After focusing on the characters and costumes for last week's Star Wars Identities Exhibition, I thought I'd move onto another big favourite of mine - spaceships!
The exhibition featured a case several foot long with one of each of the main spacecraft from the films, with light rods along the length of it that would change from light blue to red. Viewed face on, it almost looks like the ships are jumping to hyperspace...
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| I had trouble identifying the lead ship - a Mon Calamari Cruiser? |
To give you a rough idea of scale, the B-wing featured on the right hand side is about the same size as my original Kenner toy version.
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| Rear end of an Imperial Star Destroyer |
This was the one point of the exhibition where my 12yo impatiently demanded 'are you going to take pictures of every single ship in there?' to which I replied 'Yes. Yes I am.' :P
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Side view Imperial Star Destroyer, plus Imperial Shuttle and
TIE fighter |
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| Close up on the TIE |
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| TIE Interceptor, my favourite of that specification |
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| AT-AT |
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| B-wing |
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| A-wing |
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| Imperial Shuttle |
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| Imperial ships |
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| SLAVE 1 |
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| Not sure about that one... |
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| My old favourite, the X-wing, with a Snowspeeder below |
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| Relative speed/manoeuvrability chart |
But one particular ship got a bit more wall and cabinet space than the others...
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| Falcon gun seat design |
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| Falcon cockpit sketch |
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| Possibly the most iconic of the Star Wars ships - the Millenium Falcon |
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In case you can't read it - essentially the original model
of the Falcon was too big for the manoeuvres required
in Empire so they had to build a second half the
size (about the size of the original Kenner toy version) |
More of the costume photos will go up at my Tumblr blog for the cosplay fans (probably over the summer) but that concludes my photos from the exhibition. Hope you enjoyed them!
Status Update
At the recent parent-teacher meetings for 12yo, one subject that came up was his non-doing of the 'voluntary' tasks that have replaced homework (the only school in the UK to abolish compulsory homework). Figures. But it turns out that a task for one subject is making a mask, so this weekend I recruited him into making the Witch-king mask for his cosplay, thereby easing my workload and satisfying at least one of his teachers. The whingeing levels were unreal (mums of teens will probably sympathize) but progress was made. Hubs also helped me cut out the 50+ card segments for the gauntlets, and I cut out the pattern and leather for the sword belt while watching
Return of the King for some visual references. The Witch-king cosplay is truly underway! Below you can see the 50+ pieces laid out in full and the cardboard base for the flail (because Blogger won't let me caption them without moving the images out of place. Grr).
I've fallen behind with the remaining edits and the deadline is looming. So it may be that only
Reunion goes to my editor in June, and hopefully
Unexpected, while
Revived lags behind.
Keir's Shadow is still undergoing revision, but as I just keep on adding to it I still haven't moved past 32%. Sigh.
This weekend we paid a visit to one of our local beaches as the sun was out. After several years of searching, we'd found a grand total of three fossilized sharks teeth at Walton, a place famous for such finds.
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| The longest is just 3cms in total length |
But as we sat to eat our sandwiches on the sea wall, hubs found this one just lying on the surface.
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| 4.5 cms |
Some light digging went on to reveal a total of 30 prehistoric sharks teeth, making our former efforts look completely pathetic! We also found a piece of rock that's suspiciously scaly-looking. It might just be an odd rock formation, but it
could be turtle fossil...
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| 90 minutes digging and we have these! |
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| Fossil or just funny looking rock? |
Further research suggests the teeth without that kind of knobbly bit on the bottom might actually be prehistoric crocodile teeth rather than shark, but either way we're quite pleased with our drastically expanded collection. And it was a nice day too.
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| View from the cliff top |
Happenings
There's lots going on!
While one SFR event ends (though you can still get
Quickshot via Instafreebie
HERE, you might have to double check links for the other books featured
HERE to see if they're still available), another is due to start on the 18th.
Another Instafreebie SFR special: 26 titles of Alien Romance and Adventure! Find your next sexy SciFi hero
HERE.
Plus, don't forget my special giveaway for a pair of custom-made crocheted dragonscale gloves in Keir blue, created by
Hoot and Luna. This is open internationally but PLEASE BE AWARE - any import/shipping taxes will be the responsibility of the recipient as these cannot be paid in advance by the sender.
And finally, if you
still have some space left, you can still top up your ereader with sizzling summer reads at the new romance eBook store Inside Romance with a 20% discount site-wide for the whole of May. Click the banner to visit. Enjoy!
And lastly, the thing I know you've all really been waiting for - chook pics! Have a great week.
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| Left to right: Effie, Fizzgig, and the now misnamed Pitch |
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| The gang's all here! Left to right: Kyru, Scoop, Pitch, Fizzgig & Effie |
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| Fizzgig |
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| Effie |
Wow, love the exhibition photos! The way they did those light bars to simulate the jump to hyperspace was way inventive. X-wing is still my fave design, next to the Falcon of course.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering from that speed and maneuverability chart if Han's description of the Falcon as "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy" was a bit overblown. I know, I know. She did the Kessel run in 14 parsecs. (Han shouts, "12!")
And I must confess, I don't think I've ever heard of or seen a B-Wing before. Or at least never noticed it in any of the films I've seen. Odd looking little craft.
The Witch-king costume looks like tons of work, so kudos on recruiting the kiddo to help out and at the same time score on his school assignment.
Those gauntlets are truly amazing.
Hi to the chooks.
Thanks Laurie! Yeah, the light rods worked quite well.
DeleteI think the chart was done for the Death Star battle, but what captain wouldn't boast about his ship and maybe exaggerate a little. :-P
If memory serves me right, the B-wings appeared in the final battle over Endor in RotJ. I thought them rather unwieldy but it didn't stop me buying the toy one (that and a Y-wing are the only original Kenner toys remaining of my collection).
I think 'not sure about that one' is Executor. LOVE spaceships. I built the plastic model kits for pretty well all of them (except Executor - they didn't have a kit for that). Colour me green.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI had kits for a lot of the one pilot fighters, and several of the Kenner toys (though I never got the Falcon). I'm not too knowledgeable on the bigger ships.
DeleteNo, it's not. Executor has no curves. Hmmm. Maybe a prequel ship. My best guess is the Delta-7 Jedi Starfighter.
ReplyDeleteYeah, looked at that one up but still not sure. I posted it on Facebook - I know someone who has done designs for SW craft so if he doesn't know then no one does!
DeleteForgot to mention how fascinated I was with your fossil shark tooth (and or croc tooth) finds. Especially that larger tooth. Wow.
ReplyDeleteIt's so cool just finding them on the beach. As I said, we'd looked for years without really finding much and then all those in one go! We're heading for the beach again this weekend - finding them is addictive.
DeleteIs Scoop a Cochin? Looks just like two of our girls (Puffball and Henrietta).
ReplyDeleteThey're all Pekin Bantams (I'd never heard of Cochins) but interestingly found this when I looked it up:
Delete"Pekin Bantams are true bantams, they have no large counterpart. They were originally Cochin Bantams when they arrived in the UK, however they had no relationship to large Cochins and looked quite different. They came from a different place (Peking in China) so after much debate over many years, they were renamed as ‘Pekin Bantams’. Around the rest of the World, Cochin Bantams are similar in appearance to the British Pekin Bantams although breed standards are slightly different."
So there you have it. But as to why they're called 'Pekin' and not 'Peking'... :P