Part 7 - ISD Avenger Studio Reference Engines

Here are images of the studio model used for the Star Destroyer Avenger first seen in Star Wars : A New Hope. These images were obtained from modelermagic.com (images are scaled back) as well as other sources to be used for reference to your own build up.

As there are too many images to fit into one blog post, I have decided to segregate them according to their locations to make it easier to locate areas you want to make reference to. This post will touch on the Engine area of the ISD Avenger

Part 6 - ISD Avenger Studio Reference Bridge

Here are images of the studio model used for the Star Destroyer Avenger first seen in Star Wars : A New Hope. These images were obtained from modelermagic.com (images are scaled back) as well as other sources to be used for reference to your own build up.

As there are too many images to fit into one blog post, I have decided to segregate them according to their locations to make it easier to locate areas you want to make reference to. This post will touch on the Bridge Tower of the ISD Avenger

Part 5 - Darkmoonspirit's Magnificent Scratch Build Imperial Star Destroyer

Not sure if anyone remembers Darkmoonspirit but I had highlighted two of his beautifully crafted diorama here before called SUB LEVEL 6 and his spectacular Original Series Galactica Hangar Bay Diorama. So imagine how surprised I was to find him again during my research on the Imperial Star Destroyer build ups, and to this day, I still remain astounded by this person's talents at scratch building. Of course I'm sure there are others that deserves to be highlighted here before, just that I haven't chanced on their builds as yet.

Darkmoonspirit or Klaus Schaftner, chose to create his ISD using materials ranging from wood and parts from other kits. His build is of course highlighted at his thread at Resin Illuminati Forum. Abet those postings were dated so long ago, but I haven't seen it before, and what I saw compelled me to create a special blog just for his magnificent scratch build of his ISD.

His ISD was measured at an impressive 6 foot long at a scale of 1/1000, and roughly took him 3 years to complete. He based his build after the Star Destroyer Avenger, and made modifications to her so that his ISD can become the Emperor III Class Destroyer. Naturally all of these are of his own design, and if you look closely at what he has done, not only has he created an intimidating self-version of one of the Empire's formidable Capital Ship, but he gave a lot of details that made the ship look more practical.

His inspiration came when he wanted to re-create an Emperor Class Star Destroyer that was more powerful than the Avenger. His plans included adding in more guns on the side hulls as well as making the main turrets bigger. He achieved this by adding in hundreds of miniature turrets obtained from scale model Naval ships. Here's a rough list of kits he kit bashed their parts into his fantastic ISD:

20 x 1/400 scale WW2 Battleships
20 x 1/700 scale WW2 Battleships
10 x 1/700 scale Aircraft Carriers
40 x 1/200 scale WW2 Battleships - mainly 20-25 Shinanos
30 x 1/72 scale Armoured Tanks
15 x 1/35 scale Armoured Tanks

And a bunch of other Sci Fi Kits from AMT, etc

His build was even more amazing in that he retained all the main highlights for the Star Destroyer like the Shield Generators, Bridge Tower and Main Engines so that the overall look stays as close to a canon Star Destroyer, and detailed the side panels, hangar bays and laser turrets based on his own design.

The skeletal frame for his ISD was constructed mainly from wood to create a hollow mass so as to allow fiber optics to run through. Check out the numerous details he added to the rear engine section.

Part 4 - Randy Cooper's Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD) Resin Kit

Let me introduce to you someone who helped inspired me to get back at scale modeling. He's not the only one of course, there were others as well, but this guy really takes passion to a whole new level. To the ardent Sci Fi scale modeler fans out there, this man really do not need such an introduction, but to those outside of the USA, you may want to get to know this guy.

His name is Randy Cooper, scale modeler extraordinaire.

A long time ago I had browsed through one of his Imperial Star Destroyer creation, and I remembered feeling so overwhelmed by this guy's skills, talents, eye for details, how the heck did he do that, etc etc etc. I don't really know much about this guy except that he is the modern scale modeler version of Einstein. Yeah, I know, I'm putting too much praises onto this guy, but believe me, this guy is really remarkable. He basically creates from his heart, and almost everything he does comes out beautiful. Its something I had always wanted to emulate. He have a blog here which you may want to follow.

