When artist and animator I-Wei Huang builds robots he likes to mix his curiosity for electronics with his appreciation for the burgeoning genre of Steampunk. So when he recently unveiled his Steampunk R2-D2 known as R2-S2 (R2 Steam Too), fans and droid builders wanted to know more. Starwars.com’s own Bonnie Burton tracked him down and picked his brain on how to turn everyone’s favorite astromech into a Victorian-inspired machine.

How do your skills as an animator help when you make these cool creations?

Being an animator, you tend to see things in a different way, and can’t help but notice subtle details of how things move and work, especially in motion of humans and animals. To be an animator these days, you sort of have to have a balance between being artsy-fartsy and techy-geeky. I like seeing mechanical things work, because it’s visual. You can watch and study the transfer of power, and figure out how one thing drives another. When it comes to non-visual things, like electronics, I have a hard time grasping concepts of how everything work together.

Being an artist also makes you want to do something different and unusual. I just enjoy coming up with silly ideas that no one is dumb enough to try. I try to make steam contraptions that perform well mechanically, but are also aesthetic pleasing to the eye. Part of the draw of the Victorian steam technology for me is the attention given to making machines beautiful. Just because it has to serve a function, doesn’t mean that it has to be ugly. I also gravitate towards making steam machines that resemble things in nature, in particular arthropods, or things with carapaces, shells or armor.

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