Two build philosophies: exact replica, or super-accurized model?
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On the left -- exact replica. On the right -- super-accurized.
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So here is a rather longish post on the philosophy of miniature replica aesthetics. Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run,
you'd better commit early to the one you're going to have to live with for a long, long time...
You see the original Falcon in all it's glory, and it blows your mind, impresses you, and inspires you, even as you silently say internally, "There is no way in hell that ANYONE could EVER replicate a model of that complexity." That's if you're sane. Then ten years go by, and you've now built a garage kit, or a scratch-built Y-Wing, or some lesser but still-quite-daunting project, and the idea begins to dawn on you, "Maybe, just maybe..."
Then you figure, what the hell, you might as well try it, as you're going to be ten years older in ten years anyway, so why not have something to show for it. So you start collecting greeblies, measurements, secrets, kits, collections, images, references, and every single book on the subject of the Falcon you can find, including all the old back issues of Starlog you never got as a kid in the 1970's...
And a day comes when you have enough stuff to start building. And you do, in small non-committal ways at first, just a small subassembly here and there, just a mandible pit, a greeblie plate, a FalGal plate, maybe a docking ring door assembly. But rather soonish the day will come when you have to decide what you want the thing to "look like" at the end of the day. Because it's SUPER cool to see the real Falcon up close and see ALL the dozens of mistakes, oversights, shim, wedge, trim, and shave jobs that are evidence of the "over-budget, behind-schedule" rush of the whole film production, and you keep reminding yourself that it looks THIS ugly ONLY up close, in a static environment, whereas on screen, at 24-frames-per-second, and jumping into hyperspace, it looks just freaking awesome. So now you actually have to decide your aesthetic philosophy, as YOU are not a moviemaker, and YOU are not ever ever ever -- even once -- EVER going to get to see your model fly by at 24fps or make the jump to hyperspace. You are going to sit and look at it for the next twenty to forty years, at which point the next generation will get to look at it.
So the question: do you build an exact replica with all those rushed mistakes? Or do you suspend your disbelief even further and decide to build a YT-1300 freighter the way the original factory would have, with no gaps, no missing pipes, no falling-off pieces, no section that looks like a kitbashed-greeblie-nightmare-slapped-together-in-a-rush, but rather like George Lucas originally wanted, a vehicle with each section connecting to each other section with an industrial design hot-rod philosophy that made it look like it actually worked, and like each section had a reason, and each section could be explained with a mechanic's manual if you could make up the right language to describe the futuristic technology that was in fact, so "old" it took place "a long time ago" in a galaxy farther away than Van Nuys, California?
So me, I'm going for the super-accurized YT-1300 option. This means I'm building a model that works, and has its seams filled, and has its flaws hidden, covered, or creatively interpreted so as to no longer be flaws. This DOES mean, in some small areas and ways, that I'll be "interpreting" beyond authorial intention and "making a lot of special modifications myself" to her as though I'm the new owner of this one-of-a-kind vehicle, and that's both exciting and daunting. But it also means,
sub specie aeternatis, that I'm not going to let my Tamiya 1/35 Kampfpanzer Leopard parts #A25 and #A26 HOVER above the Bandai 1/24 M60 long box parts with the semi-circle indents, because that just looks flimsy and like they'd fly off as soon as you jumped to hyperspace. So the area it sits on, I'm sanding flush, so the grill piece looks integral, intentional, and "designed" that way, rather than "these two model pieces, from two different models, were slapped together quickly".
I know this is metaphysical violence, to some of you, for whom the only proper way to build it is to imitate exactly what ILM did, and didn't do, in 1975-76 prior to filming. The other way I justify it is to simply say that the model was the inspiration for the life-sized prop, and the life-sized vehicle doesn't have these mistakes, or at least not in any of the "filmed up-close" areas, that I'm aware of. So that's my decision, and my aesthetic commitment, and the way I'm proceeding. And I'm happy with it and I like it for the same reason my 10-year-old Star-Wars obsessed self would like it: it just looks cooler.
And no, you don't have to worry: if you're using my castings, I'm VERY very conscious that many/most will not be building this way, so I'm making all my castings in raw or "original" form, so that if you want to you can also do what I'm doing, but so that the default setting will be to duplicate what ILM did originally. So the parts pictured above were cast and set aside long before these particular decisions were made.
Anyone have strong feelings on this? In a certain sense, I don't think I'm doing very much differently than the "perfecting" and "harmonizing" that Bandai did when they made their 1/72 PG Falcon aesthetic decisions. At 1/72 scale it's not even that noticeable, whereas on the original scale it will be very noticeable, but I still think there's an audience that will secretly prefer it to the "warts and all" approach.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
