1:144 'ish Star Wars 'The Empire Stikes Back' Diorama

[Mish]

I was getting a bit bored with the current project so I had this mad idea to try and recreate part of the battle scene from the start of film featuring the Rebel forces in their Snow Speeders and the attaching Empire forces in their ATATs. I had the Revell 1:72 Snow Speeder but when I tried to get a 1:72 ATAT the cost was prohibitive to I found some cheap Snow Speeders and ATATs from a Hong Kong dealer on ebay and chance it. The Snow Speeders are cast in resin and roughly 1:144 the ATAT is made from plastic and needed some assembly. However, the ATAT is a little under scale All it needed to finish it off was a little weathering.

 

I decided to try and replicate the famous scene where Luke Skywalker realises the only way to take out the ATATs is by using the rear facing grappling gun on their Snow Speeders and to trail the wire around the ATATs legs and thus 'trip' them up. In order to recreate this scene, I would have to support Luke's Snow Speeder with its grapple cable. After some experimentation, I found that I could just support the Snow Speeder on some 22 gauge florist wire that would give me the required 'stiffness' to recreate the Snow speeders flight around the legs.

 

I started off using a blank base that I got from Topnotch Models and the snow from Treemendus Scenics which as stuck down with PVA wood adhesive. Having two Snow Speeders I decided to use a little bit of modelling license and have acrashed Snow Speeder in the scene as well. Once nearing completion I was left aith some 'empty space' in the front of the base, especially in the front right quarter. So at the sugestion of a friend I decided to see if I could stretch my modelling license a little further and scratch build a blaster tower also seen at some point in the battle. Using a top off of a CA 'Zip Kicker' bottle at the base and a chopped down turret and gun from a 1:72 Sherman Firefly kit I fasioned a blaster tower. Now added to the diorama totally out of place it did form a pleasing to the eye placement.

 

Now to the shocker this little diorama took me just three and a half hours to put together! And do you know what? I'me quite 'chuffed' at the result of my mad idea.

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

[RalphSarc]

Oh cool!!