This was an adjustable model, with equal resistance each way, but we don't know what the range was set to.

  • The outer metal shells are said to have cost £18,000 (according to the UK publication Electronics Tomorrow), and were made by "Petric" (not "Peteric"; the correct spelling) Engineering. That's a sizeable amount of cash. In 2020 money that would be about £133,000 or $184,000 USD.

  • Stears' original instruction manual says that the RC R2 contained two removable 6 volt batteries for lights and steering. And six 6 volt batteries (non removable) for traction. The non-removable batteries went on to cause real problems during production, as they took a long time to charge and drained rapidly.

  • What fans now call "PSIs" are described as "Pulsating Light Drives" back then.

  • Reference is made to a "Qi light source", front and rear.  "QI" stands for “quartz iodine,” or a quartz halogen tungsten light bulb. This box appears to be driven by two servo motors.

  • Reference is made to front and rear "coloured disc motors". These are presumably the motors that are equipped with multicoloured vanes to give the fibre optics their unique colour changes.

  • Reference is made to a "Deac" in the "radio control gear" section. This was a rechargeable NiCad battery. The name comes from DEAC (Deutsche Edison Akkumulatoren Company GmbH), but it seems that British RC users in the early 1970s used the company name as a generic term for rechargeable packs.

  • Stears claims that "all the robots functioned well", aside from some issues caused by bad static. This sunny view did not appear to be shared by others on the production.

The two-leg Kenny R2s

• • The internal harness and seat allowed Kenny Baker to rest without the weight of the whole thing pulling him down, until each scene was actually shot.

  • The rollerskate mechanisms were described by John Stears as "non-return rollers", which permitted forward motion but not back.

  • The droids with a kind of suspension system had "spring loaded balls on each side of the boot". This is an interesting description, since I've never seen any photos showing such a thing. Stears also talks about "spring loaded pistons" as the shock absorbers on the legs.

  • The lens in the dome eye is described by Stears as being a "one-way lens", which is also kind of an interesting description.

  • Stears confirmed that the PSIs used fibre optics and a "motorized color wheel". These were powered by what the Interface Age article describes as "high-ouput, jelly-type non-spill batteries". By this they mean lead-acid gel batteries, of course.

  • Stears states that "there was nothing used in the manufacture of both (sic) Artoos which was not machined, with the exception of the viewing lens." This of course is not strictly true, since the Kenny droids had fibreglass feet. And the holoprojectors were stamped metal lamps with plastic nozzles. But it's mostly true!

Statements made in the years post-production

• • Roger Christian refers to at least one additional fibreglass droid being constructed as a safety backup, but doesn’t say how many were made. This comment was in his book Cinema Alchemist.

  • So far I've only managed to find evidence of a single droid with a fibreglass body being built.

  • Christian implies in an interview that the fibreglass droid or droid was/were made separately from John Stears’ operation. This suggests that Stears didn’t know about the existence of the fibreglass backups until later.

  • However, there is a photo of several droids being assembled in the desert, just before the first day of shooting. John Stears is in the photo, as is the unfinished white fibreglass body. So he definitely would have known about its existence by that point.

  • In a 2004 interview Robert Watts says that the RC R2 couldn't turn its head and move “at the same time”. It's not clear if he meant that the RC R2 couldn’t turn its head while stationary, or if a different Kenny-equipped R2 was required for head-turning, but we know from other research that the latter was true.

  • In an interview with author Brandon Alinger, David Watling (the managing director of Peteric in 1976) says, "the total factory time to build all six and a half (droids), was something like 10,000 hours." As for the domes he says, "we made a largish number. I think we made about 10, I can't remember now exactly."

  • David Watling also said that a company called C&L Developments did some work on the ANH droids; subcontracted by Peteric. He specifically states that the work was the machining of the utility arms. It's not known if they performed any other machining responsibilities.

  • In an interview with Brandon Alinger in 2005, ESB effects supervisor Brian Johnson said that sculptor Francis Coates worked on the fibreglass R2 shells.

  • In an interview with me in 2020, sculptor Francis Coates said that the White Horse Toy Company made fibreglass domes that did not pass muster after metallizing. For that reason spun aluminum domes were made for ESB.

  • In an interview with me in 2020, ILM engineer Bill Shourt confirmed that the dome rotation function was added to the RC R2 after filming of Star Wars was complete. And that the tape player for live audio beeps was added for events.

R5-D4 versus R2-D2.

There are a handful of differences between the way R5 and R2 appeared in ANH. It does seem that the original idea was that they were essentially the same type of robot – just that R5-D4 had a different head, and had the red panel stripes and red manipulator arms. However, because of technical problems shooting the droid auction scene, a fibreglass droid was cobbled together to represent R5.

