Tombola Millennium Falcon Mos Eisley Diorama

[Kmagz007]

Hi and welcome.
I wanted to share with you a small build I had on the bench, on and off, for a while. This was mainly due to not really knowing how to achieve what I wanted, as a majority of this was scratch built. I also have no experience scratch building, especially with scenery. I guess it was a good thing that I started small then. Literally the smallest I could make it!
For this, I decided to modify the Tombola Millennium Falcon. If anyone doesn't know what this is, it's a small collectible toy which came inside chocolate eggs, much like the Kinder Surprise eggs. It's similar scale to the Micro Machines Millennium Falcon.
The below picture is what I started with.

As you can see, this is basic as and needs a lot of modifying. I felt the overall thickness of the model is pretty accurate, and the mould detail is not too bad either.
The other thing I liked about this model, as opposed to using a Micro Machines, is that this is not a solid mould and actually splits horizontally to separate the top from the bottom. And this is what gave me the idea to modify this into a diorama. You will see why later on.

So heres what I changed.

I removed the top half from the bottom and sanded down the side walls. This gave it the correct look of the top and bottom plating overhang on the side walls.
Next I completely removed the side pods (sorry, not sure of the exact name for these). I built this up using paper, as there was nothing else I could use that was thin enough to get the desired detail I was after. I would not have achieved this with shaping putty. For added detail, I stripped some cable wires and glued these on to add some depth and shape.
The nose "forks" got some extra detail by just gluing some offcuts of plastic, wire and the round doughnut shaped pieces are wire insulation.
I also cut off the dish. this was just a one piece moulded plastic L shape which just had to go. I lined the hole in the top of the falcon with paper. I then shaped and glued wire together to build the frame for the dish. this requires a very steady hand and a lot of patience.
Other additions were the gun on the top and more wire.

Knight Rider meets Star Wars!

And after some dry brushing and addition of some red paneling.

And this is the other reason I wanted to modify this model.

Thats it for now, I will come back with more of the diorama build. Apologies for the quality of some of these images. This was done a few years ago and never intended to post a thread at the time. I will hopefully tackle this again with a different scene and will ensure I take more photos of each step. Anyway, hope you have enjoyed the build so far.

 

[thegnome]

Extremely fine detail work--WOW!

 

[thegnome]

Followup question; are you a neurosurgeon?

 

[Kmagz007]

Haha not quite. Thanks for your comment though.

So I have some more time to continue this thread. My next step of this build was to start building the base for this diorama. I wanted to simulate the Falcon taking off from Mos Eisley, kind of giving that perspective of distance from the ground to the ship.
I had come across some glass domes which were actually Christmas decorations. Th trouble was that the dome was rather tall, which meant I needed to give the model some extra height to fill it out a bit. To combat this, I decided to use a steamed rice cup to add height to the based. You would have seen this in the photos above. This not only added height, but also houses the batteries for the LED.
I created the diorama base using some offcuts MDF and cut this to the size of the bottom of the rice cup. I drilled a hole for the stand to run through, then started mapping out the scenery.

I used pretty much anything I could find to create the right shapes of the buildings. The square shapes are just foam core board as this was easy to shape, but also helps to give a good texture for the walls.
The chrome domes are the backside of some headlights from a VW 1/24 scale kit. The tall grey tubular object is a part from the inside of a ballpoint pen.

Once I had everything roughly where I wanted them, I started gluing i all down and gave it a coat of primer.

From here, I could easily see where there needed to be more detail, such as the extra pillars on the walls. Can you spot the land speeder?
The aerial looking thing (not even sure what it is haha) was made using wire, with electrical wire insulation on the botton and towards the top. then used the fine electrical copper wire on the outside.

You can really see how the foam gives the bullrings a good stone-like texture once painted.

I felt that the domes were a bit too smooth and needed roughing up a bit, so I scraped some plastic putty on top and scratched them up a bit.
Then I sprayed a coat of Tamiya sand. I then added high lights with various different shades of browns, tan and yellows for weathering.
Once I was happy with the look, it was time to put it all together.

The dome is still a bit too tall for the model, but would have been much worse without the rice cup base. Heres a little comparison for a reminder of the size of this thing.
So there you have it. I felt this turned out much better than I had actually planned. I have a few more domes. When I can get my hands on a few more Tombola Falcon's, I will attempt another one, but a different scene. Now that I have played around with the scale and distance perspectives, and given the height of the domes, I want to try and use up more of this space. I think I may try a Hoth scene, using more of the rice cup as the hangar with the falcon inside ready to blast out. he top will show the land based battle with maybe a snow speeder and/or a walker.
Alternatively I have the Tombola Imperial Shuttle and had planned to recreate the Endor landing platform with a little Death Star in the night sky.
These will have to wait for now. Thanks for watching.

 

[thegnome]

pretty awesome final result

 

[Analyzer]

Very cool!

Love all the tiny details and quite impressive that it was lit as well

You've inspired me to try some things like this with some of the micromachines stuff I have

 

[Kmagz007]

Very cool!

Love all the tiny details and quite impressive that it was lit as well

You've inspired me to try some things like this with some of the micromachines stuff I have

Hi thanks for your comments!

Seriously have a crack! I would be very interested to see what you come up with. Something this small doesn't take much to add extra detail and you are rarely looking at it as up close as the images show you.

I have a Micromachines Sand Crawler I also want to place in a diorama. Its already quite detailed on its own, but would really pop in a scaled down Tatooine setting. They make great desk ornaments if you keep them small.