Richard Baker

Here are some final photos of my Lando's Falcon project. I have added some tiny markings decals and redid some of the weathering. My goal is to show used parts with different histories but all were the source ships were mostly taken care of- these were passenger ships and not junk freighters with scattered blaster holes. Once Lando gets the last few panels in place and fits it out with the dish and defense guns, off it goes to the finishing shop for the White with Blue trim paint job.

The Story: This build is a different take on the Falcon as we saw it in the film 'Solo', this is the unfinished state the ship was in a year before we saw it. A lot of this is based on how I understand the character Lando Calrissian. Lando has two obsessions, gambling and appearance. When he got his hands on the Falcon it already had some history and looked a bit too rough for him. While he was having it's engines overhauled the search started for the exterior cladding used for the passenger editions of the YT series. Being budget minded the exterior panels came from different seven ships which had been scrapped and were being stripped for parts. As long as they were intact he was fine- after all the work was done he planned on giving the rebuilt ship a gleaming paint job. Lando was not much of an engineer but he knew who to hire to do the needed mechanical work. After he had been stranded on a trip due to a passenger ship's breakdown for four weeks he never wanted to face that problem again. What was not in good condition was replaced with new parts, still gleaming from the factory.Being stranded before also led him to the most expensive and to him the most important modification- a small escape craft. The YT-1300 series had available a rather rare option- the YT-Dart. Use of this was relegated to mostly the passenger editions of the YT series since it severely limited the usefulness of the mandibles and cargo ability, but he really was not that interested in using the Falcon for hauling stuff for others. Even rarer was a Dart with a small hyperdrive- only a few were produced. Lando could not believe his good fortune when he came across a YT-Dart which not only had the hyperdrive but had actually been used to escape a disaster.. A YT-1300-P named "Horizon's Gold", a ship fitted out as a gambling recreation transport, had a catastrophic failure of it's main drive. The crew and passengers were able to get to the Dart in time and had just pulled away when the ship blew. The escape craft had been just at the edge of the blast but everyone was uninjured and the Dart used it's hyperdrive to get to safety. In Lando's mind this was the most perfect addition to his ship- it not only was a proven craft but was incredibly lucky as well. My build shows the Falcon about one year before 'Solo' Lando has the interior mostly done, the major mechanical work has been completed and it is on it's way to be fitted with a new dish and weaponry for the upper and lower turrets. It is still missing a couple of body panels ans one set landing gear hatches. The Build: I figured there were enough kits built to match the film and quite honestly I found Lando's version a bit bland in it's clean whiteness. I worked on the assumption from studying the ship (mostly the engineering deck and mandibles) the exterior panels were placed over the original hull so I cut a couple of them away. It may upset some people out there, but for showing the hull beneath the panels I sacrificed the Fine Molds Falcon I had been working on. I had done most of the prepainting on it when Bandai released their 1:144 kit and after that all I could see was what Fine Molds had not gotten quite right (I am a big fan of the five footer) By wonderful coincidence the smaller Fine Mold's hull was the exact size and shape to fit inside the Bandai kit hull with the panel lines matching. I also used one of the Fine Mild's landing gear feet to show in the exposed well opening since the Lando Falcon did not have any gear of it's own.This build still needs a few minor tweets of weathering before I will totally happy with it but I did want to share this now. The Fine Mold kit:

Here is my build of that wonderful Bandai kit- pretty much straight out of the box. A couple of things to note- being all black plastic I painted each panel a different type of black, from flat & gloss to reflective (this does not show up very well in the photos). This is the first build where left the window glass empty as done with the filming models. The pilots are in red outfits- I figured we never saw the special forces uniforms on screen that I remember and the red would make them more visible. Instead of leaving the panels light gray, I painted them metallic steel with a few picked out to highlight in aluminum and silver. I never liked the reversed color of the First Order TIEs and at least this way they would seem like practical hardware. I did paint some other details silver and steel- I did not use any gold/copper/brass since I wanted no warmth, just cold colors. I did dry brush the wing hubs and added some smoke-chalk to the hull and panels, most of that does not show up as well in the photos either. This was a fun build, I have a couple of other simple ones to knock out during this CoVid "vacation" before I tackle the next big one- the lighted Bandai Star Destroyer Here are a few photos (I did not use my black with red grid for obvious reasons, instead it is one of my landing circle sheets I made for exhibiting models at a local convention some years ago... A

I was digging around looking for some old files and found this old design sketch for this build-

This is such a wonderful idea- I am actually surprised that the Disney Store has not been selling these already because it is such a natural concept. Very well done!

