U-TIN-NI!!!

Revell-Fan

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Holy smokes, it's Xmas again!!! That means it is time to start a new Star Wars themed model for my friend at work. This year was the year of unexpected events for me and I had to skip and move many projects because of that. My original plan for his BD was undermined by some health issues (I got cut open at hospital in April - fortunately they did great work and did not forgot to close me up again ;) :D ) so I had to postpone the model I originally planned to make for him (I won't tell you here in order not to spoil anything). So I switched to a simpler model (at least I thought till I saw it was half-finished ;) ) and made a Snowspeeder - in the middle of summer. Originally the Speeder was supposed to be this year's Xmas model because of its nature being a cold-weather themed vehicle. So I thought hey, let's make the model he was supposed to get for his BD now to give it to him as an Xmas present. The plan was sound - until he discovered The Vintage Collection from Hasbro. I showed him their latest product and he was all-in to get his very first TVC figures: two Off-World Jawas! Some people know that my collecting career began in November of 1982 with a Kenner Jawa and a Sandpeople, so we may see how this goes with my friend. ;) :D

NOW. With two Jawas at the ready I thought it would not be a bad idea to make a fitting ride for them to get to their new home. Fortunately a nice and very well executed model was already standing by: Shunichi Makino's Sandcrawler! Hence the model I originally wanted to make was postponed again and now we are witnessing the birth of a hot-weather themed vehicle - in winter. :drinksmile:

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Since the original model is a bit small I resized the plans by 200% to make it go with the figures as a forced perspective model. The overall length will be about 30 cm which I think is pretty nice.

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A few parts had to be cut in two and re-joined with paper strips.

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The detail is very nice overall but the only area which could benefit from some rework is the back. It is completely flat, the greeblies are all printed on.

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A few selected parts are re-inforced with some left-over card.

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I eye-balled the shape of the formers and cut them to shape on-the-fly.

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I assembled all sub-assemblies first.

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Then I tackled the larger pieces. Again several components were re-inforced with corrugated card.

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Revell-Fan

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I added some flaps made of left-over paper so that the formers keep their orientation:

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Even with these small mods the front section is now as solid as a brick.

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The base piece needs a few marker streaks in selected areas:

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The same procedure on the middle part:

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The recessed pieces have the same texture. I turned the one on the other side around by 180° to get an asymmetrical look.
 

Revell-Fan

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Thank you all for your fine comments. :)

I continued working on the wheel boxes and tracks. The boxes are pretty straight forward and surprisingly VERY stable.

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I printed two sets of tracks in order to cover up the white back side of the outer tracks.

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First I attached one stripe with the texture facing down.

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It is important that they are flush with the inner side of the wheel box. If you center them you won't be able to glue the wheel box mount into place.

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Then I attached another stripe with the texture facing up.

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The fit is almost perfect. The tracks are slightly longer than they should be but this is barely noticable on the finished product.

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There are four wheel box mounts:

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And finished! :)
 

Revell-Fan

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:)

Great work! Now all we need a few Jawa!

My friend is getting two of them. ;)

Unfortunately he won't be able to put them inside since I'm gluing all parts together. Nevertheless, they would provide enough space to store some sweets or such. Here is a view at the center box glued to the fuselage:

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I painted the edges and flaps with a brown marker to prevent some white showing through later-on.

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The front piece needs some colour at the bottom, too.

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So when you attach the front you could use the top flap as a hinge:

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;)

The same can be applied to the rear box. Just sayin'. ;)

Now on to the problem area.

The rear piece is the one where the business is. However, Shunichi chose to go the easy route and made it all flat. I imported the unfolded part as a texture in SketchUp and folded it together. I tried to do that before and failed. This time, however, I was successful. I changed the geometry to make it look a bit more interesting and unfolded it in Pepakura to keep the texture. This is the result:

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A dry-fit of the main piece at the left was promising, so I continued with the new parts. I kept the original flat part as a fallback option.

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Revell-Fan

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The new recessed back pieces were installed.

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Realizing that the new parts are buildable and would fit I chose to cut up the original part into spare parts to make the rear look cleaner:

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In addition, the smaller circles at the front were laminated to thicker card and glued into place.

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The inside had to be reinforced with some card to prevent bulging:

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And this is the complete fuselage:

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The bottom components are attached.

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I printed out a picture of a dried out desert soil, laminated it to a cardboard plate and cleaned up the other sides with black paper to get a simple but effective base:

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Revell-Fan

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Thank you - but you haven't seen the beauty pics yet! ;)

Here they come! :D

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Thank you very much for watching! The rear enhancement will be available in the Resources shortly. I'm really glad that everything worked as planned. Of course you could flesh out the model further but due to the time I had available this was everything I was able to do. :)
 
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Revell-Fan

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Final thoughts: The model is pretty easy to build, very beginner-friendly. The parts are a nice size and scale up nicely. The fit is great, even at 200%. The texture is awesome and deceives the eye by making you believe that there is more going on than it really is. Basically it is just some big boxes glued together. This simplicity makes it an ideal candidate for using it as a gift box. A few areas need some colour and reinforcement but that is just a minor issue. :)
 
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