Rebel Blockade Runner

This model is not my masterpeice or even my signature piece. It is me. I am 29 inches tall and a dirty gray except for a red belly. Well, ok, I am taller than that, but this model is still me.

Who among us wasn't enthralled with Princess Leia's ship? What - ELEVEN ENGINES?! Life's too short. But then I found Joe Johnston's (from Fort Worth, too!) drawing in the "Star Wars Sketchbook". Only three engines - Still too many! I can go to the trouble to create individual panels for a ship, but my threshold for boredom does not exceed my laziness into the realm of the third engine that Johnston drew. The last design influence, the fins flanking the engine module, are an homage to my favorite Star Wars ship, "Slave I" - I've always loved it for its sheer novelty of design and because it represented to me the lonely freedom of a one-man "Serenity".

The model started as a flatish box joined to an old coffee-maker drip cup "head" via a section of a hamster run - The yellow tube available at pet stores. On the other end I externally buttressed a fragile drinking cup on the bottom with a sheet of plastic common with the box, and on the top with the lower hull of an out-of-production Tamiya SCHWERER PANZERSPAHWAGEN 8(Rad) Sd.Kfz. 232. The box atop the engines I always figured should be a Monogram Jagdpanzer IV L/70 Lang but I scratchbuilt this one. The flanking shapes are the upper hulls of a Leichter Panzerspahwagen Sd.Kfz. 223. The engines are L'Eggs eggs and drinking glasses. The larger gun turrets are also eggs (Easter, though).

Painting is frequently a tribulation. Modelmaster Light Gray enamel, red enamel, then an airbrushed wash of thinned black. Yuck! I mean, ok, sometimes a ship looks better when the disparate colors are somewhat blended together. But into shades of dark gray? On an ostensibly white ship? Used a big brush (huge by modeling standards, small by house-painting standards) to apply to a small area at a time a wash of mineral spirits and black oil paint. It and a little rubbing cleaned-off much of the previous wash - Hurrah! Followed-up with black around the exhaust and a drybrushing of light gray.

Building a large large-scale ship like this was fun - I enjoy the feeling of kinship with the initial Star Wars and Galactica model makers who used the same kits on their ships. On the other hand, this big boy needs a new home, somewhere roomy. Anybody got an empty bus station?

Dimensions: 30x12x8 inches.

This page and all contents © 2024 by John Douglass unless otherwise accredited
Last updated on February 07, 2012.

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