IMO Voyager was a pretty good show- it had to adjust it's formula to help syndication so no real Maquis-Starfleet conflicts and the ship had to be all cleaned up for the next episode. They originally were planning on doing it like the 'Year of Hell' two parter (and ST-Enterprise with the Xindi arc) with the ship accumulating damage and being repaired on the fly but the suits wanted a clean episode. They did some wonderful variants to Voyager as well- the "Warship Voyager" covered in guns (,Living Witness) the Assimilated Voyager" for entering fluidic space (Scorpion pt2), both of which would be a great project to build

One great thing about this subject is that the Voyager is one of the few StarFleet ships that does no thave that fussy aztecing- most Trek ships you spend more time masking and painting than building. The current release of the kit is the second (special) edition of it- many little adjustments, the inclusion of the shuttlebay interior (minimal but can be enhanced), better decals, that sort of thing. It is a nice sized model as well- you will not feel you have been cheated, unlike the USS Kelvin kit. Have fun and post your progress shots!

I have some great replicas in a decent scale from the Star Wars Armada & X-Wing gaming sets- about the only way to get a 14"Blockade Runner without the cost of the very fine but expensive garage kit. Also have a Rebel Transport and got a Starhawk last week for my birthday (62 now). These gaming miniatures are excellent in proportion and detail- the only real drawback is very often they have a bad heavy wash for weathering, a problem easily fixed by a repaint. They are not as fun as building your own model kits, but for some subjects are are a very practical alternative

IMO this is a perfect duplication of the ILM model's weathering and detailing (adjusting for scale). This does not look like a 1:72 scale model at all- great work!

Fantastic build on such a rare subject- the launch pad is very well done and makes a great diorama of what should have been...

IIRC it was only a single Clipper model but the camera scaling kept changing. Sometimes it was not even a physical model but a hi res photo placed on an animation stand for movement- he used this technique for the Aries 1b as well. I love this Station kit and have been wishing to get one since it first came out- it looks great and I am looking forward to seeing your progress posts!

Wonderful build!

The 1:1000 Zoellugut-Class Domelaze kit from Bandai is about 30 inches long and the sizable 1:500 Yamato is made for the home market. I do concede that small kits do sell better- makes sense since I also have limited display space, but the Yamato capital ships are a pretty good size and sell well too. I think it depends on what Bandai feels a large amount of people want to buy which is a natural business decision. I wonder what the percentage is of their Star Wars kits sold in Japan vs the the selling to the rest of the world is? The market here in the USA was clamoring for them and finding back channel ways to get them so they obtained the license to sell here through Blue Fin and and now they are available officially. The world wide market must be pretty profitable fo rthem IMO

OK, last set of pictures, then I am moving on to another build. This past weekend I altered my lighting setup and tried to show the hull textures better. The hull is built up from thin layers of sheet styrene. most as thing as card stock. It is really weird, but this model looks better with the old MkII eyeball than what shows up in camera As you can see in these last two photo, my fondness for asymmetrical hardware asserted itself. I did not spend as much time here as on the dorsal surfaces, my goal was to create some interesting heavy shadowing.

Still working of getting some better photos- While the inch grid Background is helpful, this one shows it's true size a bit better I think

There was a list of errors posted over on the RPF site when it was first revealed. Apparently all the errors match a particular set of blueprints which Dragon seems to have used for their source material. https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/dragon-gets-star-wars-licence.251476/page-7#post-3907622 Most seem to be proportion issues looking at the photos above- the ATAT's legs have the knee too low, the ATST looks too narrow and the Falcon is off in several places, most obviously the rectangular dish looks 1/3 too large. It would be nice to have additional companies producing Star Wars kits, especially in scales not done before. Dragon made a big splash with their announcement then crickets.

The Dragon ATAT was pretty inaccurate as about ten minutes with Google will demonstrate- the only good thing was that it was a fairly large scale which many people wish for. The Dragon Star Wars line seems to have drifted off into vaporware land-

Thanks! That is a 1 Inch scale grid I made a while back- it gives you both a sense of size and provides a sort of holodeck feel... I get frustrated when a beautiful model is photographed with a distracting background which makes it hard to see

