Sorry for the blurry pic, but this is the pose I was trying to replicate above, so it is a bit unnatural, but a prop photo pic.
https://i.imgur.com/ZLAKC3R.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/2n7SCmd.jpg
I was off a bit, but not a lot. Camera angle would have made it a little closer.
That's Veers' lead walker piffing a Snowspeeder right before lining up for the shot on the generators. 0:54 in this clip:
Benefits of having your pick of the best armored-vehicle drivers in the Stormtrooper Corps. They can make those things dance.
As for matters
Falcon-y...
Why people is so obssesed with 1/72 falcon? Is not the FM/revell already there... i think the amount of detail it has is really amazing.
Would love to see bandai to do NEW things...
The FineMolds kit is great but Bandai's 1/144 version shows they can capture the SHAPE perfectly--it's beefier and the FineMolds kit is a little too flat. But I'm not holding my breath for a 1/72 Bandai kit...
that's what i mean... maybe is not perfect, but is really good enough, and if you want to make it perfect you just need to put some extra work on it.
However, there are ships / scales that never have been made by these model companies, and after many years doing sw kits... i wish someone has the courage to do them, and not repeating the same models over and over and over again.... but maybe i come from other generation.
Here's the thing. Bandai isn't going over old ground. There were two main filming miniatures used for the
Falcon (generally called the five-footer and the 32-inch). Apart from different detailing which, yes, an obsessive hobbyist could perfect to one version or another with "some extra work", the main hull domes are completely and visibly different in curvature. All the model kits to date have gone with the shallow curvature of the 32-inch miniature. Many of us think the five-footer looks better, has more interior volume to hold the sets with enough room left over for essential systems (and, importantly, those smuggling compartments).
Here's a lovely comparison of FineMolds' and Bandai's 1:144
Falcon kits. FM, like everyone previous, went with the 32-inch version. By doing their
Falcon model based on the five-footer, Bandai's doing something no commercial model-maker has done before. Which is awesome, but we want it in 1:72 (at least). It takes much more than "some extra work" to completely redo the basic hull shape.
We also want accurate versions of previously-done kits, like the Imperial Shuttle, and ships/vehicles that have thus far not been addressed at all, but we also want some of these more iconic ships done to Bandai's standard in a large enough scale to have proper presence. I have a large and ever-growing collection of air- and spacecraft in 1:72, so I can maintain a universal constant of how they compare to each other with just a glance. Real-world aircraft, Star Trek shuttles and small craft, Macross Valkyries, a Babylon 5 Starfury and Thunderbolt, and so on and so on. So yeah, I want all my Star Wars spaceships to be in 1:72.
The best value a model has i because you built it and modified it to make it unique, like artisans do, that's the reason i like model kits, everyone can go to a store and buy an expensive toy or replica if he has the money, everyone can buy a model kit and build it straight out of the box... cmon, even some new kits don't need paint or glue, but your falcon is "your falcon" that and the fun you had building it is priceless.
This is a different matter. Most of the kits I mentioned just above are off the shelf kits. But I've added photoetch parts, custom decals, meticulously-researched paint jobs and details... Sometimes purchased two or more kits to chop up and make one superdetailed kit (where I don't have to worry about making exceedingly fine cuts to one kit), so I have panels open, or -- as I want to do with my eventual (hopefully)
Falcon build -- I can put a full interior in that I can lift off one or another top hull section to show off. Even having a kit that's available to the masses doesn't necessarily mean one
builds it like a novice.
There will always be people who build a model out of the box, don't paint it, don't want to fuss with glue or decals, who derive great satisfaction from having made a thing and will display it proudly, and many who see it will be impressed. Because it
does take skill, even if most of us here have had so much practice at that sort of thing, we could practically do it while asleep. If you need to go further or do more to be satisfied, or to know it's not like anyone else's, go for it. There is no sin or shame in starting from a base that's done a lot of the work for you, except in the mind of the individual. It's what one does with that that matters.
Wanting to deprive someone of the
opportunity, though... I have a lot of skills that I can't practice for lack of space, lack of tools, or lack of funds. So even though I know how to sculpt and mold and vacuform and work with fiberglass, I can't currently. I have no painting booth, so I can only paint in good weather. While I have access to a nice, high-powered, large-format SLS 3D printer, I can't just pop out to my workshop to print something. And since it costs me hundreds of dollars to make use of theirs, I have to be
very choosy of what I want to actually do that way. So. Do I have to suffer because I'm not "good enough" or don't have the right tools to extensively modify and/or scratch-build? I've purchased a lot of things through vendors on here or eBay or from mass-market manufacturers that I technically
could build from scratch, had I the resources. But if I wait until I
do, I could potentially be waiting the rest of my life.
--Jonah