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Build Your Own Imperial Star Destroyer
tashanna writes "I got an e-mail from my brother with a link to this. Someone has built an Imperial Star Destroyer model from the original Star Wars movie that's appropriately-sized for the 4" action figures. The guy made it with an armory, bridge, cell bay, computer room, engineering (split over 2 levels), Darth Vader's chamber, conference room, troop rest room, medical bay and it measures 2 meters, by 1.5 meters, by 1 meter and is for sale on Ebay. There are interior photos on the eBay site. Ummm... WOW!"
That's not Imperial, that's butter!
I know this post is kinda relevant and I am even glad to see it here but has anyone noticed that this is also just using /. to advertise the ebay auction to the target audience?
/. :)
Then again, well done for getting free ads on
Well the auction was stopped early. Wonder why?
Comes with the Chewbacca Defense system!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
http://www.overclockers.com.au/%7Ebluesmurf/
If the point was not for the person who made it to enjoy it and keep it around, then what was the point? I know that if I spent that many hours on it *for fun* then I wouldn't be selling it on no ebay.
I donno, maybe the guy has bills to pay, maybe he didn't want it kicking aroundm, taking up space. But when these things are sold on ebay in the same article, it kind of kills the whole "coolness" mood for me. Its like they are pimping the auction to jack up the price. Anyone else feel the same?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
1)Waste hours of life building scale star-destroyer model. /. with link to auction
2)Post star-destroyer for sale on ebay.
3)Post story on
4)PROFIT!!!!
Now before you mod me flamebait, realize this is a joke, and dammit I want one of these, but am both too poor and too lazy to ever have one.
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It really must have taken a lot of work to build it; he built this out of love I'm sure.
Too bad he didn't realize that the world is bigger than Swindon, Wiltshire UK, and fails to be willing to ship it. After 125,000 page views on this auction mostly from nowhere near him he just terribly screwed himself.
What a waste of free exposure!
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The thing just looks like a big balsa wood model, and it isn't very detailed. I am a model maker, and I feel the creator could have chunked a lot of plastic ship models for nurnies and greebles.. He also, could have chunked old star wars toys for control panels etc. It really just looks like a large DIY project, and not a playable toy. I was a kid not too long ago, and I wouldn't really wanna play with some big balsa wood, grey-pained thing. It also looks like it would also break too easily.
I mean I wouldn't crit, but when you put it out here, it's open season; not to mention this shouldn't have been on here anyway; it's like an advertisement.
I don't have a problem with it being an "ad" if you can really call it one. But it has nothing to do with building your own. There's no instructions. It's just that some dude built one. That's what the topic should have been: "Some dudbe built a Star Destroyer".
Who cares if it's an ad? It's still really cool to look at the pictures, regardless if it's for sale or not. Window shopping is cool.
Pissing off Kuat Drive Yards by copying their patended ship design seems like a real bad idea.
He should have waited until we have atleast one orbital defense platform up.
All I gotta do is come up with some sort of geeky spin on a complete set of Mama's Family videotapes and I'll finally get these goddamned things off my hands.
Its not complete though. my estimation to allow for 4" figures would put the scale at about 1:25, in its entirety, it would be about 64 meters long. Maybe a bit smaller. Try building that :)
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You, sir, have hit the nail on the head.
I couldn't put my fingers on exactly what it was that was missing!
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But it doesn't have a Mr. Coffee or Mr. Radar! Damn you, Lone Star!!
Mod me down, troll, offtopic, but is this really the right forum to be discussing this? There are no plans on how you can be "building your own star destroyer". They is no page on how he made it. When /. covers these sort of things there is usually lots of coverage. Plans, how-tos, "where to buy parts". This? Nope, just the ebay auction page.
Maybe it isn't disturbing enough, but I think this really belongs here. A forum to comment and post funny and disturbing ebay auctions.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
But where does Barbie fit in?
