DEATH STAR DIORAMA/PLAYSET

Modeling Subjects Dioramas
1

Hi there. I am new to this site, and I have to say that I am probably not worthy to be posting this, looking at all of the other amazing Dioramas here.

Just a short story before I show the pictures:

I decided to dust off my DVD of Star Wars not too long ago and show it to my kids for the first time as I thought that they would be old enough to finally appreciate it.

Back in 1977 I had a near spiritual experience when I first saw the film aged 7, and sure enough my kids were blown away!

Well birthdays came and my boys wanted, you guessed it, STAR WARS FIGURES! well, that was like showing a red flag to a bull, I was on e-bay buying all of the vehicles and figures I missed out on as a boy and before too long we had quite a collection.

All that was missing was a good playset, and unfortunately Hasbro never made anything decent, so I decided to build something I would have died for as a kid…The Death Star. I used foamcore to create the corridors and rooms and mounting board to create the large hangar bay. The rooms and corridors are modular, so the Playset can be arranged in different ways. It can also be packed away neatly when not in use.

I cannot take all of the credit for this as I got the inspiration for Master Niub Niub, who has created some amazing sets.

I must add that in order to build the thing I had to give up smoking in order to satisfy the wife.

Well it’s been 7 months and was qutting worth it! You decide:

2

Skonch,you and I are the same age,and I still love Star Wars But I don’t have any kids. Your Death Star is amazing looks just like the movie. I had the cheesy 3 story one when I was a kid(I think I still have it too) yours is WAY better wanna adopt a 38 year old son???lol,Good luck with the smoking to I guess its hard I never eben tried em.

John

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John,

Re the adopting thing, my wife already has three kids,

3 boys: a 3 year old a 6 year old and a 40 year old…

(saying that, probably everyone who posts or looks at this site is a kid at heart?)

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Yes, yes we are, though, I still am, according to some…

I like your build, though, I would like to see you male and or build someof your own figures to go in it

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“I like your build, though, I would like to see you male and or build someof your own figures to go in it”

Smeagol,

What a Battle Station the size of a small moon isn’t enough for you eh!

Phumph![;)]

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oh well so much for the adoption lol still looks cool I still got most of my original figures and ships I have an original Star Wars falcon still in the box. Never will part with that one

John

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WOW! That no playset, its a space station! As a big Star Wars fan I can say your children are very lucky to have a imaganitive and talented father…the set looks awsome, dead on! Better than anything you can buy…GREAT JOB![:D]

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you and i are the same age and ya brought back alot of good childhood memories. i now see where i failed as a father!! [(-D]

9

I thought it was an actual retail product at fiirst. Excellent work.

Someone described Star Wars as that generations Vietnam. Tasteless maybe, but sounds about right.

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I’d say thats wrong, because starwars doesnt have a generation, its still gaining huge masses of fans with every generation.

I was just ribbing you about the figures, to be honest, I have my collection of R2s on my right and my 12" Wedge Antilles (real hero of the alliance, **** luke) Statue-ette on my left.

11

Pffftt… Sounds about stupid… Star Wars was fiction… Nothing fictional about Vietnam…

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I can’t say that I have ever been involved in War, which is a blessing and yes, you certainly cannot compare the real with Fiction, it would be disrespectful.

All I can say about Star Wars is that it expanded my imagination like nothing before or since. I was a completely spellbound 7 year-old and the experience of seeing it in the cinema for the first time was wonderful.

I feel sad for kids of today beuase they’ve seen it all! leaving nothing to the imagination.

(I’m beginning to sound like an old man aren’t I, OMG!!!)

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To parody Jeopardy

Answer: because kids today have seen it all! leaving nothing to the imagination.

Question: Why you should introduce children to books and poetry

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"Pffftt… Sounds about stupid… Star Wars was fiction… Nothing fictional about Vietnam… "

Well, quoted out of context it sounds wrong, but it was an ironic line. Stuck with me.

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Skonch.

Just a heads up… you might want to rethink that avatar. The moderators can play hardball on anything that isnt G rated…

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Re my Avtar -

My Avtar was a sign above a Restaurant in China of the same name. I thought it was hilarious at the time. You never know, there may be a “Turdbaby” opening up in your town soon!

If anyone says anything I’ll remove it.

17

Well, speaking as one who saw Star Wars when it wasn’t an episode, and was an adult, I can say that, story-wise, it wasn’t anything that no one hadn’t already seen… It was a typical 3-act swashbuckler movie… What blew me away as a movie-goer was the FX… NOBODY has seen anything lke that before… With no opening credits (Something Lucas had to fight for, btw), the movie gives you three traveling paragraphs to set the scene, and BAM!- the action starts… We spent the first 5 minutes not knowing who the good guys are, at least not sure, until Vader’s entrance. From there, it was just one thing after another that no movie-goer had ever seen, but was still recognizable… Add the beat-up spaceships, aliens of every description, and space dogfights, and it was a winner… I loved that movie and saw it several times while it was playing in my area… I’d never done that with ANY movie before… That’s the movie that turned me on to sci-fi, for sure… (I started watching Star Trek only after Star Wars, with any kind of regularity…)

I built the X-Wing and TIE Fighter kits that came out later on too, but didn’t get into the figures and toys that followed… I was an adult after all, and my kids were too little for the stuff… When I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I was disappointed at the ending too… Return Of the Jedi (which wasn’t titled as an episode at that time) sewed up the loose ends left by Empire and I called it quits after that, other than picking up the Snowspeeder kits and the A-Wings too…

By the time Episode I came out, I didn’t care much about Star Wars anymore. It was thirty years ago I’d first seen Star Wars and so many movies had come between those two and SFX had come so far that there wasn’t anything special about it… I waited for the video to be released and gave it a look, and frankly, I was bored by it… Out of the three prequels, the only good was Clone Wars, and the best of the three was III, Revenge of the Sith, and like the others, I waited for the release on video, and shook my head at the SWNs standing in line outside theaters for all three…

Other than that, it was a fun roller-coaster ride as movies go, but knowing how the whole thing ends made for a lot less interest than I felt with SW I. Of them all, A New Hope was the only one that could stand on it’s own as a movie…

18

Perhaps you’d care to put it into context? As a career Soldier and veteran, now retired, I find it rather insulting, not ironic… I’d like to understand what you meant.

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“Perhaps you’d care to put it into context? As a career Soldier and veteran, now retired, I find it rather insulting, not ironic… I’d like to understand what you meant.”

As in a seismic social/cultural event, in no way comparing the actual subjects themselves, war VS a sci-fi movie. And no disrespect intended. Vietnam is my no.1 modelling subject, just got my wires crossed. Should have known better, sorry about that.

20

Hey skonch…thank’s way to go buddy, my 6 year old is bugging me to build him a playset for like that now.

Seriously, it’s freak’n sweet, hell, I want one. The star wars toys they had when I was a kid sucked compared to what they have now. I would have killed for fully possible storm troopers when I was a kid. So…when I saw them come out like that more recently (the same ones you have in the pics) I bought a bunch of them for myself, and some for my son. Every now and then I bring out all my old GI joes, and my storm troopers and have big battles across the living room with my son, he freak’n loves it! The 1/18 scale sherman, P-51, stryker, blackhawk and bradley dont have a bad effect on things either. I’m still a big kid. I love your work there buddy.