There goes another one...

Hold your fire, there're no life forms aboard.

maximum diameter is 7' based on a 311' Blockade Runner.

The main components of the engines were kitbashed from online model of a couple Saturn V rocket stages, but the rest is all original.

proportions and measurements of the main body were found on the The RPF

3PO model courtesy of the Sketchup Warehouse (with a few modifications)

Speeders of Mos Eisley

All four speeders that appear in Mos Eisley are pictured here.

technically you could say that the speeder on the far right is the Lars Family Speeder seen in Luke's garage, and that it needs a different paint job to be its Mos Eisley cousin, but that's splitting hairs. You could also say that Luke's own speeder is missing, but I haven't modeled it yet. Either way, I'm pretty happy with this little spread of obscure vehicles!

note: the Void-Spider and Mobquet speeders on the left both need complete paintjobs (which is a windmill for another day, so to speak) The other two are also in need of some dirtying up. 

a million points to them as can point out the one other place in A New Hope where the Ubrikkian Speeder appears, other than outside the cantina (a hint, it appears upside down)

Two for One Deal

On a roll here. Another speeder knocked off my list; the "Mobquet" Speeder. The guy on the right is only partially visible in two scenes at Mos Eisley. One is parked outside the cantina, and another is seen as Luke is selling his speeder. The ship on the left is the "Ubrickkian" Speeder, which supposedly gets its name as a tribute to Stanley Kubrick. This one I've had a model of for a while, but I cemented some parts on it.

(look to the far left for the "Mobquet Speeder")



Both of these appeared in the same Balantine Books publication with the Void-Spider in the previous post.

Void-Spider TX-3

An update to my laundry list, and one more Mos Eisley background craft done. We see this one for all of a few frames as Luke is hopping out his speeder to shoo away a few Jawas.

The blueprints have been available from Balantine Books since soon after the ANH came out, but the legs and engine don't feature in them. A few modifications were made before filming. Notably, the feet of this craft are tread teeth from the full scale set of the Jawa Sandcrawler. The engines look like more scrap from an aircraft junkyard, but it beats me what they're from. 

There will be no one to stop us this time.

my god... what kind of can of worms have I opened this time?

"Even I get boarded some times, did you think I had a choice?"

Laundry List

In my apparent mission to build models of everything that appears in A New Hope, I still have a long long way to go. At the very least, it looks like I've got quite a bit of the ships done. Here's my Got-It-Don't-Got-It-Need-It list...

In rough order of appearance (A word on what I'm considering a ship; any conveyance built as a prop and committed to celluloid, no matter how obscure, that's not a space station.) Don't-Got-It's are in bold text.

1. Rebel Blockade Runner                        Got It (but exterior needs a lot of work)
2. Star Destroyer ("Devastator")               Got It (but exterior needs a looooot of work)
3. Escape Pod                                            Got It!
4. Sand Crawler                                        Got It!
5. Luke's Speeder                                    Got It!
6. Lars Family Speeder                             Got It
7. T-16 Skyhopper                                    Got It
8. Mos Eisley Speeder (Lars with paint)  Got It (technically, just need to repaint the other model)
9. Mos Eisly Wreck next to the cantina   Got It
10. "Ubrikkian" speeder                            Got It
11. Void-Spider TX-3                               Got It
12. Mobquet Speeder                                Got It
13. Millennium Falcon                             Got It
14. TIE Fighter                                         Got It
15. Rebel base troop transport                  Got It
16. X-Wing                                               Got It
17. Y-Wing                                               Got It
18. Vader's TIE                                         Got It

So 15 out of 18... not bad... did I miss anything? (I am not, will never, be counting any ships seen in the "special" editions)

 ------updated------

It has been brought to my attention that two are missing. The Dewback and the Jerba are both technically "conveyances built as a props and committed to celluloid, [are] obscure, [and are] not space stations."

... I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but what it comes down to is that modeling those two "animals" would be a real pain in Sketchup, which is not the best for organic objects. We shall see... either way, I have begun to collect rare photo references of them, so it may just be a matter of time.

thanks to Exxos of the RPF

 ------updated 12/23/13------

what a weekend! Knocked out the Void-Spider, Mobquet Speeder, mostly polished off the Ubrikkian Speeder, and bashed out the Escape Pod.

