Pit Droid Ponderings

[savagecreature]

I presume those were all CG?

Yes, to the best of my knowledge (including talking to some of the folks who put them in the movies) they were entirely CG.

I always thought the dome kinda looked like an industrial lampshade. Or my dad's 1960's cereal bowl (which was very large), or an old salad server.
With some of the details showing a bit better it looks like the mechanics can be worked out for the collapsing of the head to the body via a piston system (maybe). I think the neck would have to be collapsible by folding up and down somehow. I'm not sure if it will be able to go straight down. Just some thoughts.

The folding of the pit droids is more along these lines:



Though I'm not totally sure the folding was identical for the motion picture ones as it was for the cartoon. There was at least a bit of cheating involved, but I figured I could come up with some mechanical solution to approximate the same result.