JMChladek
Sr Member
I finished up a little project yesterday. Anyone remember a campaign from the X-Wing Alliance PC game which featured some experimental TIE Fighter variants? One of them was a TIE Fighter that featured two cockpit pods with one solar wing in the middle. One pod housed a heavy turbo laser cannon. Unofficially, it has also been referred to as TIE Bizarro, since it is so backward from the original TIE configuration.
TIE Experimental M1 - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki
I've wanted to do one of these for years, but my plans didn't go to the front burner until I picked up a copy of Max Modeller Magazine, issue #7. It featured a build of the ship by Ricardo Rodriquez, utilizing a pair of Fine Molds kits for the project. At one time, there was a resin kit of this TIE variant available in 1/72 scale. In my stash, I had one of the AMT/Ertl 1/48 two TIE Fighter sets left over, so I decided to pull them out to see what I could accomplish. Here is my result:
I didn't set out to copy Ricardo's work exactly since he used some parts turned on a lathe. Plus, his was 1/72 while mine was 1/48. Thankfully, the TIE M-1 has only been represented in a low res polygon mesh for the game, so it was subject to a bit of interpretation.The main bit of modification involved modifying the one TIE wing to accomodate two pods. AMT molded the wing in one piece while FM did it in three (center solar wing, two outer frames). A separate outer detail cap goes on the outside of the wing and this featured a center hexagonal hub that had to be shaved flat to get the second wing hub to fit into it. I also had to cut that hex hub out of two other pieces to use as details for the outer part of the cockpit and gun balls.
You can see the hex piece at the end of the gun ball. I back filled the cockpit balls with Apoxie and sanded the areas smooth after I choped the unused wing struts off. I had thought about adding some additional greeblie bits to the ends of the balls, but they looked nice in their clean state. So I left them. The gun mount is made from an MPC TIE Interceptor rear hatch with some additional bits of styrene strip added to it. The transitional section is a Revell 1/144 space shuttle engine bell and a Monogram 1/48 AH-64 helicopter tire (the Apache kit is a great source of greeblie bits BTW). The ladder rung shaped bits are from the Apache as well. The gun barrel is made from two diameters of K&S Brass tubing.
All things considered, this was a rather fun and simple kitbash project. The base coloring is Model Master light gray over a flat back pre-shade (which I had to do in order to paint the wing due to how it was molded). Some drybrushing was done in white over the neutral gray accent pieces. I had thought about going with the TIE Interceptor based bluer color, but I like the brighter gray better as it shows more detail IMHO. I may add some blue trim stripes to it to give it some variety, but it looks nice in this clean paintjob. My TIE Bizarro also has a pilot in the cockpit. In the game, they were remotely flown. But I like manned fighters better.
Now I just need to finish up a couple X-Wings for it to fight.
TIE Experimental M1 - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki
I've wanted to do one of these for years, but my plans didn't go to the front burner until I picked up a copy of Max Modeller Magazine, issue #7. It featured a build of the ship by Ricardo Rodriquez, utilizing a pair of Fine Molds kits for the project. At one time, there was a resin kit of this TIE variant available in 1/72 scale. In my stash, I had one of the AMT/Ertl 1/48 two TIE Fighter sets left over, so I decided to pull them out to see what I could accomplish. Here is my result:
I didn't set out to copy Ricardo's work exactly since he used some parts turned on a lathe. Plus, his was 1/72 while mine was 1/48. Thankfully, the TIE M-1 has only been represented in a low res polygon mesh for the game, so it was subject to a bit of interpretation.The main bit of modification involved modifying the one TIE wing to accomodate two pods. AMT molded the wing in one piece while FM did it in three (center solar wing, two outer frames). A separate outer detail cap goes on the outside of the wing and this featured a center hexagonal hub that had to be shaved flat to get the second wing hub to fit into it. I also had to cut that hex hub out of two other pieces to use as details for the outer part of the cockpit and gun balls.
You can see the hex piece at the end of the gun ball. I back filled the cockpit balls with Apoxie and sanded the areas smooth after I choped the unused wing struts off. I had thought about adding some additional greeblie bits to the ends of the balls, but they looked nice in their clean state. So I left them. The gun mount is made from an MPC TIE Interceptor rear hatch with some additional bits of styrene strip added to it. The transitional section is a Revell 1/144 space shuttle engine bell and a Monogram 1/48 AH-64 helicopter tire (the Apache kit is a great source of greeblie bits BTW). The ladder rung shaped bits are from the Apache as well. The gun barrel is made from two diameters of K&S Brass tubing.
All things considered, this was a rather fun and simple kitbash project. The base coloring is Model Master light gray over a flat back pre-shade (which I had to do in order to paint the wing due to how it was molded). Some drybrushing was done in white over the neutral gray accent pieces. I had thought about going with the TIE Interceptor based bluer color, but I like the brighter gray better as it shows more detail IMHO. I may add some blue trim stripes to it to give it some variety, but it looks nice in this clean paintjob. My TIE Bizarro also has a pilot in the cockpit. In the game, they were remotely flown. But I like manned fighters better.
Now I just need to finish up a couple X-Wings for it to fight.