Re: ICONS Tie Masters.....
As the the contradictory statements posted here, I have no idea who "Pyro" is, and there were no castings that we copied at Icons for the Tie Fighter prototype.
"Pyro" is just shorthand for "pyrotechnic" around these parts, meaning a miniature that was created to be destroyed on camera, often by blowing it to smithereens. I'm pretty sure it originated from the heads of the people who actually build miniatures for the film industry.
I have no reason to lie about this (Honestly I don't Care about the Tie Fighter that much), I even owned an Icons Tie Fighter years ago but sold it a while back, I know one of the Studio Scale Kits out there is much more accurate than the Icons Tie Fighter, all you have to do is look at Photos of the Icons Tie Fighter, then compare them to the Photos in the "Sculpting a Galaxy" book...
Well, let's be careful, because I don't see anyone accusing anyone of lying. I'm most certainly not. It's just that, like a very small number of people here, I
really do care about the TIE-Fighter, probably too much depending on your point of view, and have been researching it, like a monk in a monastery, with hundreds of books and magazines and thousands of images and dozens of castings, for many years. I purchased and have kept my copy of the ICONS TIE-Fighter not because I'm a collector and I wanted to display it, but because I'm a builder, and I needed it for my research. I also have an ICONS X-Wing which I purchased and then promptly broke down into about twenty different pieces. My shop and attic are also bursting at the seams with the thousands of vintage model kits from the 50's, 60's and 70's that I've purchased while looking for the original greeblies attached to every square inch of this and other Star Wars models.
Last year, I spent the better part of three months researching the original hero TIE-Fighter models and identified most of the kit parts found on the wingstars, ball, arms, hatches and cockpits. If you've watched Julien's build here:
http://www.therpf.com/f10/building-ss-tie-cockpit-ball-76802/
you can see a small portion of the total effort we put into researching the original models and identifying the original kit parts used to construct them back in 1976. Collectively, we've invested way more time and energy into this research than ICONS ever could have afforded to do, probably by an order of magnitude. Steve N. and a few of his close friends who are also mostly members here, have put in even more time and energy over the past 10+ years researching this model.
See this cockpit panel:
? Our obsession with the TIE-Fighter is what allowed Julien to make such an accurate pattern. The same with the cockpit ball, arms and hatches that he made:
I say all of this this only because it's important that you understand where I'm coming from when I point out that there's absolutely
no question in my mind that the "bones" of the ICONS TIE-Fighter, meaning the cockpit ball and arms - minus the cockpit interior, hatches and canopy - most certainly descended from a production-made casting or mold of an original TIE-Fighter,
most likely of a pyrotechnic, or "pyro" version of that miniature. The wing, minus the wing mounting point cover, also most certainly descended from the same production source material.
Now, there's also
no question in my mind that guys like Mike and Max and Al at ICONS put in
a lot of time and effort scratch-building all new patterns for the top, bottom and rear hatches, as well as the mounting point cover for the wing. And they no doubt spent an
enormous amount of time figuring out how to build master patterns and molds suitable for mass production. Were I in their shoes then, I wouldn't know where to begin.
Still, there is absolutely no question in my mind that those guys had a head start on the TIE-Fighter project because someone with access to original production ILM material was nice enough to loan them either mold(s) or, more likely, a set of castings.
This is exactly how ICONS did the X-Wing project, by the way, with loaner parts from someone who had access to original production material, and I actually have spoken with Mike Moore at length on the phone about that project. You might want to ask Mike, or Al or Max about the source for the core of the TIE-Fighter that you saw them working on back then.