From what I have read, Randy Cooper's kits are of very high quality with details up the cahoots you'd need a friend to help close your jaw when you see one. There was only ONE unsatisfied customer that I know of but his complaint wasn't too much on the quality of his resin kits, but rather more on some warped (bend) parts. I didn't really follow through with that forum thread so I don't have the whole story here, but bear in mind, that's only ONE out of over a DOZEN compliments I have read, and from the numerous images of other people's build up of Randy's kits, well, the one thing that comes to my mind is that I can't afford them. They're really high end requiring a more professional skill level to handle - or at least that's how I rationale this whole thing after feeling intimidated by all those excellent work out there .. yeah .. lame, I know. *Blush*

OK, enough about Randy, lets check out his 37.5" Imperial Star Destroyer. The following are images I had saved from Randy's site and these should give you an idea just how magnificent his Avenger Star Destroyer is. Better prepare some tissues to wipe off your slobber.

Part 3 - Anigrand Sci Fi Dynamics Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD) Avenger Resin Kit

If you're looking for an Anigrand Sci Fi Dynamics 27" Imperial Star Destroyer, about the only place you can find these now are either through eBay, or the Market place at some of the Sci Fi Scale Modeling forums. I waited too long to get mine from Anigrand, a remarkable Garage Kit maker with its company based in Hong Kong. At that time, the kit cost about USD238 not inclusive of shipping, so I thought I'd wait a little to see if they would come up with a promotion. Boy, did I regret that move. The company got hit by a C&D Court Order (Cease and Decease) in 2010 courtesy of George Lucas's lawyers for infringing the copyright laws for Star Wars. Well, with the royalties and license cost, I doubt you can get this kit at USD238.

By coincidence, the legal action took place days before Fine Molds released their 1/144 scale Millennium Falcon kit, so a lot of fans all over the world assumed that this Japanese company had something to do with the C&D. Far for me to acknowledge this claim or deny it, but whatever the actual reason was, Anigrand did infringe on Star Wars' copyright. A real pity as this company was producing an awesome array of Star Wars kits that included the Lambda Shuttle and Medical Frigate among other, all highly detailed and beautifully casted.

So what is so remarkable about an Sci Fi Dynamics Anigrand kit? For starters, these kits are casted in very good quality resin, they're huge at 1/2256 scale (which puts her in scale with any other 1/2256 scale vessels like the Revell's Venator Class Cruiser)and the level of details can only be compared to those you find on the actual studio models. And as a bonus, most of their kits comes with additional extras, for example the ISD came with a 1/144 scale TIE Defender and TIE Clawcraft.

See for yourself the amount of details found on an Anigrand Resin kit.

Another nice thing about the Anigrand kit is that the instruction sheet are quite comprehensive as they chose to use photo images to illustrate what parts go where. From the numerous feedback I had observed, this kit do not have any fittings issue, and I have yet to hear of any complaints from anyone to date on the kits' quality.

The Sci Fi Dynamics Anigrand's ISD came with 82 resin cast and photoetch parts, measuring a span of 466mm (18.3") and 711mm (about 28") length. Since Anigrand no longer produces any of their Star Wars line, the link only shows her as discontinued, but you can still access Anigrand's Homepage to see the other goodies they have. But if you could get her, the packaging would be something like this, currently offered by elend at the Starship Modeler marketplace section (link works as of 20th April 2011 until such time item is sold or removed). If you're interested, send elend a private message (PM) and don't try to post any replies in that thread as the moderator has disallowed that function for the market place.

Part 2 - The Star Destroyer Plastic Model Kit and Aftermarket Parts

The Imperial Star Destroyer plastic model kit was first made available by a company called MPC. It also had other range of star wars vehicles, in particular the one man fighters like the X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter and the Falcon. I remembered since I had all those a long time ago, and the only ones left in my stash was the X-Wing, Y-Wing and the ISD, which I had built up and painted using Humbrol enamel pants (with a very thick brush). I was 16 then. and had only begun my scale modeling hobby, so you can imagine how crappy that kit looked.

After MPC, came ERTL/AMT which produced two variants, the first being just the normal plastic kit, while the latter came with Fiber Optic lightings.

The below image is a reissue from Japan using the same mold from the ERTL/AMT kit

And here is a very nice comparison from this site of how your ISD would look like when built out of the box, and modified using aftermarket parts as well as some scratch building.