There are behind the scenes photos showing technicians setting up the RC R2 as an R5 - red stripes and all. However, in the film the RC droid is never shown playing R5. Instead, it appears that two different R2 bodies were used to represent R5 in the auction scene.

The sequence opens with a red-painted two-legged droid shuffling across the desert. This is most likely a repainted Kenny droid. However, the three-legged R5 shown rolling along immediately prior to losing its “motivator” is different. It has a strange undersized middle foot with no side details, a side leg substituting for a middle leg, and really tall wheels. This is because it was a fibreglass 2-leg R2 unit hastily converted on-set into a rolling 3-leg R2 unit.

• • R5 has a white, partly conical, head with a near flat top instead of a metal dome. This is the primary distinguishing difference between the droids.

  • R5 has a white body with red front arms and red rectangles over some of the panels. These parts were restored to blue and white for R2 scenes. Were these painted red, or was simple adhesive red vinyl or tape used?

  • The droid has mostly blue details elsewhere, confirming R5 was just an R2 repaint.

  • The small front door, that’s later used for the Dagobah charge bay in ESB, has recessed details. R2-D2 has a flat featureless door in most scenes.

  • The middle ankle protrudes down further than R2’s does. This is the most obvious difference other than the head and colour.

  • Some renditions of R5 have a round "skirt" around the base of the body.

The photo above shows the "these aren't the droids you're looking for" scene being filmed. It's a screenshot from analogue video footage, which is why it's pretty blurry. The camera is on the ground to the left of the image, and Luke's landspeeder is about to halt further to the right. It looks like a camera may have been set up on the scaffolding, but no footage from this vantage point was used in the finished film. Producer Gary Kurtz is to the back, wearing a tan hat and probably taking a stills photo. And John Stears is half-visible behind the temporary wall, with the radio-control pack for the RC droid.

Two droids can be seen, ready to roll along the temporary plywood surface, to halt in front of a blank wall - they're just there for foreground interest and flavour! The modified R5 is seen repainted yellow, and its high wheel stance is quite visible. Next to it is the RC R2, which has had green stripes applied, and a temporary white dome installed. Its feet are much closer to the ground. The yellow droid was actually hauled on a string for this shot. Behind the scenes footage exists where you can see a crouching person by the wall, carefully pulling fishing line hand over hand to propel the robot forward.

Areas of uncertainty.

• • The metal domes were most likely used atop different bodies - metal or fibreglass - as required. Is this correct?

  • Exactly how many metal droids were constructed for ANH? Six plus a partial, or seven?

  • How many fibreglass droid bodies were constructed for ANH? I've only found evidence for one, but perhaps it was two.

  • The fibreglass work was performed by technicians at EMI Elstree studios. Who were these individuals?

  • Were any of the Elstree-shot scenes in ANH, where R2 appears to change course, done via the droid's middle foot steering system? Or were they all done via fishing line or wires? It appears that some of the Tunisian footage has a semi-working steering foot.

  • A plaster cast was made for ANH, using either an R2 metal dome or the lamp that was used as the model for the original R2 dome. Fibreglass copies of this cast, which include a noticeable dent on the top, were painted up for temporary one-off droid heads, like some of the fighter socket droids and the Mos Eisley street droids. Were they used elsewhere?

  • At least two R5 heads were built, as revealed by one ANH on-set photo. How many of these hexagon heads were there?

• • Some R2 droids had a single bare metal or silver/grey-coloured panel on the back. It's not known if multiple droids had this silver door, or if a single back panel was moved between different droids. Why did this change? Was it just a simple error in the EMI paint shop after the robots came back from Tunisia?

  • Some websites online claim that Peteric Engineering were an Australian company. All the evidence I've seen indicates that they were English. Where did this Australian idea come from?

  • Why did the ESB droids have button-back shoulders?

Not Appearing in this Film

Unfortunately, certain individuals have overstated their contribution to Star Wars history. Why do I care? Well, for one thing the names of the people who actually did design and construct R2-D2 in 1976 are nearly forgotten today, in part because of these exaggerated competing claims. In fact, early drafts of this document contained some inaccurate attributions because of these widespread but false narratives.

This historical inaccuracy is regrettable. Since the emphasis of my work is on carefully researched and verifiable facts, I highlight the following.

