BoontaModelling
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The Makayan One
Scratch-Built Podracer
Scratch-Built Podracer
Intro
Welcome to this build.
We are all intimately acquainted with those moments. A pair of idle side-cutters in one hand, a glass of room temperature apple juice in the other, just taking the time to reflect on what it would take to build a Podracer from scratch.
But not just any Podracer. No.
Too numerous are the projects in which innocent gardening hose connectors have been glued together without much rhyme or reason, hoping that the Airbrush sent Primer would eventually tie things together and make sense of this chaos, brought upon me by none other than myself.
No, this had to be different. It had to be planned, sketched, and thoughtfully executed, guided by a clear vision from the outset. A vision of what it would be eventually, right from the start. The challenge this time would not be to just “trust the process while making stuff up”, it would be to bring something to life that already exists in the mind.
Step 1: get it out of the mind.
And here we are. Let me introduce you to the Podracer I had little to no idea of how to actually build.
This was going to be fun.
The Cockpit
A dear friend and flatmate of mine gave me an F1 toy car when he left the country to continue his studies abroad. It was a pathetic compensation for the loss of his company, sure. But much like placing a homing beacon on the Millennium Falcon, it was an act that would prove valuable later on.
“Do something with it”, he said. “What the force, man? What in the world could I do with an F1 toy car?”, is what I said.
But when I started looking for an interesting start for the cockpit of the Podracer months later, I stumbled across this toy again and it hit me like lightning striking a sacred tree: what better base for a Podracer, then an F1 car? After all, Star Wars design is often about taking something familiar and turning it into something new. Like a camera flash.
So off I went.
After many hours of bashing kits and building different parts, I ended up with something that could confidently be called a decent Podracer cockpit. This was a good start. It seemed the gods of scratch-building were smiling upon me.
The Wings
Honestly, when sketching this Podracer, I didn’t really spend a lot of time thinking about how I would actually build it. Much like Padmés and Anakins marriage, it just became what it had to be. It was the Force, I suppose.
But now, I faced the challenge of bending styrene 180° around a fix radius to achieve the folded, wing-like shape of the engine extensions. This was something I’d never tried before and it scared the Sith out of me.
But first! Something fun.
In true Star Wars fashion, I’d drawn a few missing panels into the sketch to reveal some of the mechanical inner workings of the racer. So, I built four separate ‘trays’ that would later be glued to the hull from the inside, holding the detailing and providing structural integrity to the wings once folded.
As expected, this is where the fun began. I knew these would be difficult to paint later, so I did it while they were still accessible. As Palpatine used to say, “Masking them later is not a biggie”.
But there was no way around it. That styrene had to be bent eventually.
The good news was that I could use my concept sketch as a cutting template for the ‘unfolded’ wings. This was very helpful and it was also useful in the surface paneling.
Some test bends revealed that what I had set out to do was entirely possible and less difficult than I thought. But it would require an inner support to define a smooth outside radius and prevent the styrene from bending weirdly out of shape. I made this support by cutting an acrylic tube in half lengthwise and gluing it to the centerline of the wing, right where the fold would be - a small adventure in itself.
To my surprise, bending the styrene worked as flawlessly as enlisting a 10-year-old to a deadly race. It just needed a bit of force, patience, and heat from a hairdryer. By this point, I had put quite a bit of work into the wings already, and breaking them would have been really frustrating. But I didn’t and I must say - much like Anakin after Order 66, I was quite proud of myself.
The construction, though somewhat improvised and a bit messy in places, was sturdy enough to race for decades.
The rest was a walk in the park. Some styrene detailing all around, more kit bashed mechanical details, a super big cooling grille at the front, and these things were good to go.
The Engines
The engines, which would later be attached to the wings, would be less of a challenge - or so I thought. After trying different approaches with varying diameters of acrylic tubing, I composedly decided to never touch that stuff again. I tried spinning - usually a good trick - but that didn’t help. Maybe it was me and my approach, but I never worked with anything so absurdly frustrating. I now understand how Vader felt working with Admiral Motti.
But in the end, the rebels blew up the Death Star, and the basic shape of the engines was made out of a large empty marker pen that just happened to be the right size. Because the inner workings of the pen had interesting shapes as well, I decided the engines should be open on one side to reveal more detail inside later on.
