A bit over a year-and-a-half ago I rolled out my Death Star pyro surface model:
Death Star surface - pyro model reproduction
That was a ton of fun to do and I know a few other folks were and have been working on the same model at various scales. t2sides for example has gotten to see mine in person a few times and is in progress on his own.
In the process of starting work on his version of that pyro surface model Sean decided that he would cast enough copies of tile to do a few other pieces as well and we began discussions together to generate a reproduction of the well-known Red Leader "It's a hit!" pyro model of the trench, the famous ILM parking lot trench. Sean's trench actually started before mine! You'll see more of his when he rolls it out but I wanted to give proper credit - here's a pic I snapped of his trench end way back in October last year:
At first I was simply excited to help Sean identify and plan out some of the tile placements based on the various reference photos we could find. But the deeper I got into the research the more fascinated (and obsessed!) I became and I decided I just had to do this model myself as well.
So, the same as I did for my first pyro surface model, I present my retrospective WIP thread with a selection of WIP images and the final finished model.
Digital planning in modo during the early stages as I was starting to map out the surface level while Sean worked the trench walls:
Later I started to bring in the wall bits that Sean IDed:
Physical construction:
And, the final model, completed back in December:
Some comparisons with reference from the Van Nuys parking lot shoot:
Whew, that was a heck of a challenge! There are some bits that are simply not correct, as we didn't have complete reference coverage of the whole model (i.e., low-resolution coverage of many parts of the surface and complete gaps in coverage for much of the trench itself). I know of a few tiles that I'll be replacing as Sean finishes his. But I tried to reproduce the rest as closely as I could. The whole model is about 37 inches long and weighs 9.5 pounds. So happy to have it join my first pyro model on display in my gallery.
Dan
Death Star surface - pyro model reproduction
That was a ton of fun to do and I know a few other folks were and have been working on the same model at various scales. t2sides for example has gotten to see mine in person a few times and is in progress on his own.
In the process of starting work on his version of that pyro surface model Sean decided that he would cast enough copies of tile to do a few other pieces as well and we began discussions together to generate a reproduction of the well-known Red Leader "It's a hit!" pyro model of the trench, the famous ILM parking lot trench. Sean's trench actually started before mine! You'll see more of his when he rolls it out but I wanted to give proper credit - here's a pic I snapped of his trench end way back in October last year:
At first I was simply excited to help Sean identify and plan out some of the tile placements based on the various reference photos we could find. But the deeper I got into the research the more fascinated (and obsessed!) I became and I decided I just had to do this model myself as well.
So, the same as I did for my first pyro surface model, I present my retrospective WIP thread with a selection of WIP images and the final finished model.
Digital planning in modo during the early stages as I was starting to map out the surface level while Sean worked the trench walls:
Later I started to bring in the wall bits that Sean IDed:
Physical construction:
And, the final model, completed back in December:
Some comparisons with reference from the Van Nuys parking lot shoot:
Whew, that was a heck of a challenge! There are some bits that are simply not correct, as we didn't have complete reference coverage of the whole model (i.e., low-resolution coverage of many parts of the surface and complete gaps in coverage for much of the trench itself). I know of a few tiles that I'll be replacing as Sean finishes his. But I tried to reproduce the rest as closely as I could. The whole model is about 37 inches long and weighs 9.5 pounds. So happy to have it join my first pyro model on display in my gallery.
Dan
