Topic: Rogue82's Custom Vehicles

[Rogue82]

following on from my start in the Figure department here's a few of the Vehicles I'm customising. Inspired by Samurai Studio's Gorgeous weathering and LED work on his A,B, X & Y Wings I've picked up the knife and had at it!

So far I have:

• A-Wing Starfighter WIP 1, 2
• Y-Wing Bomber WIP 1

My custom figures can be found here.
Outside of the toys I'm into the costuming side of Star Wars. I have full Stormtrooper armour and I'm (slowly) working on a Rebel Pilot's outfit. My WIP on this can be found here

Hope you enjoy.

Chris

[Rogue82]

The first ship I've been working on is the A-Wing. Ever since getting the Ralph McQuarrie Return of the Jedi Portfolio image number 17 has been burned into my memory. Two blue A-wing's soaring into battle. Stunning.

I always wanted one as a kid but even then the Droids version was selling for silly money so when the POTF2 version was released in 1997 I jumped on it and loved it. Its aged pretty well, the only updates Hasbro have made to it over the years is more detailing in the cockpit and different paint apps. But as yet no McQuarrie paint scheme, so thats where this is headed. I'm not going to be changing the guns and thrusters to match the concept version.



First I unscrewed the ship and took out all the guns, landing gear, seating etc. These will be painted, modifed and weathered later. Next I grabbed my scalpel and carefully trimmed back all the pannel lines before using a dremmel and going over them all as indentations. A scalpel had to be used for some of the smaller lines and at the ends of lines.




Next I used the scalpel to shave off one of the rings on each of the thrusters to match the film used models and sanded it smooth.


That is as far as I have got with this custom but I will be fully detailing the cockpit, adding fibre optic lights in the cockpit, flickering lights in the thrusters, McQuarrie paint scheme and weathering, looking at altering the canopy hatch and moving the mechanism. Plenty to keep me busy!

[wheeljack]

This will be a fun one to watch, what type of fiber optics are you going to be using, and where do you buy that kind of lighting fixtures?

[Rogue82]

Hi wheeljack. I plan on picking up a set of battery opperated chrismas tree lights, a fairly small string, with a built in "twinkle" setting and bunching a few together, but If I get brave I may have a play around with getting the components myself from Maplin (electrical supplies store here in the UK) so that I can get it to perform exactly how I want it to. Dirtyglovesoftalent on YouTube has done a version of it (I think he's a member on here aswell)

I buy my fibre Optics from a British company called Branor Systems. So far I've had good service and I'm pleased with the results, they also have some good fibre optics tutorials.

The other ship I am working on at the moment is a Vintage Y-Wing. After seeing the screaming Samurai customs I had to have a go at one myself so I picked up this Y-Wing off eBay for £5. It was typically missing 4 of the engine struts, the underside bomb, the top guns and one of the front guns. The electrics still work and the landing gear is quite strong but I may see if theres a way of strengthening it further. Here's the ship as it arrived.


To fix the thruster struts I bought some strips of plastic in a T Shape. I used the existing struts to get the right length and trimmed the ends to fit into the various holes on the Y-Wing body and the end cap of the thrusters. I also added anothe bit of the T strip on the reverse side to line up with the guides in the thruster. Below are the new struts.


This Y-Wing is a long way from finished. I still need to improve the cockpit detailing, possibly add a targeting computer with Lighting, fibre optics in the console, replace the front and top cannons,  replace the stickers with 3D components, flickering lights in the thrusters, and weathering.

[Wardog]

I can't wait to see these when they're done.....The Y-Wing especially. 

[wheeljack]

Thanks for all the wealth of info, I also live in England

[Tamer]

Wow, two great works in progress at the same time. On the fp.

[Luke Sprywalker]

OH wow! REALLY AWESOME START TO BOTH OF THESE VEHICLES!  By the way, I hope you will enter the A-Wing in our new customizing cotest that started yesterday.

[Rogue82]

Hi all, sorry about the delay in posts in my threads. My missus went back to university this year and demanded that she have the office, formerly my collection room and customizing workspace, as a space for her studies. Grumbling like Mutley I moved out and into the garage. Not an easy job given the amount of crap in there! I've spent the last few months clearing it out, installing cabinets, shelving and a fold down desk. Its still not completely as I'd like it but its workable. So the last few evenings I've managed to get in there and do some customizing!

Last night I resumed work on my A-Wing. I dremmelled out the engine thrusters on both the engine parts and the backing piece that holds them in place.




This image shows the original struts left in.


There is a gap between the two pieces that I will create a flame image printed onto acetate with greaseproof paper behind it as a filter. Behind that will be a flickering LED.

To get the flickering effect I've used a small LED tea-light.



I got these from a wedding I went to. I took the tea-light apart and carefully cut the LED from the circuit.  

I then soldered wire onto the protruding prongs from the circuit and the other end of the wire onto the clipped LED. This will give me the length I need to put the LED in the engine and house the circuit in the body of the ship. I've got to do some testing on how many LED's I can hook up to the Battery as I'll need at least two that flicker and one that stays on constantly.



Video of the flickering LED.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLCS2nhySs8

And finally here is the card used to block out the rest of the ships insides when looking lown the engine.



Hopefully More to come soon.

[Tamer]

Good to see you back, expect to see this on the front page sometime soon.

[StenHunter]

looking good! love the LED flicker effect. It's SOO much easier to find these extremely cheap lights and convert them to our needs than to scratch build them and having to know how many capacitors to put in..etc.. Good luck and keep the images coming!

[Bubba Fett]

Thanks for the tutorial. I can't wait to see the finished product!

[Tamer]

Had to use that video for the story on the front page. That is gonna be one cool engine assembly.

[Clonehead]

That was a brilliant idea using those tea lights. Keep us posted.

[PrimitiveTodd]

Holy cow...I never thought of adding tea lights...I love what you are doing!  I wish I had seen this before my A-Wing post a week or so ago.  Food for thought for sure!!!