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[Jagged Fel]

You sneaky punk :P

[Syrtaras]

I wield the sneaky bastard sword of sneakiness, so what can I say...? :P

[Vortagh]

I guess I should give some sort of "what became of this?" report. :p

So let's see. The project is on hold and will be so for the next three years. Why?

The first thing that happened, was me scrapping the very first iteration of "The Frame". In case you don't know (most likely because you never thought about it), the ISD model - any ISD model that isn't a model kit - has an internal frame. As it it custom built, it's made of many outside plates, that are glued together. Obviously anything of that size would need some internal structure. Otherwise it would bend (Ever built a model kit of the starship Enterprise and kept it for a few years? You'll notice the warp nacelles bending out of shape).
So, why is this a problem? Well, the first iteration of that frame was made out of wood (basically we are talking about five wooden "bulkheads", set spaced from bow to stern, connected by three wooden "sticks". The middle stick would not be one stick, but several, as it had cutouts for where the hangars would intersect it.
ANYWAY, to make a long story short, while actually making it longer through more explanation: The frame was shit. It was fine in itself, but to display an ISD without building an ugly cradle, you need to do what they did in the prop department and build in a connection point (used to hold the model for filming shots). That wouldn't work with the wooden frame. There'd be too much stress on the screws and everything. So I went to metal. A tiny bit heavier, but it worked fine.


Which is where the next problem came, because stupid, resulting in the third frame.
When I started this, I did my research, but not research-y enough. The reason I had problems with finding the kits mentioned above, was the fact that I had the entire scale wrong. The kits used on the ISD where, in fact, 1:700 scale, not the 1:1x00 I mentioned looking for. The ISD used in what we now call "A New Hope" was smaller than all the "studio scale" models I had seen. The ones with the super detailing in, used in ESB and ROTJ, are 2 metres long. Yeah. And they use 1:700 scale.

So I had two choices:
- continue with the ISD on frame II, building something that would never be what I wanted
- scrap the whole shebang again and start anew.

I picked the second one. People who know me personally, know that I hate half-assed things. It's the "I never finish anythi" approach. Either you do it as perfect as possible, or you stop. What's the point in continuing, when you know that in the end, it will not be what you thought it would be? It's a typical prop-/replica-building thing and is only fueled by my dislike for bad model making.

So, that was around 2009/2010, IIRC. Now it's 2015. So what gives?
The past couple years have been very insane for me. Let's say there was a lot of work, a lot of hate, a lot of disgust, a lot of anger, a death or two, illness and other things during various times.

I didn't have the time or the money to work on this and I definitely won't have either in the next 12 months. There might be more of both after that.

There's two major issues in replica building. Time and Money.
Time is huge. We are talking not only about actually building and painting something like this, which already takes hundreds of hours, but research, research, research, research, planning - often making drawings and even 3D models on the PC - and research. Usually I don't have that time. If I do...
If I do, I usually don't have the money. This isn't the cost of the metal frame. Or the plastic sheets that make the hull. You don't build this with a screwdriver, a hammer and some airfix colours. You need a dremel with lot of attachments. You need a mask because many of the materials you are spraying into the air are poisonous. You need an airbrush. You need to cast resin in silicone molds (unless you have more money than brains, then you can go and buy hundreds of model kits to "super detail the hull & superstructure of a two-metre long ISD) - btw, resin is carcinogenic. Remember that mask I mentioned? Better get a good one, one of those mouth/nose/eyes covering HEPA ones. You need a good printer. Why? So you can print on photo film, creating photo-etched parts. In an acid bath. Why? Because I want fukken TIE-Fighters in my hangar! And their wings need to be THIN. :p

Etc etc etc.

The project isn't dead. Far from it. The good part about not having money to blow on this, is that it's totally unnecessary for research. :p
I'm still planning on finishing this. I love everything about it and nothing yet, has ever inspired me to come up with all these wonderful additions and how to actually bring them alive. So I'll keep you updated. :)

What I will do beforehand though, to put some things that I thought of into reality, long before I can create the ISD (also....right now I kinda don't have the space to house a 2x1m arrow of awesome anywhere in my apartment :p).
A Corellian Corvette. A Corellian Gunboat. A Lancer-Class Frigate. A Strike Cruiser. A Carrack. Something small. Something I can build beforehand to try out things. To add ideas that I've had. To create something so Syrt shuts the fuck up about me never finishing anythi :p

Stay tuned, those of you who still roam these boards.

[Jagged Fel]

The good part about not having money to blow on this, is that it's totally unnecessary for research.

In other words, no money == VL :P

[Vortagh]

Totally. :p

[Munro Burton]

If you plan to take another eight years, you might as well plan to 3d print the thing, although that's a lot of 3d designing work. You could start with the small stuff - TIEs, shuttles, corvettes, frigates. Overall equipment(rent instead of buy) and material investment would probably be about the same in the end, but there wouldn't be much hands-on work. Except maybe the painting, but I think some printers can do that too.

At least you're living up to the in-universe remark that an ISD had something like 170,000 design flaws. :P