SCALE MODEL NEWS

EVERYONE'S FAVOURITE KILLER weapon, the Death Star is the most powerful armament possessed by the evil Empire, and it has been shown ( above ) in various forms of part-built construction. But brothers Benjamin and Isaac Botkin have gone much further, to create a mesmerising build-sequence that displays their musical and cgi talents. SMN report: The video was a personal fan film, created by musician Benjamin Botkin and his FX-guru brother, Isaac. The visuals were planned and created in Lightwave 3D software, while the score was composed especially for the sequence. Ben’s goal was to arrive at an original melody that echoed the iconic music style of John Williams. The musical piece for the sequence was created by Ben, using virtual instruments, available from a galaxy of online music libraries. It’s all truly inspiring stuff, and fascinating for any Star Wars fan – and indeed for anyone who is interested in visual effects, and music apps such as GarageBand. For scale model builders,...

HERE'S SOME FASCINATING VIEWING for you: Bart van Dijk's beautifully smooth animation of building a Lego Death Star. In Bart's build, 4016 individual Lego pieces come together as if by magic. SMN report: The Lego Death Star is a hefty piece of kit, weighing some 6.3 kg (14 lb) when fully assembled. Like other Lego stuff, it's not a true 'scale model' but is visually near enough to make the cut. If you like creatures with your technical equipment, there are plenty of Lego figures ( below ) to choose from. The AT-ST biped walker and TIE fighter are pretty nice to build, and fit neatly into the Lego Star Wars microverse. Lego offers an extremely well engineered model ( below ) of the Millennium Falcon , perhaps the most famous fictional spacecraft of them all. When assembled, the Falcon is not as heavy as the Death Star, but even so it weighs in at some 2.2 kg (4.8 lb), comprised of 1330 components. Star Wars has a galaxy of equipment to choose from, and Lego tr...

The US movie effects company ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) is coming up to its 40th birthday, due in May 2015. Formed in May 1975 by George Lucas, ILM has made groundbreaking special effects (SFX) for many big-name movies, including the scenes from Star Trek: Heart of Darkness  seen in the video above. However, the most influential of ILM's movie's has to remain the original Star Wars trilogy, starting with 1977’s Episode IV: A New Hope . The biggest difference between then and now is that in those early days, moviemakers made physical models for almost all SFX scenes - computer generated imagery (CGI) was in its infancy, and the amazing movie trickery today's audiences regard as normal lay decades in the future. Even so, Star Wars broke new ground in adventure science-fiction, for the spacecraft attack sequences looked absolutely convincing, and ILM created leading-edge technology to make them so. For example, to film the attack on the Death Star, cameras flew along a b...

SMN report: LEGO builders number in their legions, but we've just come across someone who has blown our socks off, a Dutchman titled the ‘Mad Physicist.’ The day job The Mad Physicist is just that - a physicist - in his day job, and LEGO-building is strictly a hobby that’s far away from the computers and laboratory. The title came from fellow LEGO builders who sometimes seemed to think that he must have a way of doing things that others wouldn't normally come up with. Stunning LEGO models ‘Mad’ or not, the models are simply stunning, and we show just a couple here. The V-22 Osprey is not only a fair replica of the real thing - note the rotor blades even have their blade twists incorporated correctly - but it also has retractable landing gear ( pic above ). One of our favourite Mad constructions is called Brickston, a play on the South London borough of Brixton. We don’t know about the actual store names, but in general, the model matches our old-time memories of the place well....