Jaws Part I: Inner Jaws

I wasn't quite ready to talk about the saucer trenches so I'm going to start talking about the Falcon's jaws, which are the rectangular boxes on the top and bottom of the ship right in between the mandibles.  When you think about it, the Falcon is much more insect-like than bird-like.  Here's a render of the inside of the Falcon's jaws:

When modelers at ILM were kitbashing the Millennium Falcon and other ships for Star Wars, there were certain times where they made molds of assemblies of parts so they could reuse them in various places.  The inner jaws contain the first example of one of these "plate" assemblies.  As you can see in the following two renders, the upper and lower inner jaws are essentially the same.

This plate assembly is known as the 8Rad plate because the large rectangular part in the center is from the Tamiya 1:35 Schwerer Panzerspähwagen (8Rad) Sdkfz232 model kit.

This part in particular was used on many models in Star Wars, and if you've been paying attention, it's actually been used 3 times on my Falcon so far (though extensively trimmed down).  It can also be found in the trenches of the 3 foot Star Destroyer...

And here it is on the Nebulon B Medical Frigate.

Here's a render of my 8Rad plate:

And here is the kit part breakdown for the inner jaws:

The back wall of the inner jaws is the tank body of a Tamiya 1:35 Sheridan which looks like this:

As you can see the dimensions are a bit different and that's because the model makers cut out quite a bit from the middle of the tank body.  Another cut down Sheridan body is used on the bottom of the Falcon, but we'll get to that later!

Here's a render of our progress so far:

Thanks for reading!  Next time we'll be looking at the surface greebles of the jaw boxes.

P.S.  I've found some updated part IDs so I have updated the docking ring and dish part maps.

Rogue Studio Productions

Last year at Star Wars Celebration I met a model maker named Lee Malone of Rogue Studio Productions who built his own studio scale model of the 5 foot Millennium Falcon.  Here's a Star Wars show Live video from the event showcasing his Falcon

I really can't say enough about how awesome both Lee and his Falcon are.  He couldn't be a nicer guy, and by the same token his Falcon also couldn't be nicer!  He sent me this video today that I felt I had to share especially since we're in the thick of talking about greebles and kitbashing!  It offers a closer look at his model and some of the model kits that went into the kitbashing of the Millennium Falcon.  Enjoy!

Apparently this is only part of a longer video that will come out soon and you better believe I'll be updating this post when it does arrive.  In the meantime be sure to check out Rogue Studio's facebook page for WIP photos of the build.  I've learned a lot in the past couple of years about the Falcon but I proudly kneel before Lee who is a true master!

Mandibles Part IV: Lower Mandibles

It's been a long time, but I'm back!  I've spent the last several months recording lectures for an online  hard surface modeling course, but that's irrelevant to our beloved Falcon!  Finally we are at the end of our Mandible Greeble Saga!  Here are some renders of the lower mandibles:

And here is the kit part breakdown for the lower mandibles:

The bottom definitely isn't as detailed as the top, but some pretty interesting parts were used.  The one piece I was surprised I couldn't find an ID for was the tank deck in the front starboard access pit.  I need to do a bit more digging there.

Finally a render of our progress thus far:

The mandibles are now complete!  Thanks for reading as always!

Next time:  Jaws!

Mandibles Part III: Upper Mandibles

Here are some renders of the upper mandibles.

And here is the kit part breakdown of the upper mandibles:

The mandibles contain our first set of access pits, which are areas of detail recessed beneath the main hull.  I've included renders of what these groups of parts look like outside of the context of the mandibles for a closer look.  One of the things I find interesting about the greebles of the Falcon is that sometimes they are very localized.  For example, the P51 Mustang parts on the forward access pit on the port mandible are clustered together.  I can imagine whichever model maker was working on this part pulling this kit from the shelf and using these parts to quickly fill in this access pit.

Here's a render of our progress so far.  As always, thank you for reading!

Next time: Lower Mandibles: the spine tingling conclusion to the mandible saga!

Mandibles Part II: Outer Mandibles

There's not much to say this time, so let's look at some renders of the outer mandibles!

Here is the kit breakdown for the outer mandibles.  Sorry for the similarities in some of the colors, there are just too many kits involved here!

And as usual, our build progress so far.

The front 3/4 views of the ship are starting to come together!  Thanks as always for reading, or I guess looking at renders this time!

Next time: Upper Mandibles

Mandibles Part I: Inner Mandibles

One of the features that elevates the Millennium Falcon from the typical flying saucer (in addition to the cockpit of course) are two wedge shaped mandibles that jut out of the front of the ship.

The Haynes Owner's Workshop Manual describes a mechanism on the inner sides of these mandibles that serves as a tractor beam for cargo which is loaded into the ship between the jaws.  

