T-16 Skyhopper

I spent some time this weekend perfecting a model of Luke's T-16 Skyhopper. One of my favorite ships throughout the world of Star Wars.



The ship shows up in the garage scene on Tatooine. Luke holds a model of it while complaining about his bleak future. Something it took me years to notice was that there was a full scale T-16 in the background of the very same scene.

I made the model using Sketchup's Photomatch tools, combining a number of photos of the original scale model made by Colin Cantwell. I've also been building in such a way that it will be 3D-print ready. Once complete, I may even sell some kits.

here an image of the actual model

and the scene where the ship shows up.

Lars Homestead Garage

A start on Luke's garage from blueprints found in the Rinzler tome. A good start, getting the lighting right has been key. The T-16 in the background was also built from production blueprints. The so called Lars Family Speeder was built from some basic plans that appear in the Star Wars Techinical Journal (Shane Johnson, 1994), but needed a lot of modification. Lots of details to be added, including the possibly modified Gaudi chair.

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.