Norank

• • There have been various statements from former employees/owners of a company called Norank Engineering claiming involvement in the building of R2. In fact, a website representing the company has said that (Norank) “made R2-D2, C-3PO, the landspeeder, the X-wings, Y-Wings, Millenium Falcon and of course the lightsabers here in our workshop”. I have found no evidence to back these extraordinary claims. In fact, most of those items were built by the Star Wars art department at Elstree itself, and the landspeeder and Y-wing bodies were built by subcontractors Ogle Design. As described in this document, the bodies/domes for R2-D2 were also subcontracted for both Star Wars and Empire.

  • Norank was associated with Elstree studios, was physically based on the studio lot at one point, and seems to have contributed engineering work to many British films, but I have not seen any actual evidence showing that Norank worked on the original 1976-77 Star Wars R2-D2 props.

  • The thank-you advertisement created by John Stears lists many different individuals and suppliers who worked on Star Wars with Stears' team but does not list Norank. Given that Stears was wanting to set the record straight as to who contributed to the film, it seems highly unlikely that anyone of note would have been omitted from the list.

  • There is an undated photo on the Norank site showing staff working on a droid. Examination of the photo reveals that it isn't an R2-D2 droid, but one of the clear-domed background droids (later named R3 robots) built for ESB. It is possible that Norank were subcontracted to work on some of the ESB droids' metal detail parts or mechanisms since it seems they had milling equipment. However, I've spoken to three of the people who worked on ESB droids and none of them recall Norank doing anything.

  • It also seems possible they may have worked on C-3PO's metal arms for Star Wars; an area of responsibility not covered by Stears' team.

  • This all being said, there is one area in which Norank has contributed significantly to R2-D2 history. One or two of the principals obtained a partial set of ESB-era R2 blueprints and later appears to have purchased additional ANH-era material. Some of these were bought directly from John Stears when Stears was preparing to emigrate to the USA in the early 1990s. These drawings have, over the years, made their way into the hands of private collectors. Some of this content has sadly vanished from public view, but fortunately some generous benefactors have chosen to make scans of some of these documents available for the world to enjoy. In addition, lower-resolution partial scans, used by auctioneers to sell their wares, have been the source of valuable data for R2-D2 researchers.

Anthony/Tony Dyson

• • Obituaries described Dyson as the “father” or “designer” of R2-D2. Neither is accurate. His role was running the White Horse Toy Company, the subcontractor that made the the Empire Strikes Back R2 droid body shells from fibreglass. He was not named in the film's end credits, though his company was credited as “R2 Bodies Fabricated by...”. Dyson never worked on any other Star Wars production, but the ESB droids were reused for Return of the Jedi (1983) and the prequels. Without a time machine he couldn't have worked on the original 1976 design of the robot. 

  • The fibreglass shells built by Dyson's team were clearly solid and crisply made, and full credit should be given to White Horse for that. However, sources from the time show that it was the ESB effects team at Elstree that worked on mechanical, electrical, painting, and final integration aspects of the droids’ construction. In addition, fibreglass expert and former White Horse employee Francis Coates, who hand-sculpted the fibreglass patterns for the ESB R2 units, said in a 2020 phone interview that Dyson ran the business but did not do any actual hands-on work. It’s certain Dyson did not do any robotics engineering.

  • The claims that Dyson made, or permitted interviewers to make, changed over the years. Early interviews such as this one confirm that his sole involvement with the franchise was the ESB droids. He also confirms that John Stears (misspelt in that transcription) was responsible for building the first R2-D2s, though he downplays them incorrectly as “prototypes”. But in later years Dyson described himself as a robotics expert and the “man behind R2-D2”. 

  • In an interview with Brandon Alinger, Brian Johnson mentions that Dyson used the R2 fibreglass moulds to produce additional droids and attempted to sell them, but was quashed by Lucasfilm. It appears Dyson retained one such droid, with which he often posed for publicity photos for his later businesses over the years. (there's a particularly ridiculous one where he's pretending to stick a soldering iron into a droid's holoprojector) This prop is now believed to be owned by the Science Fiction Archives company in France, and is mostly equivalent to an empty ESB R2 droid shell before it was lit and mechanized at Elstree. I have not seen any evidence that this droid was used in the film, contrary to speculative claims on the site's page.

  • When Dyson died in Malta in 2016 someone, likely Dyson’s partner, contacted various well-known media sources and provided them with biographical information. These were used to publish obituaries that turned out to be a mixture of probably correct statements and factually incorrect statements. Thus the false narrative of Dyson’s Star Wars contribution became cemented into the historical record.

Links and references.

Websites

Astromech.net. The first stop for people wanting to build their own full-sized composite droid replica.

OpenR2. An ambitious site filled with detailed first-hand documentation on the original R2 droid.

