Do the early Star Wars model ships have too many greeblies?

[James Kenobi 1138]

As much as I love the design of the Y-wing, I really love the covered ones from The Clone Wars.

 

[Master Tej]

Yeah, batguy, I will agree with Cadeus that, at the end of the day, do you whatever you want to. Fact of the matter is that it's a big galaxy, and a Millenium Falcon without greeblies won't look out of place. Nobody's going to look at it and go "you've left your greeblies off" once they know it's not supposed to be a painstaking accurate model. Have fun with it!

- Master Tej -

 

[Griffworks]

Wow, you guys really debate this stuff.

I'm as confused as you are...I always thought Star Wars was just a film series? :confused

Well, duh! We're a bunch of model geeks. Whattaya expect?!? :lol

Plus, some of us like to discuss the technical details of why a ship design looks like it does. What do those pipes and thingamabobs do? Why does that hang down like it does? The bulk of us who post here are, after all, SciFi fans. Those sorts of details are what attract a lot of SF fans to hardware.

 

[joberg]

Not true that the greeblies/nurnies/wiggets on the ships of "2001 A Space Odyssey" were randomly thrown on the models. NASA engineers/designers helped the production designers and the model makers understand and design the various ships you see in the movie. While there's a lot, and I mean a lot of details on the models, these were painted mainly in white and given the "used look" (go to Douglas Trumbull website, he has very good pics of the models). It's just that we don't see them a lot because of that white paint:cry Look at an engine for those big Saturn rockets and it's crammed with stuff!!

While I understand your line of thought, I wouldn't mind seeing a "simple" MF with less greeblies on it, it's just not the MF anymore but another space ship altogether then.

 

[Albertese]

I'm not complaining that there are greeblies, just that they don't look the way I would imagine a real mechanical thing looking. It's a better job than most earlier Sci-fi but not how I picture technology eventually developing. I just think some of the stuff looks crowded for the sake of being crowded.

I see what you're saying, but let's not forget that Star Wars is not meant to be an extrapolation of our future, but, rather, a fantasy elseworld where things developed rather differently.

And the surfaces . . . so much flat light gray. I don't crave bright colors or anything (not for the OT era anyway) but even most industrial machinery tends to have more color variations, glossy/flat, some shiny-looking unpainted metal areas, etc. I get that the stuff is supposed to show atmospheric weathering, but even so.

Flat light gray can be the primary color but I would expect more individual components to be a bit different. ILM did some of that but I guess I picture more of it. They did some good random spots of rust-red hull plating on the Falcon for example. But I'm thinking more about the individual greeblies too.

Now, for purposes of building models to be displayed in your own home for an audience of, really, just you, that's a fine idea. I, too, personally like to think through the textures and how glossy something is or not is and where... this can make for a really nice looking and believable model. But let's not loose sight of the philosophy of film making ILM was up to in those halcyon days...

Their objective was to make things look "real" on-screen for a matter of seconds at a time. These guys also had a department responsible for making matte paintings... Both the modelers and the matte painters used the same philosophy: details by impression. You see a bunch of junk cobbled together for four seconds and your mind associates that with industrial things you've seen in real life. It doesn't need to be thought through. If you take a good long look at the matte paintings, they're chock full of stuff that looks terrible, obvious blobs of paint which, seen for seconds, seem like something real. This impressionistic approach was used with models also; random stuff suggesting detail. The use of solid flat light gray is a masterstroke of genius, because it let's your brain see "machinery" rather than "parts." The light playing across the surface casts shadows which is what makes the greeblies unite into "a bunch of machinery that's probably doing something." I've tried painting some Star Wars models in my misspent youth by picking out the details separately, my logic being that if you look in the engine of a car, the hoses are one color and the engine heads are something else and the battery is something else and really, there's a bunch of different colors going on in there... but it makes a Star Wars ship look really weird. The secret to Star Wars is that the details are seen by the shadows they cast, not by their individual colors. If you look at the Falcon you'll notice that the colors that are there, the red and gray and desert tan, are, very often, not bounded by any particular surface details. (Much of it is bounded by hull panels, sure, but a lot of it is just squares and rectangles painted without regard to greeblies.) I've found with my own original designs meant to fit into the SW universe, treating the coloring separate from the greebling really makes it feel like Star Wars.

I'm picturing subtle changes from the ILM props, not big obvious stuff that a kid in the toy store notices right off.

Sounds good to me! : )

Well, I think the reason for the light flat gray coloring is primarily the practical aspect of filming the models on blue screen. Having a glossy paintjob tends to lead to a lot of problems with what's known as chromakey bleeding (which is where the color of the screen is reflected on the surface of the model, thus leading to problems trying to key out the color for compositing. This issue still exists, even with green screen).

This is mostly correct. It's the reason none of the original SW ships had glass in the windows. It's also why none of the OT ships had any bright blue colors, the closest you get is B-Wings and TIE fighters with a very desaturated grayish blue.

I think they had that issue with the first three Star Trek movies, which I think is the reason why the Enterprise was blown up in the third film, and the Enterprise after the fourth movie doesn't have the same problem.

