Combat Cloud Car
The combat cloud was never showcased in any of the movies but it was included in the "star wars essential guide to vehicles and vessels" which I have owned a copy of since I was very young... and some of my first "customs" were kit bashed sketches of the line drawings of the ships seen within that book!
One of my favorite designs, and one that I've always wanted to make a custom of but never felt confident enough in my abilities to do so, was the combat cloud car.
here is the line drawing scematic of that vessel:
The twin pod cloud car is similar enough to this vessel that I felt it could be adapted into the combat cloud car. Luckilly in my "fodder" box of action fleet ships that were missing parts I had a cloud car that one pod was missing it's canopy. I carefully cut the pods apart and started from there.
I had to first plug the gaping hole on the side of the pod where I cut the other section off, and did so by covering it with styrene pieces and made the duplicate application on the other side so that it would match. I then constructed wings and the rear fin from strips of styrene and fixed them into place as well.
the engine was made from a left-over x-wing engine. I trimmed it down and created a bend in the engine right before the nacelle so that it would be "in line" with the hull of the craft. It's not exactly like the schematic but I think it looks good and works well enough.
The gun mount on the front is something I'm significantly proud of. I wanted to have the guns recessed into a divot like in the schematic but didn't know how I was going to pull that off... when the solution hit me. I drilled a hole into the nose of the craft then inverted a jango fett helmet upside down and squeezed it into the hole, glued it into place and then trimmed off the excess to be flush with the hull. This gave me the perfect "bowl" to attach the two laser cannons!
I then repainted the entire vessel... twice... my first run at painting it was sloppy and I didn't like the color blue I used... so I repainted the entire vehicle and re-detailed it for, what I think, is a much better result.
WIP:
First paint scheme:
Final paint:
I realy love the mcquarrie concept colors of blue and grey on the cloud car, but of course that's not the color they used in the movies. I felt like it'd be a great color to use for the combat cloud car though and went with that... Because of the color's I've nicknamed it the "blue bird"