Yes! Now us (boys) men can take our (dolls) collectable figurines and (play) display them in a scale size (doll-house) terrarium!
It's very well done, but...
The maker apparently doesn't know much about Star Wars. He calls it a "scale" replica...considering a Star Destroyer is supposed to be 1.6 kilometers long, those little model people are what, 500 feet tall?
And the bridge section shouldn't be near as fat.
He even says that a Star Destroyer boasts "8 laser batteries" when it's a well known fact that it has 60 turbolaser cannons...not 8. If it had 8 laser cannons, two X-wings would outgun it, lol.
I read the summery and was like, "What is a Star Wars"?!?! Then I was relieved to see you had a link so I could easily find out more about those Star Wars.
Love,
Duh McObvious
What gave you that idea? The picture of the kid next to it, the 4" Star Wars dolls shown inside the Star Destroyer, or the text indicating that it was made for play?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
On my 25th birthday I got a Death Star replica from my friends. It was built from an inflatable bathball and a large plastic bag. Unfortunetaly it was destroyed by some rebels armed with alcohol a couple of months later. Anyway, while it was still intact I used it to threaten my roommates when they "forgot" to do their dishes.
rarely does slashdot link to a page with alot of BW/ power AND a counter. heh you can refresh to see the slashdot effect in realtime.
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The war on terror is a war for peace
I am a 3D modeler/TD by trade, heh I guess that lingo isn't common geek speak, here is an article on 'greebling', or 'adding nurnies and greebles' to an object. It's basically the art of making up hi-tech looking crap. The original star destroyers were greebled with plastic navy ship parts and other crap. Interestingly enough, i think they were somewhere around the size of this guys toy; i may be wrong...
I'm sorry, but the anal retentive streak in me just wouldn't let this go. In order for a Star Destroyer to be built to the same scale as 4" action figures it would need to be over 75 meters long! Now *that* would be a freakin' lego project!
Okay, fine, I'll be editor for the day. (5 seconds of googling later...) Make your own Star Destroyer.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
... it would need to be over 75 meters long!
That's exactly what I was thinking. To scale with the standard action figures would mean it'd be larger than you could possibly ship (pun intended) and the five-year-old would probably be able to fit *inside* one of the circular engines on the back. Now, the rooms inside based on the photos look almost to scale, but there should be like umpteen thousand rooms inside one SSD. Compare to the regular sized tie fighters that the figures fit in. You might be able to house ten fighters in that whole model..
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I'm a fan of the sleek ship designs that keep their junk on the inside where it belongs. Of course, it's harder to judge scale when you can't see the irregular pieces of purposely discolored sheetmetal put into place by human hands (ugh)... but it makes more sense that way.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Yea. It's wrong to make money on anything.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Maybe you should get a bit more anal about reading the article.
> Although not entirely screen accurate (it would have been the length of my street for that) the distinctive shape is unmistakable.
I believe somewhere in the description he does mention that it is out of scale (because if he were to make it completely in scale it would be as big as a city block) but most of the really 'cool' stuff is there.
Step 1) Get Yourself and 25,000 metric tons of steel into space.
Step 2) Start Welding.
Step 3) ??????
Step 4) PROFIT!
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Red - "I found your doll, dumbass."
Eric - "It's an ACTION FIGURE! "
if you click on this link you will find one that has a computer inside it.!
You and your replies seem to be missing the point that it is not a model; it is a playset designed for small children like the one in the photograph. He also says that it is quite sturdy, and designed to not have small piece come off during use.
It is a labor of love that a caring father created for his children, not to impress the denizens of slashdot. I strongly doubt he had anything to do with this getting posted on the front page, and seeing as how he isn't willing to ship it he doesn't benefit much from it.
I think for an object made largely from wood and decals it looks quite good, and most eight year olds would be thrilled with it, not to mention the envy of their friends. Just because it isn't covered in molded plastic doesn't make it less impressive.
