StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This model is about a year old, but it's one of the few models I have that I actually, completely, 100% finished before being distracted by some other shiny project. . .

From "The Art of Episode 1": The "Koenig"-style Naboo fighter design, so called due to it's similarity to a German battleship of the same name (I can't seem to access the webpage that has the image right now, so I can't check the specifics of the info; I hope the website is still up.)

Anyway, I was quite taken with the design, what with its 'boiler-plate' OT feel, so I decided to build a CGI version. It took a bit of fiddling to work out a color and marking scheme that I didn't hate, but it eventually worked out; I think the orange on the front somehow pulls it all together.

The ship never got a pilot, but I was considering that as a seperate project anyway, so I can still technically count this model as done without feeling bad about it.

Modeled in LightWave 3D; textures hand-painted in Photoshop. Lighting, rendering and post-processing by my brother, who's much better at that sort of thing than I am.

It never would have worked. I mean, you can fit more than one R2 unit in one of those!

Plus it needs an upper rear wing like the one on the nose, kinda like an I when looked at head-on...

How about it flares behind the cockpit forming a small delta shape?

Like so: (Forgive the wretched ascii.)

Southpaw wrote:This model is about a year old, but it's one of the few models I have that I actually, completely, 100% finished before being distracted by some other shiny project. . .

From "The Art of Episode 1": The "Koenig"-style Naboo fighter design, so called due to it's similarity to a German battleship of the same name

Modeled in LightWave 3D; textures hand-painted in Photoshop. Lighting, rendering and post-processing by my brother, who's much better at that sort of thing than I am.

That looks weird, good model work but a weird fighter. I'm wondering how it lands with the gun so far down? And the design is so weighted to the back... Still it's distinctive you have to give it that.
Have you tried mounting the wings to the rear and maybe twin guns set in the Nose?

I can see no resemblance to any German dreadnought whatsoever.

Rob Wilson wrote:That looks weird, good model work but a weird fighter. I'm wondering how it lands with the gun so far down? And the design is so weighted to the back... Still it's distinctive you have to give it that.
Have you tried mounting the wings to the rear and maybe twin guns set in the Nose?

I think the whole design as a nice, off-beat quality that I really enjoy. I considered at one point adding landing gear of some kind to the back, which could lower down to the level of the gun, but decided not to because:

(1) The final Naboo Starfighter design "lands" by hovering a few feet above the ground, so this one could probably do the same thing, and

(2) I was too lazy to augment the design.

I think I actually did test it out with wings at the back, but as I said, I like the whole 'tone' of this design, and didn't want to change it all that much. Didn't think of the twin guns in the nose, though. Actually, a full-scale rework to include those changes, plus space for an astromech droid might be worth trying. . .

Sea Skimmer wrote:I can see no resemblance to any German dreadnought whatsoever.

I still can't seem to connect to the website with the scan of the sketch to confirm the specifics, but I recall that the story was that Doug Chiang took the prow of a Koenig-class dreadnought and added the cockpit, wings/engines and gun to come up with this design. The site had a photo of one of the ships with panelling on the front that bore a strong resemblance to the zig-zag marking on the side hull of the fighter.

Southpaw wrote:

Sea Skimmer wrote:I can see no resemblance to any German dreadnought whatsoever.

I still can't seem to connect to the website with the scan of the sketch to confirm the specifics, but I recall that the story was that Doug Chiang took the prow of a Koenig-class dreadnought and added the cockpit, wings/engines and gun to come up with this design. The site had a photo of one of the ships with panelling on the front that bore a strong resemblance to the zig-zag marking on the side hull of the fighter.

It's rob Browns site, which for some reason appears to be down. Basically it's as Southpaw states here, though the prow (or it could have been the stern) was to be 'doubled' up to give the fighter a bit of extra height.

And on the topic of the Naboo fighter, according to the Episode 1 ICS, the landing gear is stowed either side under the rear of the wing roots. I therefore have to assume the floating was performed by the dedicated bays the fighters were stored in to allow a quick response and exit.

Weren't the N-1s floating on the docking platform in Ep 2?

I've never cared for that concept design, to be honest. A slightly beefier N-1 would be a lot better.

Sea Skimmer wrote:I can see no resemblance to any German dreadnought whatsoever.

Just a very vague similarity to the bow of one. I was expecting a midships turret....

(edit) The model itself is very, very nice, though. The jealosy I feel on seeing the stuff people like this produce burns. It burns real bad.
Something tells me it's not like I could go drop a grand and pick up a program and start churning out models, however.

CorSec wrote:Weren't the N-1s floating on the docking platform in Ep 2?

Yup. ILM probably didn't want to be bothered with landing gear, either!

Frank Hipper wrote:The model itself is very, very nice, though. The jealosy I feel on seeing the stuff people like this produce burns. It burns real bad.

[Mr. Burns]Excellent. . .[/Mr. Burns] *evil laughter*

Frank Hipper wrote:Something tells me it's not like I could go drop a grand and pick up a program and start churning out models, however.

That's pretty much what I did, actually. Not the 'dropping a grand' part, though. (Note to the FBI: If you take me to court, I'll deny everything. )

Seriously, when I first got Lightwave, I just jumped näively into modeling after only the most cursory tutorial reading. Admittedly, my earliest stuff wasn't all that great, but boy was I happy with it! I guess it was one of those "bumblebee doesn't know it can't fly" sorts of things. So it just might work for you, too.