Just two more to go: Vader's TIE, and Luke's Landspeeder

 ------updated 3/26/2019------

Lord I've been at this a long time... I've added one more ship and not really cleaned up the remaining details on the other ones. Gotta get to work! Probably have to rebuild a lot considering how much I've learned since 2013...

Millennium Falcon in Docking Bay 327

The model nears completion!

Blockade Runner Captured

Here I've ignored the funny pitch and yaw angles I mentioned in an earlier post, and just put the Blockade Runner in a reasonable attitude in the Star Destroyer's docking bay. Seen here, the Blockade Runner is scaled to 150m long, which makes the rest of the Star Destroyer seem overly large (though still shorted than a mile). The bay I've dreamed up here, which is shown with closed blast-doors on the studio scale model used in filming, would be more than 3 times the size of Docking Bay 327 seen on the Death Star.

No Hope for the Princess This Time

Well, after all that hoopla getting the Tantive model built just so I could do the photomatch of the tractorbeam scene, I got some funny results.

The impression that you get when you watch the film is that the Tantive is drawn into the Star Destroyer Bay with everything at right angles...

well, it turns out the whole thing was kind of catty-wompus...

 fig. 1 photomatch results

The green lines are the geometry of my models, overlaid on a still from the movie, and with the perspective of the still matched in-program.

looks fairly straight forward, right?

nope.

the Tantive is pitched down 12 degrees from horizontal, and yawed to port about 14.

  fig. 2 elevation view of photomatch results

  fig. 3 plan view of photomatch results

Ultimately I don't think this was supposed to be the case, but is an unintended artifact of the effects composite. The production department didn't perfectly match the appropriate angles when the photographed the ships separately, and instead made it look passable. Still, it's kind of interesting... if you're deeply obsessed that is.

Size Comparison

An updated version of the size comparison chart I started this blog out with, now that I have some new models.

Rebel Blockade Runner

A while back I built a model of the Rebel Blockade Runner, which I'd created from fan-made plans found online. I'd been pretty satisfied with the model for a while, but didn't think about it for a long time afterward.

Earlier this week, I got a wild hair up my ass to see what would happen if I photomatched the scene in ANH where the Star Destroyer draws the Blockade Runner into its bay. I wanted to see what the relative scales would look like, if everything was matched in perspective (rather than through guesswork).

What I discovered, instead, was that my previously built Blockade Runner Model didn't match what was on the screen at all. So I got complete distracted, and rebuilt my Blockade Runner from scratch. This time 100% original work, using Sketchup's Photomatch tool on the studio scale model used in filming ANH. Turned out pretty well, if I do say so.

Here's the geometry of the model overlaid on the photos I used.

only 7,048,426 parts to go!

Falcon Cockpit, ESB (part 3)

Progress has expanded into the rest of the interior....

Falcon Cockpit, ESB (part 2)

Added the volvo dashboard parts on the side panels there, photomatched in sketchup from some nice close-ups found of the same part on the sides of Han's block of frozen carbonite.

 

 

TIE Fighter

Interior based on production blueprints, and carefully reconstructed from screencaps and behind the scenes images. This is a basically never before seen view of the TIE interior (there have been many interpretations over the years, but none that really come close to what's actually seen in the first Star Wars movie) The pilot is a very rough mock up, just so the ship isn't empty. The chair is my embellishment, and is based on the Martin Baker ejection seat featured in the cockpit (with the distinctive headrest removed)

Exterior work in progress

and here's the cockpit

Falcon Cockpit, ESB

I seem to be converting the details on my ANH cockpit, to the ESB cockpit...

so many details. Don't I always say that?

Echo Base Rough

Just fooling around with a few models... The X-Wing, the Falcon, and all the background elements are mine, but the snowspeeders were downloaded from the sketchup warehouse for a quick preview. The space is based on the blueprints of the Elstree Sound Stage where the interior sets of Echo Base were constructed. The extended space beyond the berths (second picture right-hand) is a rough extension of the large matte paintings that were used in those areas on the sounds stage to imply a larger space.