Imperial Star Destroyer (WIP)

The Falcon that Almost Was.

A while ago I posted some renders of a proto-Falcon which featured the body of the Blockade Runner, the cockpit of the actual Millennium Falcon, and details adapted from McQuarrie Paintings.

Well recent I ran across some good photos of the actual studio filming model that almost was the Millennium Falcon. It featured most of the same details I mentioned, originally designed by Ralph McQuarrie, but had some differences. I had some spare moments, so I knocked together some details lifted from my other Falcon model, to get another look at the Falcon that Almost Was.

This is a rough draft, without many greebles, but you can get the idea. I've also included some shots of the real thing.

Here are some interior renders, based on Production Designer John Barry's sketch of this ship's interior.

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)

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.

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.

Millennium Falcon: what might have been

The original designs of the Millennium Falcon was basically what we now know as the Rebel Blockade Runner, but with the current Falcon's cockpit for a nose. This version was slated to be Han Solo's ship for quite some time. The filming model was fully built, and blueprints exist for full scale shooting sets. But the flying saucer with mandibles we now know and love took its place. Below are some renders of what might have been, if that original version had made it into the final cut of the film.

Bringing The "Linear" Falcon to Life

Early in the production of Star Wars, Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie designed Han's "Pirateship" as a long bodied rocket-like vessel. Big engines on the back, a cylindrical body (underneath a lot of structural details) and a nose cockpit. This early conceptual design of the now iconic ship is sometimes referred to as the "Linear Falcon". However, concerns were raised that linear arrangement seemed too much like the Eagle transport vessel of the then airing TV show, Space 1999 (1975-1977).

A model of the ship had already been built, so rather than scrapping the 5' behemoth, they modified the cockpit into the hammer-head configuration we're now familiar with as the Leia's Blockade Runner. The old cockpit was removed, and became the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon we know and love.

Below is a work in progress model of that original design, based on Johnston's studio model, and McQuarries beautiful production paintings.

The scale is based on the 8' diameter of the movie set Falcon's cockpit (a model of which has been transplanted here from my model of the Falcon onto a model of the Blockade Runner body) Greebles were pulled straight off the Falcon as well, making a sort of mock up of what a full scale set of the ship might have looked like. I also used some virtual kitbashing to complete a few details, cutting up models of tanks and trucks to add to the exterior (which is how many of the studio-scale Falcon details were created) The ramp design is based on Joe Johnston sketches.

Rebel Blockade Runner (Part 3)

Final details coming together now...

Vac-Formed Wall Panels (Part 2)

The wall panels are nearing completion.

And here's a look at how close they are to the original parts. This is one case, it seems, where the blueprints matched the final product in the movie, a nice surprise. 

Vac-Formed Wall Panels

 

I'm working on models of the vac-formed wall panels that recur throughout A New Hope. A detail that I've mentioned before, these panels only appear on neutral or Rebel equipment, in the Blockade Runner, on Tatooine, on the exterior of the Millennium Falcon and on the rebel troop transport in Yavin Base.

Stacked together, flipped in various ways, and even cut in half, the panels were well designed as modular pieces that could make up any number of variations without seeming like repeated tiles. It took me a while to recognize their repeating patterns throughout the movie, but once spotted they appeared all over the place. They were used with great effect to make ordinary bare corners of the film seem full of technology.

There were four panels in all, and above I'm working on the two that feature largely in the Blockade Runner Set. Original drawings of the panels appear in Rinzler's Blueprints book, but are labeled as parts of the Cantina Exterior (the one place I haven't seen the panels show up).

You can see these two panels clearly to the left and right of the doorway R2 and 3P0 are shuffling through. Above them, on the same columns, are the same panels, but cut in half to form seemingly different panels. 

And here they are again on the Lars Homestead, covering those bulky boxes. Each box had a unique arrangement of the modular panels.