Your museum plan sounds cool, but your making more work for your self then need be. The only person that will even know those details you plan to add to the interior and what not will be you, NO ONE else will notice them nor care who sees them. I started to detail the interior on my first Bandai TIE and I got it done for a test fit I realized you can't even see what was done anyway, so why bother? Not to knock your efforts, but it will be wasted effort and the only who will notice it or care will be you who see's it. 99.5% of the people who see the display won't care.
But yeah. When I was in museums and state capitols and such when I was younger I loved getting right up to the battleship models and such that I'd see and I loved that there were interiors behind the windows. All my other craft in this scale have interiors, and it would rankle if these didn't -- even if I needed to get right up to it and shine a flashlight in the top windows to see. I'm doing the same thing with my larger Trek models, too -- the 1:350
Enterprises, the 1:677
Voyager, the big
Defiant... I don't know how many people will get up close and look, but if/when they do I want there to be something there to see. Internal lighting helps, there, though...
The official entry/egress point for the TIE fighters seems to be the top hatch - it's shown repeatedly this way on Rebels, and even in TFA, Poe and Finn are shown climbing down into the TIE (though that's a different type). Also, it has to be the top hatch on Vader's TIE Advanced - there's no rear "hatch" at all on his!
The TIE interior sets didn't show any indication of hatch location at all, did they? For that matter, the rear "window" on the TIE set doesn't line up with the equivalent part on the model... so I guess even in the standard TIE fighter, the rear "window" is a holo display (as it is with Vader's).
I can see where you got that idea though as a preliminary studio model blueprint and some old comics (along with the MPC Interceptor) indicate the rear to be the hatch, and the top an emergency escape, but they're outliers... all other sources like the various cross-section books show only the top hatch. And if we are talking strictly canon, Rebels and TFA are it.
You raise some darn good points... It still bugs me, though. It makes the TIEs more dependent on a mother ship or base for the pilots to get in and out, which is understandable, but does raise some issues. I need to go back and re-watch Rebels, but when they're on the ground (arg!) I can't remember if we saw how Ezra and Zeb got up on top of the fighter they stole. Having the back hatch at least an
option for ground landings (on those craft favorably configured) seems like the best way to go. The TIE Defender likewise can't have a back hatch, because of the wing mount. Ditto the TIE Avenger (so far, still only EU, but I'm hoping...). I've never looked at the TIE Bomber and its ilk with an eye for ingress/egress. I may end up detailing both as hatches where applicable, and just the top for the rest.
The other thing that irks is that the top hatch is generally reversed. One of the ANH TIEs has it the other way, with the windows forward (where a pilot could glance up and see what was above him), but having them be in a direction difficult and unlikely to be used, and have that as the standard, is painful to me.
I'm strongly considering reversing the top hatches on all of them to a more sensical orientation, as I'm going to with the front windows to match the interior shots Per the exterior build, there's a frame piece
right in the middle of the pilot's view. And two more at horizon-left and -right. There are contradictions that need to be resolved, and I'm prepared for my solutions to rile the purists. *chuckle*
At any rate, having both top and rear hatches open (where available) should help illuminate the interior for viewing, per Lynn's point, above.
Bandai could release a hundred other cool kits of Star Wars subjects that have never been done before, but until we have the PERFECT Falcon and that PERFECT star destroyer, nothing else will really satisfy. :$
Bandai knows that. And they will wait and continue with their small things till nothing is left because they KNOW WE ALL WILL BE BUYING THEIR STUFF, NO MATTER HOW SMALL IT MAY BE!!!
Speak for yourself.
I am
not, in fact, buying any of their 1:144 or smaller kits. I am
not, in fact, buying any of their figure kits. I am only buying their vehicles in 1:48, and their spaceships in 1:72 (though I am probably going to get the 1:350
Falcon to display next to my
Enterprise of same scale). And I am holding onto the slim hope that they might start up a mid-scale of 1:270 for medium-sized ships like Corvettes and such, though I know that's unlikely. I don't just automatically buy anything Bandai releases.
By all love for Bandai, I can already hear the moaning about incorrect details when/if they finally release a 1/72 Millennium Falcon. It will never be perfect. Not even when Bandai does it. And if they do one in 1/72, people will start crying for a 1/48 version, and the whole thread can be copy&pasted. No, no.
Radiant VII!
Radiant VII!
Radiant VII!
Radiant VII!
Radiant VII!
Yep, if they do an Original Trilogy 1/72 Falcon it'll have the incorrect cockpit tunnel greeblies, plus the TFA docking rings, and we will all wail and gnash our teeth.
There's a
lot of reference for the 5-footer. The ANH configuration is well documented in the Japan-published Chronicles book, for starters. *heh* The current config is in the Archives, is it not? At any rate, there's ample photographing of it from exhibitions. It'd be, I think, pretty easy to have optional parts for the post-ANH details. They may do the cockpit tunnel as a separate piece, too, and have the TFA version available as a further option. As big as the box would be for the main hull, they'd have plenty of room for all the post-ANH variations on just a single frame (ESB+ forward lateral landing gear wells and the gear itself, ESB+ exterior lighting cans and cages, TFA flipped sidewalls, TFA incorrect cockpit tunnel and docking rings, TFA sensor dish...).
But yes, I'd also love a
Radiant VII (and parts to build it as a
Charger-class frigate). 1:72 for that is, I think, probably unrealistic. 1:144 is possible, but that would annoy me, as I have nothing else in that scale. 1:270 would still be close to two feet long and be in scale with the X-Wing game miniatures, to boot. That last would be my pick, so I could have a pretty model on the shelf that also had use in the game.
--Jonah
