Adding to an impressive line-up of spacecraft for SHIPtember 2018 is Anders Horvath with his LEGO replica of a GR-75 Medium Transport from The Empire Strikes Back. Choosing to build a Star Wars spacecraft so iconic and recognizable is challenging, but Anders nailed it with excellent contrast between the cargo containers, central greebling, and relatively slick hull panels. Best yet, it’s even got an interior.
The layered elliptic paneling of the hull is built beautifully. The original seen on screen is segmented unevenly, and this is reflected well in the LEGO rendition. The layering of tiles create the divisions between panels and suggests curvature down the length.
The Medium Transport’s impressive details extend into its microscale interior revealed by removing the top panels.
Of all the interior rooms, the microscale bridge is my favorite. 1×1 corner panel pieces as chairs define the scale well here.
Finally, in the ship’s rear is the thruster array, integrated well with the rest of the hull’s shape.
More photos of Anders’s GR-75 can be found on his Flickr album. Like most SHIPtember participants, Anders documented the build process with photos, which you can explore here.
I have to be honest, but while this is a really nice looking model, it just doesn’t scream “Rebel Medium Transport” to me. I’m familiar with the ship it’s supposed to represent, and when seeing a random picture of it will be able to identify it as being from the Hoth evacuation, but unless viewing this from above I just don’t see it. It’s really the cargo containers. I’ve never had a really close look at the exterior hull structure and always assumed they loaded the cargo internally, but pulling up movie images does show that they had external cargo pods like these, except they were much smaller in relation to the size of the craft (probably closer to a 2×4 brick than what’s built here, which look more like minifig-scale pods), they’re not as brightly colored (they’re dull enough that without a close examination they can be mistaken for part of the hull itself), and in none of the images do they hang below the ventral armor plating. On a guess, this was modeled after the model from the X-Wing miniatures game, as the cargo pods on that are also relatively huge compared to the size of the spacecraft. But I do like the armor plating. Compound curves like that are very hard to pull off nicely, and while it seems many people like to come up with their own techniques rather than copy others, it’s always great to see anything that doesn’t look like the UCS Death Star II. That thing looks like a mid-90’s 3D videogame model with the polygon count turned way down.
I do agree that the lowest section of cargo pods doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen before. However, the scale of the whole ship is what concerns me more. I’m not sure that the occupants would be that small in comparison. Now judging from what I’ve seen while playing Star Wars Battlefront the people would be much larger, something slightly smaller than minifigure scale, but definitely not as small as microscale. I don’t remember a scene in Empire Strikes Back that included a person standing next to more than a partial image one of these in the movie for scale comparison either, so that is why I refer to the video game (which is approved by Lucasfilm). All in all though, it is a fantastic looking build.
@Purple Dave: Does someone just need to give you a hug? You spend an inordinate amount of time writing long, pedantic critiques of other people’s creative efforts. Maybe just sit back and enjoy it instead? You don’t need to prove that you’re the smartest or most knowledgeable person on the Internet…
Just because Lucasfilm clears something doesn’t mean it’s accurate. West End Games defined a lot of the pre-EU canon, and they got tons of stuff wrong. They listed the ISD at 1 mile in length, but the SSD at only 5 miles, when there’s a shot in Ep5 that clearly shows a tiny ISD with the SSD directly behind it (proving the ISD had to be closer to the camera). The shortest the SSD could possibly be based on that shot was ~10 miles, and it looks like a couple years ago it was updated to being 12 miles long. But I mean that goof stood for a _long_ time. Even the fact that the bridges looked identical (and should be the same size) should have clued someone in to the fact that the scale was off.
As for scale of this ship, I really have no idea. The cargo pods I see look more appropriate for minifig-scale, but I don’t really know how big they might have been in the movie. I do know that 2×4 bricks would look closer to the size of the pods that you can see in stills from the actual movie. We never see the inside, and you can’t always trust what you see on screen. The Falcon has varying numbers of landing gear, the cockpit has a different number of panes depending on whether it’s viewed from inside or out, and apparently there’s no way to reconcile all the various interior shots into a layout that would still fit within that hull (so says the first person who ever built a UCS-scaled MF long before 10179 came out, who referred to three different sources to find a “true” interior layout before giving up and taking his own). The cargo pods are definitely out of scale, but I doubt we’ll ever know what the actual interior scale would have been.
I believe in canon the only pressured section of the ship is the pod at the top which contains the bridge. But I don’t care, the model is lovely and that top panelling is gorgeous.
Purple Dave… dude this is something amazing, it’s really spot on
Especially the cargo pods underneath – that’s how it all works
The ERTL model kit from the 80s didn’t do it justice the way this does
Star Wars canon is a completely useless idea. Canon is whatever the next movie or cartoon being made decides it is.
Brilliant model.
Hi Anders Horvath here
I like the comments above it give a flavour to the build and my MOC.
I am aware of that I have done some own creative freedom with the pods and the scale. I tried to find drawings but there is no much to go at and as well with AT-AT the scale is sometimes tricky.
The scale I have tried to work by is that the interior eas half the scale as a minifig so a doorway is 2 studs wide and 3 studs high. This give the scale of approx 1 stud= 1-1.5 meters. The ship it self is approx 4 baseplates long and 1 baseplate wide.
I love to here more comments, maybe version 2 can be better ?