Animated Cylon with LEDs at 32mm

After allowing the primer to dry, and connecting a battery, I could start to see where the model was “leaking light”.

In this particular model’s case (I made three in total) it was where the primer had gone down too thinly on the helmet, and a couple of little cracks around the neckline.

This was about the hardest part of the job – with the battery *still connected* (and the red LEDs whizzing backwards and forwards) I had to touch up the black around the helmet, so make it a good, strong, solid coat – so that no red light could leak through.

The flashing LED actually made this quite difficult and it took two or three coats/attempts to get a nice, solid base that obscured 100% of the light.

Just like so many of us were caught out by the revelation the C3PO always did have a silver leg all along, I had a similar revelation while looking for source image of Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica series.

In my head, they were shiny black.

Absolutely no question about it – glossy, shiny black, just like Darth Vader’s helmet. But with a bit more shine. And a bit of sparkle and lens flare every now and again. But absolutely, definitely black. All over.

Yet every single internet picture I found showed them to wear black fabric, but bright silver armour!

Now, my non-metallic painting ability is just about zero. There was no way I was going to be able to paint silver in such a way as to make it look super-high-gloss black.

I figured that the “mis-remembering” must have come from the very dark backdrops the Cylons always appeared to be in. So – just like 3PO’s silver leg reflecting the sand, and the colour of the rest of his armour, so we just assumed it was gold – I’ve obviously mistaken reflected black in the shiny armour for… well… black shiny armour.

I couldn’t bring myself to just paint the armour plate-mail silver. It was just too jarring from my own memories of the programme.

I wanted the Cylons to remain, essentially dark, but also show that I recognised that parts of the armour were silver. So I did a heavy dry-brush of “gun metal” silver (quite a dark silver) over the black primer.

Then, in a nod to the fact that their armour is actually silver, I painted the helmet crest and visor, and the gauntlet bands on the gloves a bright “plate-mail” silver.

A bit of drybrushing with “uniform grey” on the legs and torso brought out the banding, then I blocked in the “skirt” again in black, added a grey edge highlight and tidied up the black between the silver armour on the arms and hands.

And that really was about it. About two and a half hours to fully paint all three.

I know they’re not absolutely true to the Cylons in the programme. But they’re true to how I remembered Cylons – as dark, shiny black, terrifying figures with an ominous glowing red eye.