Suffice to say that the plastic kit alone is definitely inadequate if you're looking for a close resemblance to the studio model. The one thing that has it going for the plastic kit is its price. Of course that was before this kit became scarce due to it being out of production. I had two units, one of which that was crappy built, another I bought with the Fiber Optic option, and another two units I bought from a forum's marketplace. Why so many?

Well, I have always had this desire to re-create both the Avenger and Devastator, and to display them both side by side. The problem was lighting up the the two kits. I'm still very green where lighting is concerned, so what I did was to try to get all the aftermarket parts in first, and then worry about the lighting set later. I've managed to procure all of Odyssey Slipways' accurate parts, and am in the process of trying to get Arvey's accurate parts.

This leave 2 other ISD kit in my possession. I plan to clean off the old enamel paint from the earlier kit I had built and put in some scratch built parts on my ISD to come up with my own variant, or I might even try to recreate a Victory Class Destroyer, meaning I would need to butcher the kit and increase its scale since a Victory Class is a lot smaller compared to the ISD. Well, that's my plans anyway.

Part 1 - The Imperial Star Destroyer

Here's one ship that everyone deep inside would love to own, the Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD). She made her grand entrance during the opening scene in Star Wars : A New Hope, and ever since then, this ship has garnered a huge following, including me. I won't go into details on her history and specifications since this blog isn't about those things (you can find them though through google), but I'll touch more on the kits at hand and her studio model reference materials.

We see her again in The Empire Strikes Back, and then in Return of the Jedi, and to those that are unobservant like me, the ship looks similiar to the one we saw in Star Wars. But for those with an eye for details, they saw a variant model.

Thanks to the internet, I found out one was called the Avenger, and the other the Devastator. I'm sure fans have given names to the other ISDs we see throughout the movies but for the purpose of my blog highlight, I will only emphasize on these two since aftermarket parts have been made available to re-create the two different ISDs.

Her design is relatively simple enough, a triangular base with upper housing and a bridge complex, synanomous with that of an actual ship at sea. She serves as a capital ship for the empire with the ability to act as both a destroyer, fighter squardron carrier and troop/mechanize transport vessel, and possesses a formidable array of armament. She is a dream come true for anyone who wants to rule the universe. Her sheer size even dwarfs the USS Enterprise D, and has the ability to jump through hyperspace. Truly a remarkable design from George Lucas, this ship is so famous that it is successfully etched unto the mind of the masses that anytime anyone sees the ISD anywhere, they would recognise her straighaway from Star Wars.

Fantastic Plastic's X-71 Space Shuttle from Armageddon

We've seen many variants of the Space Shuttle in the movies and normally most of us would be enthrilled to see them since they are based on Real Science, especially more so when these shuttles were molded from the actual space craft from NASA. Now that the Space Shuttles have been decommissioned, the interest gains momentum as slowly but surely these shuttles will fall into the realm of nostalgia.

I'm sure some of you would have your favourite shuttles, be it the one seen from the movie "LifeForce" or others, but the topic today highlights on one that has a kit being prepared for mass sales. Its the Shuttle from the movie "Armageddon", the X-71 Space Shuttle. Abet there were many discrepancies on the shuttle launch procedures as well as it integrity, but its only a movie. Hence don't take these shuttles as practical, but relive them through the movies.

In the early opening scene, we were treated to a disaster in space when the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed by meteorites. (I wonder if they would still use the Shuttle Columbia's insignia in view of the real life tragedy that be-fell that shuttle). It was initially thought the shuttle was destroyed by terrorise until NASA (in the movie) discovered that a huge chunk of rock was headed for earth.

Hence a plan was hatched, to land on that asteroid, drill to its core centre, and plant a nuclear warhead to break apart the piece of rock so it can safely glide past earth. Don't ask me if this is actual science or whether if this could work in real life, I'm no rocket scientist. But I did enjoy the show. I thought Bruce Willis was great there.

In this movie, we got to see two shuttles launched simultaneously, the Freedom and Independence. I remember reading somewhere that some of the launch sequence were from actual shuttle launches, and that the X-71 were digitally put in to replace the shuttles. How did I know this? Try looking at the scene when the shuttles reached earth's atmosphere just before booster separation. Someone missed out the shuttle on the background and what was shown was an actual shuttle with its rocket boosters.