Full Scale ESB Falcon

off-and-on I've been working on this new version of the Falcon, accurate to the fullscale prop used in Empire Strikes Back...




update with some more details

a little bit more...

Millennium Falcon Turret Spin

Created this animation to show how the turret is now able to rotate, as I outlined in the previous post here

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

so the turret is backwards... spotted on The RPF by the eagle-eyed Jaitea. It's be speculated that the turret can or should rotate into this position, though it's never been seen on film. Until now.

I think I can deal with this. I think I'll have to do a quick animation, to see what it looks like swinging around. But visually it totally makes sense, and doesn't break the ship or add anything stupid, in my opinion.









But what's really weirding me out though is the disappearing red panel...

this is the rear quarter from the first teaser, ostensibly from the same desert battle with TIE fighters. Note the red panel


and here she is now with in the new trailer with no red panel.



what gives?

I kind of hope she gets blasted at some point, and we see Han or somebody standing on the falcon replacing her panels. That could be a fun scene. But I also wonder if the flight scene in the teaser was made up specially for the teaser, and the model they used had a red panel for some reason, which was discarded for the actual movie.

time will tell.

Falcon and X-Wing in flight

with some bonus extra angles

How's My Driving?

got into a discussion about the visibility of the Falcon's mandibles through the cockpit window. You can't see them in any of the shots in the movies, but if the camera were further forward you would be able to. Just take a look at this image from inside the cockpit of the fullscale Falcon built for Empire.

User Wavey on the RPF said that it "would be hazardous pulling out on to the interstellar highway." I came to the conclusion that the Falcon needs this bumper sticker...

oh the fun we have...

"Go strap yourselves in...

...I'm going to make the jump to light-speed."

finally tracked down the buckles used for the crash-couch in the main hold. Well, at least a buckle that's close enough.

Definitive Millennium Falcon Interior (part 4)

Definitive Millennium Falcon Interior (part 2)

Definitive Millennium Falcon Interior

Well... here we go again. My first model of the New Hope interior of the Falcon was made waaaay back when I was just learning sketchup. It is a mess, to say the least. So, armed with new skills and knowledge (and a fair amount of time borrowed from somewhere) I've started an all new model of the interior.

Starting with a photomatch, and working my way from there, this is as far as I've come.

my goal is to make a model that, when rendered, is indistinguishable from what we see on screen in A New Hope... no sweat, right?

and just for the sake of bragging, here is the geometry of the model overlaid with the perspective matched photo of the real set.

Further updates. more junk for everybody!

Full Scale Falcon Basic Structure

If you haven't heard about the Full Scale Falcon Project, you should head over to this link now
Fullscalefalcon.com

I have the dubious honor of being the guy who figures out how the famously impossible interior of the Millennium Falcon could work in reality. Over the holiday weekend, I came a hell of lot closer.

This is pretty much the final layout, designed at 1:1 scale, of the planned Falcon.

next step, structural engineering to make sure this baby would hold together...

be sure to watch the video flythrough of the interior space, at the bottom of the page!

It may not look like much...

but it's got it where it counts.

This may not look a whole lot different from the last render I posted of the Falcon's ESB interior, but believe me, there's a lot of new work in there. Those two lower panels on Chewie's side are now reasonably complete. One or two greebles I had to mostly guess, but on the whole it's fairly accurate to the real deal.

Millennium Falcon in Docking Bay 327

The model nears completion!

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.