The gods of kit bashing and scratch building must have been really intrigued by this project, because a good amount of things fell into place astonishingly well. Parts fit together like Han Solo sliding into the Carbon-freezing chamber, random round parts had the exact right diameter for an ideal press fit, and the fact that the bodies of the engines were made from a marker pen, meant that they could be disassembled into easy to paint groups.
I loved building these engines… and they knew.
The additional kit bashing and scratch building was a breeze.
And life was good.
The Assembly
The problem I’d been successfully ignoring up until now, was that I had absolutely no clue of how to attach the wings to the engines. Some ‘spontaneous alterations’ during the wing construction made it impossible to fit them as originally planned in the concept drawing. I tried, and failed. And I remembered there is no try.
So after much contemplating and a prayer to the gods who had favoured me thus far, I decided to just f*cking ‘wing it’ and bolt the engines straight to the wings.
A surprise in approach, to be sure, but a welcome one.
The way the engines were constructed allowed me to bolt the large front part of the engines to the wing seperately, so the rest of the engines could slide into that piece. The internal screw heads even provided the right amount of friction for a secure fit. Once again, the gods were with me.
However, naturally there was a bit of last-minute drama. While adding greebles to one of the wings one night, I accidentally spilled a significant amount of Tamiya Super-Thin cement all over it. My heart raced in fear as I held my breath, waiting for the wing to explode in my face under the tension of the bent styrene. I sure had a very bad feeling about this - but all was well. And stayed well. Astonishing.
The Paint
Needless to say, the process of painting this mean machine was a welcome return to familiar territory. I really did feel like the most challenging part was behind me and I must say, it was not as scruffy-looking as I thought while in the midst of it. The primer stage brought the usual “wow” moments when everything becomes unified. Masking, chipping, detailing and some carefully placed decals were all good fun. And looking back at the road travelled, it was especially satisfying this time.
I mixed a custom green from Tamiya “Cockpit Green”, “Sand” and some drops of “Pale Blue” to roughly match the colour from the concept sketch, bypassed the compressor and went to lightspeed.
The Lighting
Did I say the most challenging part was behind me? Yeah, that changed when I decided to bring light into the darkness and wire up some funky LED filaments. This was after everything was glued and painted, with little thought given to such a task beforehand.
By then, I felt like I had already put so much work into this model that not lighting it would be like getting a parking ticket for your spaceship on Canto Bight - an absolute disgrace. The idea was to connect the engines with a pink ‘laser beam’ filament and light up the two exhausts with two more orange filaments.
I came up with a more or less stupidly convoluted plan of taking over the Galactic Republic, while at the same time running the electronics on this model in series from one engine, over the cockpit, to the other engine and then connecting both with another filament before going down into the base again. Let me tell you, guiding the wires through the assembled model was like trying to hit a small exhaust port with a proton torpedo and nothing like bull’s-eyeing womp rats in a T-16 back home.
However, the result was equally mind-blowing.
And I was done.
The Base
But speaking of bases, there’s no way of displaying or even storing a model like this without a solid three-point connection to some sort of base. Otherwise, it’s all just loosely wobbling about and not at all pleasant to even look at. So apparently, much like Darth Maul after literally being cut in half - I wasn’t done yet.
I wanted to display this model in a creative way. And knowing my way around a camera, I understood that an important aspect of conveying breakneck speed in a still - is motion blur.
So, I decided to try building a motion-blurred desert ground display. This was made using regular wall-repair putty, a lot of water, a brush and an evening of steady hand movement trying to soften the surface to a blur. And desert-like colours. Because we like sand.
Everything was mounted into a quality picture frame - and that was it.
And just like Palpatine after being thrown down a reactor shaft - I was really done.
Or was I…. ?
The Conclusion
This was my most complicated project to date. I learned a lot along the way and I must say, building something entirely from scratch is a uniquely rewarding process. There were a lot of ‘firsts’ for me in this, and like a friend said to me some weeks ago, “these things are not about the finish line, but the lessons and skills learned along the way.”
For everyone thinking about doing something similar, I want to encourage you and say that Podracers are absolutely amazing for this type of thing. The freedom of designing a racer, or making one up as you go is a lot fun and you are always challenged to build two mirrored engine pieces. From the shape and number of the engines, the cockpit and paint job to the base - the room for being creative is endless.
This will likely not be the last one.
For everyone who has read this far, thank you so much for your interest. I appreciate every minute you took to read through all of this. And if you’d like to read some more, below is a follow up post with the final images and a little bit of background lore about this Podracer.
Thanks again.
-Boonta
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