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Paul sutton
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Crashed imperial star destroyer

August 12, 2020 · in Sci-fi · · 7 · 2.2K

Hello all.
This diorama shows a crashed imperial star destroyer.
I've tried to show a story with this diorama. The ship has taken heavy damage to its bridge causing it to crash land on a fairly hospitable planet. The diorama is shown a number of years after this crash and small settlements and farming are now present around the old wreck.

The kit is the old AMT kit which I have had lying around for literally decades. This kit must be pushing 40 years old and is not particularly accurate. I removed most of the raised surface detail and added Details with plastic card. The internal damaged structure and the base are all scratch built. Painting is with acrylics and weathering used a number of MIG was he's and pigments.

The approximate scale here is 1mm = 4 meters which makes the trees between 20 and 30m tall.

This is not meant to be a super accurate recreation of a star destroyer (that would have taken far longer with this kit) but rather just a fun and cheap project using an old kit.

Hope you like it

Reader reactions:
5  Awesome

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7 responses

  1. Hi Paul!
    This is a really beautiful model/diorama.
    I love this idea of taking a classic kit to be brought up as a nice diorama.
    Got some old finished models, partially destroyed, with parts missing. Now, you made me thinking about bringing them up to life as crashed/destroyed dioramas?...

  2. Now, that looks like the only way of killing off the entire population of a small village i Midsomer Murders the scriptwriters have not come up with so far. Cool idea. How about a bit of green slimy stuff running down a few spots to tie the spacecraft to the landscape?

    • I did think of this and tried it in a few spots but just wasn’t happy with the result. I also tried basing materials to try and give it a bit of an overgrown look but again it just did not look right. The issue is the scale (1mm = 4m). I might have a go at airbrushing a few spots of vegetation on it as it would certainly help to blend the model and base together.

  3. It's a pretty good idea for older not so great kits. I would be reluctant to do that to the much more expensive/larger Zvezda kit or even the Bandai masterpiece.

  4. Great concept and presentation! I tend to model from the cheap seats.

  5. Great looking diorama, Paul (@Paulsutt542). This answers the questions of how to display an airship with no landing gear.

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