For someone who still plays with toys, you are rather crtical of how someone else spends their time. Don't take that the wrong way; I paint and convert tabletop figures all the time; I just don't project arbitrary standards inappropriately over the internet.
The only reason for aerodynamics is of course, for air to flow cleanly over the surface. In Vacuum, no flowing of air.
So if you have some sort of hypothetical shielding, it really would not matter too much if you had the eiffel tower sticking out of the top of your space ship. As long as it is braced well enough to handle all the g-force of acceleration and turning.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
# BUGBUG: put ingress filtering on this vent.
# someone might want to... I dunno... shoot a
# torpedo down there or something.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Spacecraft will probbaly always tend towards the "junk box" style because it's cheap and easy to engineer. ;)
When they start making spacecraft for consumers, then there will probably be more sleeker looking spacecraft. And they won't all be silver or grey either!
Whats worse - buying this, or not buying it because its techically the wrong size?
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And don't forget all the contract labor that has to put financial interests before their own safety, who, as it turns out, made the wrong choice and became victims of a war they had no part in.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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It's a space station!
He's getting the money to move out of his mother's basement
A Star Destroyer made for 4" action figures? How bout one made for 4' actual people. I won't be interested in buying one until I can sit my own hyperbolic chamber and mentally kill people.
.. knew the power of the /dark side/ of the force!
I don't have the link, but somebody did have a Rebel Blockade runner on ebay that was built to scale (for the 4" figs) and it had to pulled around on a 35' tractor trailer - an Imperial Cruiser is over 10X larger than a Blockade Runner (150 meters long vs 1600 meters long) so this isn't even close.
LRJ
The first Star Destroyer model (Devastator) was about three feet in length. The second one (Avenger) built for "Empire" was about eight feet and *much* more detailed, and the Super Star Destroyer (Executor) for the same movie was about ten feet. Some really good photos of the Avenger studio model are available here, and show the sheer amount of effort that ILM put into building these behemoths. Of course, there are lots of other photos of all the studio models available elsewhere online.
Gads, I gotta get a life....
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It's about time we get a link posted here that you can visit without being the first 5 people to see the post.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
that the model is not in scale with 4 inch toys. It is in scale (of some undisclosed ratio) with the on-screen version as far as external construction goes. The inside has been redesigned to be appropriate for use with the 4 inch toys, but a look at the picture will show how out of scale it is. Clearly an ISD has more than six or seven rooms.
As he says, a toy that was properly in scale to 4 inch toys would be the length of his street. Really, what the guy has done is the perfect compromise between accuracy to the movie and functionality as a toy. i applaud him.
lysergically yours
I was just looking at this thinking....there weren't a handful of rooms on these suckers, they were HUGE! They had huge launchbays that could hold shuttles and squads of tie fighters.
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind words regarding my Star Destroyer. A subscriber was kind enough to send me the link to this site, which I had no idea existed never mind was discussing my ship. It did indeed take 3 years to build but only with a week here and a few days there. When I started I had no idea what I was going and no prior woodwork skills. I simply wanted to make the ship I yearned for when I was a child and looked at it how I believe a child would. As some of you have noticed I have ended the listing and have sold the ship privately. It has gone to a good home and I can rest assured it will be played with as a toy is meant to be. I would certainly not say a profit was made, apart from the many hours of labour, wood is not cheap to buy. I also gave the buyer many figures and ships to man the vessel with. During the last week or two I have been inundated with emails from Star Wars fans telling me of their admiration for the creation, I am just astounded. I did not expect in a millennia anything like the response I have received. I am not a carpenter or artist by trade, but a simple soldier in the British Army. I am posted very shortly to Germany and really do need to cut down some of my Star Wars possessions. My response to the critics is I have made something that has put a smile on a child's face - what have you done? For the rest of you, hang around another year or three because your inspiration has me planning my next project - A 4 inch scale Deathstar! That is scale so the figures fit in it, not 80 miles in diameter. DarthScooby1001