This is a larger model of a capital ship in 1:350 scale. It is about 16 1/2" long, all sheet styrene with some detailing bits, no landing gear or mounting point this time. I wanted to create a ship which was devoted to planetary surveys- most sensors and support equipment is on it's underside and along the forward section sides. All hatches are marked in red for easy location. The ship can submerge if needed with the shuttle bay on top being exposed for use (note- this was built a couple of decades before Trek did the same with the Enterprise). There is also a universal docking port forward of the shuttle bay which can be adapted to fit a variety of docking mechanisms. Two long range sensors are mounted in the front and underneath is a rotating turret for self defense. Aside from the front pilots station and the upper observation dome there are only a couple of windows- the ship uses sensors mostly for seeing around it. The main exit hatch has a platform on rails to assist in leaving down the slope of the hull when the ship is on the ground. There are two externally mounted landing pods on the ventral side and a deployable field generator on the port side. About the design: I had fun with this one.There are some animalistic features to the design- the main surfaces are detailed taking cues from a crocodile hide- I wanted to give it an armored feel. The side view shows the forward lower section having a throat like structure with gill flaps. The hull has some perspective tricks built into it as well which come into play when you are looking down it's length from either end' I need to fix the lighting and take a few more pictures. my set up works better with white/light gray subjects. There are also a couple of places where some panels have come off over the years- need to make some replacements and get this model back into shape!

I have both the FFG Blockade Runner and Rebel Transport, both are exceptionally detailed and a good size. I have seen the BL torn down and rebuilt with a full cockpit and engine lighting. The Transport has a full set of accurate colored cargo pods, it's only downside is that the hull on my edition has too heavy of a weathering wash but that is something easy to fix.

Someone in marketing determined that fighters were the kits to produce so we have really saturated that now- I cannot even count the different X-Wings in various scales made by many different companies over the years. I am glad we are beginning to see some capital ships being produced, while way too small they are accurate and very well detailed. I am hoping these were "testing the waters" type kits to determine popularity like the Mecha Colle ISD was. 3D printing is a great way to go but they can be expensive and most need extensive cleanup since the parts are built in layers which need to be smoothed. I look upon the printers in our hobby like the Dremels of yesteryear- initially rare and expensive, now years later it is hard to find a workbench without one. Right now we have more Star Wars kits available than have ever been released before. U=It is easy to focus on the ones which have not been released yet but just look at what we can buy and build now. I love capital ships and never though I would ever see a styrene SSD in any size but now I have two in my closet of doom. The large Fantasy Flight Games Blockade runner is a great size for a kit, but until one is released I can look at that one on my shelf. A Bandai kit that scale would be so wonderful,

Thanks! I have a fondness for functional/industrial designs- 'Alien' does excel in that category!

One more photo- this is a close up shot of the starboard hull area with the hatch. Another detail of the greebly shown- the three connected disks shown to the top right are generators with the power feed lined with radiator fins traveling back and up the angled pylon to the weapons pod. In the design of this 'family' of ships power generators can become unstable so they are surface mounted so any blow off is outwards from the hull. On the underside there are several disk shaped generators on the starboard side- these are the generators for the main weapons, these can be dropped and set to go critical also...

Sorry about the wrong placement- I just got in a hurry trying to get it posted while at work and went to the wrong area.

OK, this one is a strange one but the odd design has a reason behind it. Lots of space fighters out there, I wanted to make something different- a fighter created to attack ground targets in any planetary atmosphere. I got to thinking and decided that multiple drive systems would be in order since what would work in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere may not be the best to use in methane. I also like asymmetrical designs and wanted to have some fun. This ship is in 1:72 scale and about 14 inches long from the nose to that end of the port engine. I gave it two control sections- one for flight in the front and one for weapons which I put in a large pod on an off set pylon. This is to give the weapons pod an unobstructed view around and below the ship. It is accessed through he main pylon and can detach in an emergency. The weapon control pod had a long range gun and a rotating top gun for defense. The top gun can be swapped out for several types of weapons or an advanced sensor suite. the main weaponry is mounted underneath the main body- a rotating turret with three heavy beam weapons. on the port side of the main body there are several missile launch rails with a variety of options, the red tactical nukes are shown. Forward on the underside are three landing pods which can be used for escape or recon. There are three multiple drive units with a scattering of boosters. The main port engine and the two smaller starboard ones can, in a last resort effort, detach and act as fire forward as missiles going critical on impact. The third drive (aft slotted one) can be used to return if it is in the proper atmosphere. About the build- This one is all sheet styrene with a number of recognizable donor kits- I didn't spend too much time trying to disguise them on this model. It does have an exit hatch on the starboard main hull outlined in red (starting with this model I build most of my designs with red hatches so you can spot them easily in an emergency). When I was taking these pictures I discovered that this is a hard model to photograph. It has a number of perspective tricks built into it and when seen from the forward starboard three-quarter angle had a wrap round effect when seen with the eye that does not work well with my current camera. Plan Views