| Death Star Diorama "I have you now" Ever since the first Star Wars movie was released (Episode IV A New Hope) I’ve always wanted to use my modelling interest and my love of the movie to create a diorama of Luke Skywalker’s final approach to destroy the Death Star. It would depict Luke’s X- Wing fighter, Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced X1 and his two flanking TIE Fighters. Luke would be ‘using the Force’ to fire the photon torpedoes, while Darth Vader aims to fire at Luke with the final words “I have you now”. As everyone knows, a few moments later, Han Solo blasts one of the TIE Fighters, eventually causing Darth’s ship to careen into space, allowing Luke to destroy the Death Star and save the galaxy. Detailed description is below the photos. Finished: May 2006 Awards: - Northstar Hobbies Contest, Mississauga ON, June 4, 2006, Gold Medal Diorama Click on Thumbnail to see detailed image. These images are 800 x 600 and should load reasonably quickly, depending on your connection speed. My desire to recreate this moment has been stymied, not so much from the lack of kits, but from the quality and scales available. • MPC originally released Darth Vader’s TIE X1 advanced ship in 1/36 scale in 1978. I originally bought three of these kits, hoping to convert two of them to TIE Fighters. The panel lines on this kit were raised, which didn’t seem too realistic to me and I only built one to depict Darth Vader’s ship. • MPC also released Luke’s X-Wing in 1978, but it was about 1/42 scale and did not match Darth’s ship for size. The panel lines were raised on this kit as well. • Even scratchbuilding some of the ships in one of these scales would mean that the diorama would be very large. • Over the years, numerous other kits have been released, including a double TIE Fighter set from AMT/Ertl in 1997, but in 1/51 scale. Only recently (about 2002) has Fine Molds released X-Wing, TIE Fighter and TIE Interceptor kits, all in 1/72 scale. These kits have extremely fine detail, sunken panel lines and were the best fitting kits I have ever had the pleasure of working on. At 1/72 scale, they would fit into a reasonably-sized diorama. Although not cheap, they were available through internet mail order companies. X-Wing I began by building Luke’s X-Wing first. Details about the ship model can be found at here. Using photos of a similar X-Wing that has been shown at various museums (photos were posted on the Internet) and the new DVD version of the movie, I built the X- Wing as close as I could to what appeared in the movie. However, there are inconsistencies in the movie that I noted. In particular, when Luke climbs into his X-Wing in preparation for the attack, his ship has a solid red stripe down the left hand side. When he begins to do battle against the Empire, the stripe had mysteriously split into three pieces! The right side of the ship is not seen in the battle sequences. Luke’s robot droid, R2-D2, was called upon in the battle sequences to fix a stabilizer on the ship. A piece of small diameter wire was added to show R2 fixing a portion of the X-Wing engine. The only other deviation was to build the targeting viewer behind Luke as he deactivated the computer while he relied on the Force. The X-Wing was painted with Polly S flat water based Lettering White paint using my airbrush. Detailed brush painting of specific panels was done using similar water based paints and masking the areas. I used the decals supplied in the Fine Molds kit, with some minor variations, to decorate the ship, followed by a flat clear coat Testors Model Master Acryl 4636 flat clear to get the dull finish I wanted. The weathering was done with a combination of an enamel wash and various pastels. A wonderful vinyl masking kit, available through Starship Modeler, was used to paint the canopy. TIE Fighters Similar to the X-Wings, the two TIE Fighters were built from the kit instructions. Photos of these two ships can be found here. One of the real treats of the Fine Molds kits is that the solar panels are separate from the surrounding support structure, eliminating all the masking with similar kits. Tamiya acrylic semi-gloss black paint was used on the panels directly from the can. This seems to give a shinier finish to the panel, which contrasts nicely with the flat finish of the rest of the model. I used Tamiya XF-66 light grey, thinned and shot through my airbrush for the bulk of the body. This grey seemed to have the right amount of ‘blueness’ to it. However, there was not a lot of contrast with the front canopy and top cockpit cover colour (XF-53). Only a light wash was added to ships as they did not appear in the movie to be battle damaged as Luke’s X-Wing. (Some speculate that as they accompany Darth Vader’s ship, they would always be in tip-top shape). Again, a vinyl masking kit was used to paint the canopies. The two TIE fighters were given distinctive markings as shown in the instructions. Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced X1 The real challenge was converting a TIE Interceptor to Darth’s TIE Advanced X1. I had a good template to use in the fact that the original MPC Darth Vader’s ship was in 1/36 scale. This was almost exactly double the size I wanted to create. This conversion is described here as well as at Starship Modeller The conversion broke down into three main parts
By turning the wings of the TIE Interceptor backwards, the front portion of the wings was pretty well done. I thought that I would initially make castings of the existing solar panels and splice them together to make the larger panels of the X1. However, this looked to be very time consuming and difficult to replicate accurately. In the end, I replaced all the solar panels with Evergreen V-Groove sheet styrene. This gave some texture to the panel, although not perfectly accurate. The Interceptor wings were modified to make the panel more rectangular in shape. Using sheet styrene of various thicknesses, new supports for the panels and the arms from the pod were made. This included a number of styrene shapes to replicate the detail compared to the MPC kit. The outer part of the wings have a circular shape that is not quite the same as on the TIE Interceptor. A mold was made of the shape from the TIE Fighter and two pieces were cast from resin. These pieces were then added to styrene sheets, built up to give the correct thickness and then added to the wing. The pod arms: The arms connecting the pod to the wings are bulkier than the TIE Fighter/Interceptor kits. The arms were also quite different in that they were flat on top and bottom, whereas the TIE Fighter/Interceptor arms were pointed. The conversion started by assembling the TIE Interceptor body with tape to hold the halves together. Sheet styrene was cut, shaped and built up over the existing arms. Openings were made for the large front recess and the smaller back recess in each arm. Details were added to the recesses using various styrene rod and strip. The body: The X1 has an elongated body section on the back. There are two distinct sections to this – a larger shaped section with a curved edge – a thicker middle part The longer, rear section of the body was built using sheet styrene, panel lines scribed and various other panel details added. enamel black wash was added. The Base I had two options for making the base. The first one was to build up a detailed Death Star, with some laser turrets, different heights and all kinds of small details. As well as being a lot of work to build, this option did not give a feeling of the fast movement of the ships. Alternatively, a base could be built of relatively flat surfaces, and use painting to give a sense of speed. It would resemble photos from a diorama that I saw somewhere on the internet. This was the option that I chose for the base. The base is simply some smooth melamine covered particle board (bookshelf panels actually) with some extra raised sections of MDF added in places. Krylon grey primer was sprayed over the whole base. Stripes were made using white and black acylic paint and a simpe, hand-held cardboard mask. The ships were mounted on clear acrylic rod. Overall, this diorama project was the biggest one I have taken on to date and pushed my modeling skills in weathering, mold making and casting techniques. I think the flavour of the scene has been captured for Star Wars fans everywhere. |
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Evan Jones Sci-Fi Models