This was true of the ship as built for TMP. The original paintjob was white and the paneling effect was done using different kinds of perlescent paint and contrasting glossy and flat areas. But when ILM got the model for Wrath of Kahn, the first thing they did was repaint it in their own style with all flat paints in (IIRC) five different subtly different whites to get the paneling effect, which pretty much solved the colorspill issues. The ship was destroyed for plot reasons in ST3, possibly with the idea of Kirk being assigned Excelsior in the next film, but, as we all know, ST4 gave us back the same old model E but with a fun new "A".

Plus, I think by using flat grays, whites and even black coloring for vehicles, it helps separate them from the blue screen when you light them so to also avoid bleeding issues.

I also believe chromakey bleeding was the reason why none of the ANH vehicles had drastically different coloring as well (but I could be wrong on that regard).

You're sort of right... The thing is you don't want to use the color you'll be using as your background for colors on your model. Doing so will make isolating the subject much more difficult. Your other point about the lack of contrast on the ANH models is wrong, though. Avoiding blue was a technical requirement, but the rest was just style.

I hope that helps!

--Alex

 

[MFP 2020]

If excessive/nonsensical greeblies bother you, don't ever look at the close-up shots of the Nostromo and the engine room and underside sections. The amount of stuff on those things makes me angry.

 

[Joosh]

1. The X-wing was one of the most advanced tactical snub fighters ever built at the time of "A New Hope" requiring months of construction to produce a single craft. Because of it's multi-role function, It had to be clean and easily serviceable depending on it's mission. The standard TIE was akin to a gutted 4-cylinder RX-7 and the X-wing was more of a fully loaded Mazda CX-9 with a V8 to boot.

I'm going to sway off topic, but hold on because then we're going to take a hard right at Albuquerque back on track.

I really hated that they went this direction with the X-Wing. Advanced fighters isn't what the rebellion should have been flying at the time. The Y-Wing and it's many assorted incarnations fit the rag tag rebels. The things looked like they were thrown together. The X-Wing was clearly a cleaner and more advanced craft than the Y, but a rag tag group of rebels shouldn't have the most advanced tactical snub fighter built. It should have been at least a generation behind, technologically- maybe not capabillity, from the Tie.

I liked that once we got to ROTJ they had the B-Wings and A-Wings that looked more state of the art than the X and Y Wings. It showed progression, the Battle of Yavin showed they could win a major battle against the empire and destroy a feared weapon, so of course by ROTJ the fleet and fighter craft should be improved, people and planets would be flocking to the rebellion by that point.

Wasn't the whole point of ANH that the rebels destroyed the Empires technological marvel with ships that should have been on the scrap heap ten years before?

Hang on- swerving back on topic----

I love the simpler looks of the Falcon that have been showing up on the RPF, the overall shape of the Falcon is classic, but for the purposes of the movie, the horribly over greebled Falcon works best. "What a piece of Junk" suits it and suits it better than the original art work would have. The original art work was graceful and flowing. The movie version makes you say, before Leia ever did, you came in that thing?

The Y-Wings look good on screen, but they have way to much senseless garbage on them when you see the filming models. They are the one ship that you can truly make no sense out of the greebling. The Falcon and the X-Wings the do-dads all make some kind of sense. Not the Ys (and I have a soft spot for Y-Wings) they are best viewed from a distance, because up close they are a bungled up mess. There is stuff stuck on every millimeter of them. The people who have replicated the Ys part for part deserve every kudo available, but they also need their head checked. There is no way they kept their sanity while identifying parts and trying to fit them in. Y Wings look like a hobby shop threw up on them and somebody said- there we go, DONE! and threw it in front of the camera.

 

[GF]

The way I see it is that It's technologie from a galaxy far far away which can't be compared with real world designs so everything can be justified, take for example the lightsabers, in the real world it's impossible to contain a laser beam but in the SW universe they apparently can. I undertand what you mean by overdone, it's like when you start weathering something you can easily get carried away and I'm sure the ILM guys did on some ships, but I personally like that detailed look to the ships, hell they actually also speak English in that galaxy far far away LOL!!!!

Gerardo

 

[GF]

If excessive/nonsensical greeblies bother you, don't ever look at the close-up shots of the Nostromo and the engine room and underside sections. The amount of stuff on those things makes me angry.

Since Nostromo is earth technology it's less forgiven, all the greeblies need to be justified, even though it's in the future it has to make more sense than in the SW universe which is in another galaxy with a totaly different aspect of things.


Gerardo

 

[GF]

let's not forget that Star Wars is not meant to be an extrapolation of our future, but, rather, a fantasy elseworld where things developed rather differently.

Exactly my thoughts, you couldn't have said it better

Gerardo

 

[Jedi Dade]

OK the way I look at it is this... the technology of the SW universe is so advanced that magic things like Hyperdrives are as common as fuel injection on our cars. Additionally the knowledge on how to operate these things is common place - a farmboy can fly (well) one of the most state of the art fighters in the universe for example.

