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)

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...

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.

No Hope for the Princess This Time

Well, after all that hoopla getting the Tantive model built just so I could do the photomatch of the tractorbeam scene, I got some funny results.

The impression that you get when you watch the film is that the Tantive is drawn into the Star Destroyer Bay with everything at right angles...

well, it turns out the whole thing was kind of catty-wompus...

 fig. 1 photomatch results

The green lines are the geometry of my models, overlaid on a still from the movie, and with the perspective of the still matched in-program.

looks fairly straight forward, right?

nope.

the Tantive is pitched down 12 degrees from horizontal, and yawed to port about 14.

  fig. 2 elevation view of photomatch results

  fig. 3 plan view of photomatch results

Ultimately I don't think this was supposed to be the case, but is an unintended artifact of the effects composite. The production department didn't perfectly match the appropriate angles when the photographed the ships separately, and instead made it look passable. Still, it's kind of interesting... if you're deeply obsessed that is.

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.

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.

Rebel Blockade Runner (Part 2)

And finally, here's a video of a virtual walkthrough of the model rendered above.

Rebel Blockade Runner

These are renders of my model of the Blockade Runner's interior movie sets, built from production blueprints. I've seen a lot of superb replicas of this set, but most seem to miss the subtly different whites of the wall modules and the scuffed up flooring. I still need to add a lot of details to this model, but I have to say it's pretty pleasing so far.

A fun detail about this set: the flat panels (dark there on the columns, and white on the box modules) are a set of vacuuformed panels used through A New Hope, on most Rebel Technology (Never on imperial sets). Another nice subtlety that tied the forces of good together with the use of unconscious details.


Seen here, behind young Lucas on the Blockade Runner Set. 

and in these examples.

background prop 'generator' boxes on Tattooine (replicated below in Sketchup)

 

And again here on the back of a Rebel Troop Transport in Yavin Base.

 

And even a pair on the Full Scale Millennium Falcon (on the side of the mandible, right at the front)