Another theory that has gained some traction recently is that the mandibles could latch on to cargo units that the Falcon pushes along.  This piece of concept art was posted on theforce.net forum by member jasonfry and illustrates this idea:

I really love this idea and hope to see it canonized one day, if not with the Falcon itself perhaps another YT-1300 freighter.  This would explain the Falcon's outboard cockpit, lack of serious cargo space on the inside of the ship and its large engine relative to the ship's size.  

These are a few renders of my model's inner mandibles:

It's plain to see they are essentially symmetrical, with only a couple of differences from left to right.  I was actually amazed to learn that a large kit piece used on this area is actually the frame and floorpan from a 1957 Chevy Bel Air model kit.

It's been cut up quite a bit, but it's there!  My dad owns a 1956 Bel Air so I've been around tri-fives (as the '55, '56, and '57 Bel Airs are called) my whole life.  I even modeled my dad's '56 in school.

Maybe I'm making too big of a deal out of this but I thought it was really cool to discover that this part lived on the Falcon.
Here's a breakdown of the rest of the kit parts on the mandibles:

The large pontoon bridge panels actually have some nice fine-scale detail when you look at the model kit parts.  My plan is to handle that kind of detail with texture maps later on.  Here's our progress so far:

I'm splitting the mandibles up over a few posts just because of the high volume of parts on them. Expect to see more soon, and as always, thanks for reading!

Next Time:  Outer Mandibles!

Falcons of all Sizes

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay between posts, but I'm ready to get back to the action here! There are many Falcons in my life right now and I wanted to share some of the other things I have going on.

I was able to attend Star Wars Celebration in Orlando this year and met a few random awesome people.  One of the people I spoke at length with was Lee Malone who really faithfully recreated the 5 foot filming miniature of the Millennium Falcon.

This thing really looked incredible, and it was awesome to hear a bit about his process of tracking down the kit parts and decals. I've been lucky to have seen the real miniature and this is as close as anyone's going to get to the real thing.  There are more build photos on his Rogue Studio Productions Facebook page so be sure to check it out!

I've also been hard at work on a couple practical Falcon models of my own.  First this mini Bandai kit.

I had a lot of fun with this thing.  The engineering of how it all fit together without any glue was really incredible and the level of detail was really amazing for how small it is.  It was interesting trying to do weathering on something so tiny but I'm pretty happy with the results.

I also started assembling the DeAgostini Millennium Falcon which, finally after 2 years of monthly shipments I have all the parts to.  For those who don't know this is a pretty good replica of the 3 foot filming miniature that was built for ESB.  It's going to be a lot of work to paint it up nice and I'd like to make some improvements to the interior but it's been really fun assembling the exterior so far!  Here are some photos of my progress.

 

It was really interesting building this thing because I'm definitely more familiar with the 5 foot filming miniature so it was cool to see the details on this thing and how they're similar but very different.  It all felt so alien!  It's still an amazing model.  The size and heft of it is pretty impressive (it has an aluminum frame!)

ANYWAY, I'm rendering some images of the mandibles as I type this so another post should be on the way tonight.  Sorry again for the long wait, and as always, thanks for reading!

Docking Rings

On either side of the Millennium Falcon are two bucket shaped features called docking rings.  While they are present in all sets and miniatures, we never see them actually function on film.  Here are a couple of images of the docking rings on the 5 foot miniature.

One practical function these docking rings provided was to disguise mounting points on the filming miniatures.  The model was designed to be mounted from 6 points: front, back, sides top and bottom. This allowed it to be mounted and filmed from any angle.  Two of these points are hidden behind the hexagonal detail of each docking ring.  You can see in this image where this panel has been removed.

The docking rings are also a prime example of deterioration of the miniature over time.  Since the model was built over 40 years ago, pieces have broken off and exposed the dark primer under the off-white base coat of the Falcon.  You can see this in the above images of the 5 footer.  Since these parts are identifiable in older photos, I've included them in my model.  

Here are some renders of my docking rings.

 

And here is the breakdown of greebles for the docking rings.  The face of each ring is the same; I figured that if they were meant to have same function they would be identical.

Many of the larger greebles on the docking rings come from the Aurora Sealab III model kit.  In fact It's mostly made up of these 4 Sealab pieces, cut down and positioned in different ways.

You can also see that this piece was used as a strut where the docking rings meet the docking tunnels on the 5 foot filming miniature, but while organizing my model I included them with the docking tunnels so they will be featured in another post.  We'll be seeing a lot more of the Aurora Sealab III throughout this build.

Anyway, there's not much else to say about the docking rings.  The starboard docking ring famously has a huge blast blown into the side of it, but I will cover that in a later post about damage.  

As always, thank you for reading, and here are a couple of renders of our progress so far:

Next time: Mandibles Part 1