As a result of all of this I see NO reason to apply our world asthetics to the SW universe... However its your model build it anyway you like... When I build Trek I don't use greeblies, when I build SW - I like my Greeblies

Jedi Dade

 

[Mola Rob]

Simple answer for me is no they do not have too many greeblies. I love the look of the ships in the OT, and 2001, and 2010, and Silent Running, and Outland, and Alien.

Now if you want to see unnecessary and underwhelming greeblies watch Starcrash.

 

[SEBRET]

The way I see it is that It's technologie from a galaxy far far away which can't be compared with real world designs so everything can be justified, take for example the lightsabers, in the real world it's impossible to contain a laser beam but in the SW universe they apparently can. I undertand what you mean by overdone, it's like when you start weathering something you can easily get carried away and I'm sure the ILM guys did on some ships, but I personally like that detailed look to the ships, hell they actually also speak English in that galaxy far far away LOL!!!!

Gerardo

I've always hated the laser beam theory for light sabers. I was actually rather happy when that explanation was phased out for the plasma loop theory. Its a pet peeve of mine when people still try to argue against star wars with the "stopping lasers" argument.

 

[JediMichael]

I think without all the detail, the ships would look to plain. Like boring unbelievable gray cardboard boxes flying around.

 

[Robiwon]

Star Wars is Star Wars in part because of the designers mind and the images they came up with on screen. Take away any of that and at it would not be Star Wars. If you want to build a smoother Falcon, go ahead. If you want to add reds and yellows and blues go ahead. Justify it anyway you want. Just don't call a red, yellow, and blue smoothie Falcon a Falcon.

I think Jedi Dade sums it up quite nicely with this single sentence.

I see NO reason to apply our world asthetics to the SW universe...
Jedi Dade

 

[PHArchivist]

I think its safe to say that over the history of sci-fi model building, the art has steadily evolved away from smooth-surfaced craft...

If JJ Abrams truly honored the original Enterprise design, do you suppose he would have at least added some degree of texturing to the smooth, uniterrupted grey surface? Certainly the builders of the TMP Enterprise felt it was necessary.

Smooth-skinned and brightly colored spaceships are one reason why The Phantom Menace sucked...


More in response to your question though:

I hear your point. But I think the ILM builders hit the sweet spot. X-Wings for example; I never realized how much crap was stuck on there until this Board reverse engineered it ten years ago. The usage of greeblies was deft, sublte, and artful. The Falcon goes farther, but it works for what it is. And Star Destroyers; I think they got it just right limiting the kit-bashing to just the perimeter and vertical surfaces (mostly).

Bit you've confused my with the Death Star. That model had ZERO greeblies. None. I know the surface tile pieces (trench, etcetera) had major relief. But the primary filming model was smooth as a baby's ass.


For your build, I agree that strict adherance to accuracy kills that project. Find parts that are close, or that you like. Tone it down. Add more later if you want...

 

[glorbes]

I always saw the greeblies as the antithesis of the smooth Flash Gordon rocket ship, or possibly the flat look of the Enterprise. Its a stylistic choice that lends a certain amount of authenticity to the models, and makes the surfaces more visually dynamic. The more small, multi-layered detail added to a model, the more it tricks the eye into believing its a certain, larger scale. PHArchivist, I think you hit it right on the head when you talk about where the greeblies are added makes all the difference...the Star Destroyers go nuts with the greeblies in the sandwich filler parts between the top and bottom sections, which contrasts nicely with the relatively flat, smooth horizontal surfaces. The bundling of details in the nooks and crannies of the ships is great, in my opinion, and for ships like the Falcon and the Y-Wing, the 'guts on the outside' look tells you a great deal about the personality and history of the ship in a single glance. The flipside of this is the Valley Forge from Silent Running...that's ship that has the texture and greeblies,but it doesn't go far enough in termsof the layered detail and (in my opinion) looks like a model on screen,which I don't think was helped by the way the model was lit and filmed. Don't go far enough with the detail, and it looks fake...the ILM guys found the right balance to trick the eye and make their models look real.

 

[wannab]

It's the 2001 ASO influence -- greebles for scale. That is all.



Doug

 

[Robiwon]

PHArchivist,
Just how would you know anything about the Death Star filming miniature!? You build one or somthin?

 

[Cadeus]

I love the level of detail some builders are willing to achieve. And the conversations sometimes persecute the details enough to make the cruelest man shed a tear... I have been a Star Wars nut my whole life, (all 38 years of it). But I am a fan of the story, not the movies. To me, the movies are simply the visual aspect of only part of the story. I have read all of the books, as well. And I even dabbled in a little role playing in high-school. But I don't care who played Gaurd number three in ROJ, or how much sand they used to create the desert sand-table for the execution scene. If I bought a Falcon model kit, I would be content to build it as-is, and I would be satisfied. But there is something to be wanted for the level of dedication and accuracy that builders like Al and galaxyman1701, just to name two, put into their work. It was a lot easier for ILM to draw a picture, build a model and throw on some hot-rod parts than it is for dedicated hobbyists to recreate those models part for part. I don't spend a lot of time on therpf.com because I want to build accurate models. I spend a lot of time on therpf.com because I just love to build models! And what I learn from the veterans is worth gold.