HewittYoda: That's totally intentional. As I noted in another thread, C3PO was definitely modeled on the robot Maria from Metropolis.

Since Metropolis is a black and white movie, the Maria robot appears silver on film; likewise, in the first draft of ANH, Lucas wrote that Threepio was chrome-colored. However, the female robot costume was actually painted a bronze color on set--a fact which Lucas must have discovered, because in his subsequent drafts of ANH, he refers to C3PO as bronze in hue.

R2D2 was modeled on the robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie from the film Silent Running--squat, blocky repair droids with claw arms, which talk in C64-style internal-speaker bleepy/bloopy noises instead of normal human speech. The robots on that film were "played" by double amputees within the metal shells. It was concept artist Ralph McQuarrie who decided to make R2D2 cylindrical instead of boxy like the Silent Running robots.

BTW, one other thing that may be of interest: in the ANH third draft, Luke watches TV (and later records a goodbye message when he runs away from home) on a small, handheld flatscreen device. It's clearly modeled on the portable TV sets seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey, during the scene where the astronauts watch their interview with the BBC. (Said handheld TVs kind of resemble modern iPads.)