Hoth Scanner

bit of a change of pace. Working on some printable parts for Han's Hoth Scanner for a client.

"Good against remotes, that's one thing...

Good against the living... that's something else."

Had to build this guy to hang out in the Falcon's main hold. I've been putting this one off for a long, long time. Once I finally got to building, it went very quickly. I'm here to tell you, "cease the day" and all that...

More work on the Millennium Falcon

Lots of small things falling into place, bringing me closer and closer to completion. Here are some renders of the little stuff I've been adding, and a video walk-through of the whole model.

Re-addressed and textured the boarding ramp so it's more accurate:

Finished off the access pit in the back starboard quarter:

Textured the blast mark on the starboard docking-ring from a movie screencap, rebuilt the forward quarter access pit from a photomatched screencap ("she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts"), and finally added the junk under the cockpit access tube.

And a new video stitching the exterior and interior models:

Millennium Falcon Cockpit Mystery Solved?

As I've worked on a replica of the Millennium Falcon's cockpit over the years, there has been a mystery spot that has always eluded me. But I may have solved the mystery. 

The problem area is a box of levers hanging from the canopy, directly over the dashboard console. In A New Hope, Han Solo reaches up to pull one of these levers after they run into the lone TIE fighter in the destroyed Alderaan System. This area is in perpetual shadow, and I've never really know what kind of levers were up there. You can only really see them in silhouette:

Some months ago, on a routine scouring of screencaps from ANH, I came accross the lever that Ben Kenobi uses to deactivate the tractor beam on the Death Star.

which also turned out to a part of the tactical display on Yavin.

The art department on Star Wars was pretty heavy on repeating parts throughout the movie. If you made a small prop in one area, why not recycle it in another. So I got to thinking, is this lever our mystery part? I had nothing really but a hunch to go on, but I decided to model the lever anyway, and see if it fit.

The lever itself uses another part that shows up in a number of places. The long piston-like part was used both as an acuator on C3PO's legs, and as the hyperspace throttles on the Millennium Falcon's cockpit.

Once built, I added them to the cockpit, and after some careful adjustment, they seem to fit very well.

This is a render in silhouette

And here's that bluescreen shot again:




not a bad match at all.

and now, here are some renders of the full cockpit.

IG-88 Blaster

The 3D printed part for the IG-88 blaster (mentioned here) came through from Shapeways.com

 Looks like a great fit!

Millennium Falcon Main Hold

So many details, and yet I haven't even begun to get to all of them. It's a labor of love I guess...

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.

IG-88 Blaster

Bit of a change of pace. A client, and fellow member of the Replica Prop Forum, comissioned me to replicate the tip of IG-88's blaster. The model is being printed by shapeways as I write this.

After I finished modelling the part, I got curious about the rest of the weapon. I was able to find a CG model of the MP44 rifle that the ESB production department used as a base for the blaster, and from there I modelled a number of other parts that were added on (such as some scopes and a pair of model v8 pistons)

A few more parts would need to be added to finish the model off, but it was kind of fun to reverse engineer the kinds of modifications the art departments made to create their distinctive blasters from existing guns.

And here's an image of the original blaster, from the Star Wars Visual Dictionary.