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.

Episode VII X-WIng "Lock S-Foils in Attack Position"

Episode VII X-Wing

Well, I wasn't going to tackle this, and then I did. 

This new X-Wing is a bit odd, and it's taking some getting used to. On the whole though, it's a good ship. The right size and proportions to recall its predecessor, and enough Ralph McQuarrie details thrown in to make it feel right. But there's been much debate about how the s-foils actually open up.

So, as usual, I did some photogrammetry and ended up with this basic model.

A rough fit, but close enough for my purposes. I filled in the blanks from the numerous photos that have been circulating of the full sized prop, and from the promo video featuring the blue version.

And here's the ship in its closed position.

a user on the OriginalTrilogy.com made this handy diagram, showing how the wings appear to open,

 So here's what that would look like...

a little weird, but not bad, right? And of course, reminds us of this great painting

but just for the sake of argument, here's an alternate version that's been proposed, where the engine doesn't slpit.

hmm, I think the split engines are the way to go, much more dramatic, and goes back to McQuarrie's first paintings of the x-wing.

time will tell...



and just for fun, her she is in action!

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...

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

Don't get cocky...

The composition popped into my head over lunch. I had all the models built, so I thought I'd give it a try. Not too shabby, even if I say so. 

Full Scale X-Wing Model

Started work on this model some time last year, and recently got a chance to make some major progress with it. I'm basing the exterior almost entirely on the full-scale prop used in the Yavin Hangar scenes in A New Hope. I've used sketchup's photogrammetry tools to refine the great blueprints designed by user Oldman over on the Replica Prop Forum.

The design is actually for a long time collaborator who is planning to build a 1:6 X-wing. The renders you see here are my 1:1 model scaled down to 1:6. A generic 12" ruler there on the ground in front of the rebel pilot cut out should give the proper sense that this thing is going to be Huge...