The R2 builders club on Facebook.

Michael Baddeley's 3D printed R2-D2 Patreon site. Based around the club plans.

https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/r2-innovation-three-aluminum-r2-d2-builds.170825/

https://astromech.net/forums/showthread.php?32846-R2-Identity-Guide/page1

Video Documentaries

The Making of Star Wars TV special, 1977.

Star Wars on BBC Arena, 1978. Intolerably smug presenter; useful interviews.

Star Wars Episode I: Bad Droid Karma webisode

Books

Alinger, Brandon. Star Wars Costumes. Titan Books, 2014. Has an excellent section on R2-D2.

Arnold, Alan. Once upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of the Empire Strikes Back. Ballantine Books, 1980. A remarkably frank look at the making of the film.

Christian, Roger. Cinema Alchemist: Designing ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Alien’. Titan Books, 2016. Set decorator Roger Christian's biography.

Daniels, Anthony.  I Am C-3PO - The Inside Story. 2019. Daniels' Threepio autobiography.

Duncan, Paul. The Star Wars Archives 1977-1983. Taschen, 2018. Includes large photos from the Lucasfilm archives.

Miller, W.R.. The Star Wars Historical Sourcebook: Volume One: 1971-1976. Pulp Hero Press.

Rinzler, J.W. Star Wars: the Blueprints. 47 North, 2013. Extensive collection of blueprint reproductions from the Original Trilogy.

Rinzler, J.W. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film. Aurum Press, 2007. Assiduously researched and authoritative. Enhanced edition contains high-resolution photographs.

Rinzler, J.W. The Making of the Empire Strikes Back. Aurum Press, 2010. The successor volume, covering ESB.

Uncredited. Star Wars Blueprints. Ballantine, 1977. An unusual format - a vinyl pouch containing reproductions of 15 blueprints from the original film. Includes R2-D2. Sadly the draftspeople and designers are not credited.

Magazines

American Cinematographer, July 1977. The Filming of Star Wars. https://theasc.com/magazine/starwars/

Bantha Tracks, July 1978. The official Star Wars fan club magazine. https://www.jeditemplearchives.com/specialreports/banthatracks/

Cinefantastique, volume 6, no 4/volume 7, no 1, double issue 1978. Star Wars interviews.

Electronics Tomorrow, Winter 1977: http://starlogged.blogspot.com/2012/08/1977-star-wars-droids-in-electronics.html

Electronics Today, December 1977: http://cyberneticzoo.com/early-mobile-robots/1975-6-r2-d2-from-star-wars-john-stears-british/

Interface Age. April 1978. Short article written by John Stears.

Web articles

Want to build your own droid? http://astromech.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=83871

Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples: How two British superfans built Star Wars' new R2-D2. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/star-wars-force-awakens-r2-d2

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299485/releaseinfo

http://www.r2-d2.de/index3.htm

Brandon Alinger's 2013 interview with Peteric's David Watling.

Brandon Alinger's 2005 interview with Brian Johnson.

Remembering Tony Dyson. An interview with the man whose company built the ESB droid shells.

Ben Burtt and Star Wars' sound.

Ben Burtt, brief informal interview.

Galactic Renaissance Man: Model Maker and Droid Maestro Don Bies Talks Artoo, Becoming Boba Fett, and More: interview with Don Bies.

The Club Spec:Revisited specifications, to create blueprints for a more screen-accurate R2.

Star Wars in Death Valley: the Jawas Hunt R2-D2. Fan Mitch Darby retraces R2's steps in Tunisia and Death Valley.

World of Wayne De Agostini R2-D2 build video log.

Thanks.

Most of this stuff came from a lot of poring over old R2 photos, doing endless amounts of research, reading books and articles. But online discussions have also been massively valuable.

Thanks to Robert Jackson and Mark Kiger for countless excellent comments and corrections. These guys have done a tremendous amount of research on the topic of the original droids over the years. And Chris Reiff, Oliver Steeples, Brandon Alinger, Astromech's FrettedLogic and Edwardo for terrific contributions to Facebook, R2 Builders Club, and Astromech.net discussions.

Thanks, all!

Copyright.

This text was written entirely by and for 3Dsf.info. Feel free to make copies for your own use, but I ask that you not repost it for download elsewhere. The reason is I'm updating these pages all the time for accuracy and development purposes. So the most up to date page should always be available at 3Dsf.info!

The majority of the photos are copyright their respective owners. They're either the property of Lucasfilm or of various people who have posted images online; specific provenance is mostly not known. They're reproduced here for the purpose of criticism and research.

Contact

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