Sunday, August 21, 2011

The X-Wing Fighter, and ART-2 Models New Offering


The X-Wing Fighter, first seen in Star Wars (before it was known as Star Wars A New Hope) way back in 1978, and has since become an iconic one man space fighter to this day. It was the very first Sci Fi genre that introduced dog fights in space, and inspired countless other movies to follow suit.


The X-Wing Starfighter is actually the Incom T-65 Starfighter developed by the Incom Corporation. Known for its versatility and exceptional combat performance, she is equipped with deflector shields, a hyperdrive and an R2 Astromech for repairs and navigation. She is also armed with four laser cannons and a complement of photon torpedoes.




Of course if you ask me, the best X-Wing kit to date would still be the 1/72 and 1/48 scale plastic kits from Fine Molds. Some may argue about this but after having assemble kits from MPC-ERTL, Revell and then Fine Molds, my vote is with the latter.






And then Kotobukiya introduced this fully painted but you need to assemble kit of a comprehensive X-Wing to date. I have this one too, and I can tell you some parts are really a b***h to fit in. I have read fingers and thumbs to attest to this, but I will admit, she's one fine kit. Detailed to the hilt, and a miniature diorama provided along. She's pricey too.







With so many variants of the X-Wing fighter kits hitting the market (both resin and plastic kits), when I hear another one was coming, I sort of went "humph, OK". I didn't really went to have a look over at Modelermagic.com's after receiving their FB alert (saw the alert on my 3G with my phone)... I should have. I decided to take a look using my Unifi at home and ...... Whoa, nice. And I do believe this kit is going to give Captain Cardboard's Scott Alexandre (now known as Atomic City Models) resin kit a run for its money, well, in a sense since his kit is already out of production. The idea of course is to reproduce the closest Hero Unit, in this case "Red 3" which was piloted by Luke Skywalker.


There is actually a history on the Red 3 X-Wing fighter kits that was developed, and the project had been re-done for a total of 3 times, the last one being headed by Mike Salzo himself (yeah, the guy that did the 1/24 scale Raptor for the new BSG). We won't go into the details on that since the highlight here is on the new kit.


The project is now headed by Rodolfo Martinez, a professional illustrator and modeler, and what he has done is that he has added in more details to the engine and made the cockpit to resemble the one seen from The Empire Strikes Back, among a few other things. Here's the comment taken from Modelermagic.com so you know what you can expect from the new kit.

We’ve been quite busy with the model these past weeks, but every second we have spent in this project has paid up. The Urethane resin we are using is very resistant and a pleasure to work with, easy to sand and polish, and VERY strong! We even threw a Control Panel part against a wall and not even a little detail came off! Today I finished semi assembling two X-Wings with our prototype aluminum armature and everything worked just fine. This was the final test we needed to do to produce an assembly guide and to be sure that every part fitted with its counterpart. I will sculpt the pilot and another Astromech model this coming week, plus I will be making some extra molds of parts to work faster. After that we will be ready to announce all the purchase information.
         Best regards,

Rodolfo Martínez U.
Illustrator & Modeler

ART-2 Models

And here are some shots of the in progress X-Wing kit. The kit is not available for sale yet, but they are indeed exceeding expectations from modelers who wants only the best.










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