Zvezda's 1/72 Black Pearl from "Pirates of the Caribbean"

For such a popular ship to be made into a kit, and to have that kit remain as mysterious as the ship itself in the movies, that must have been some kind of feat. I have been waiting on news of her and believe it or not, I didn't find out that the kit is already out until I found out by chance. For your information, Zvezda is an up and coming Russian brand that is slowly but surely breaking into the world of fine scale modeling.

The problem is that all my favourite shops did not have her in stock, nor were some of them aware she was even released. I managed to find a few sites that sold her online but because I have never bought anything from them let alone hear of them, I decided to put word out if any of my favourite hobby stores would carry her. I'll let you all know of the outcome later.

As far as I know, most scale modelers who successfully got this kit got them from eBay from a seller from Moscow. Feed backs suggest the seller is reliable. Or you can try to get her from Hobbyterra.com or Scale-model-kits.com but don't ask me how these shop are as I have never shopped with them before.

So how does this kit actually look like? Well, according to the articles I've read, the Zvezda's Black Pearl is as good as any wooden panel model ship kits that is available out there. Looking at the sprues layout, this kit does hold a lot of promises besides looking challenging and good - I'm referring to all that rigging and rag tag sails you're going to need to emulate. Here are some images of a preliminary build up of her.

Another point to take note about the Black Pearl, this ship technically does not exist in the real world. In the first movie, the "Black Pearl" was build over a barge using camera angles and CGI to cover up revealing areas, while a miniature model unit was used for the overall scenic shots. In the second and third movie, the "Black Pearl" was build over an existing sailing ship. We didn't see much of the Black Pearl in the fourth movie as the ship was captured within a bottle, trapped on a perpetual angry sea by Blackbeard.

Here are some behind the scenes images of the Black Pearl. If you look carefully, you can see remnants of a Barge at the stern of the ship (that means the rear). Look for them after the jump.

A full scale mock up was build over an existing sailing ship for the second and third movie hence the Black Pearl looked more complete behind the scenes than she was during the first movie. Use of CGIs was also incorporated to capture the final fighting scenes between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman.

Here are the part's images from the Zvezda's kit sprues by sprues in 1/72 scale.

And as expected, there are differences between the Black Pearl seen in the first movie, and the second and third. You'll need to do a comparison based on screencaps from all three movies. But I do have some studio miniature reference below you can also use, taken from a Disney exhibit.

It will be interesting to see a fine build up of this kit, esp one that is placed in a diorama setting where the Black Pearl sails off int the ocean ... being chased by her adversary.