Discussing about scales of ships in star wars — Page 4

THX :)

I'm working on the next one, huge work on that one!

I hope you'll like it guys ;)

THX guys, it's nice to know my work is appreciated :D

Now I'm even more exited by the next one ;)

It's been a while since I've fed this tread with some stuff so here's a little WIP of the ship I'm currently working on, I suppose I don't need to tell you what ship this is :)

and another WIP:

these are attempts to make faithful representations with blueprint accuracy of the various falcon sets as they where built by ILM crew.
There was no ring corridor section in this set, but I put it anyway, for reference.

I know some of you will find the conical aspect surprising and illogical (it's ok, I thought that too at first) but I have evidence that leads to that conclusion, I'll post them and explain everything in the big (huge) Falcon analysis post…

So, meanwhile, what do think guys?

REM: the scale here is not the same as the previous post.

Grrrrrrrreat!

All these details! A good reference for everyone here!

Cant wait to see more of it :D

-Angel

At the request of Vaderios, here's a little analysis of Cloud City proportions.

The main establishing shots are those:

(THX to Vaderios for the HD screengrabs : )

The two shapes are similar but not quite the same.

The night one is broader (and from an almost straight camera angle).
The day one is narrower (and from a little lower camera angle).

I have a theory about that difference of width:
I think it's possible that the ILM guys, wanting to portray an enormous floating city, can have given a fish eye kind of effect to the mattes.
Such effect can shorten the broadest part of a wide horizontal shape, as the horizontal ends are further away from the camera, they are more affected by perspective than the vertical ends. And thus give the false impression the shape is narrower than it really is. (hope I'm making myself understandable?)
Cloud City saucer portion shape, for instance, is almost 4 times wider than it's height, so such an effect could occur…

So, my guess would be that the night matte was to portray a farther view of Cloud City while the day matte was designed to portray a closer view. But unfortunately, in the movie, the two views are used both in far range and close range, which messes things up a little. For instance, in the two screens above, the night matte is bigger but broader and the day matte smaller but narrower, it should be the opposite… (please tell me if this makes any sense to you guys :/ )

Another important shot is this one:

(This picture of the matte was missing a portion, so I completed it with screengrab from the movie)

In this close-up view the shape is even narrower. Again, as said above, perspective can explain the difference…
REM: I think the blueprint from "the essential guide to vehicles and vessels" book was drawn using this matte…

So, as the night matte seems to be the farther view of the city, we can assume perspective deformation is to a minimum. I choose to take that matte as a reference for my blueprint (however I used the close-up matte's better definition to draw the buildings portion, and a distant view (the Falcon arrival) for the end of the pylon):

Here's a comparison between the shots taking the height as reference, with my blueprint outlined in red:

About that:

vaderios said:
…
Also see some schematics about the two cloud cities

-Angel

vaderios said:

Ripplin said:

Why did they make Cloud City so different for the game? Just for aesthetics' sake?

This is an interesting pov Ripplin how a retro design can be modernized to our days.. meaning that the bulky one can be more slick and delicate. Plus the game version has the super structure be enormous compare the original one. just see how small are the buildings in the TFU one ;)
…

Actually Angel I think the picture you used for your mockups was actually an anamorphosed image to be used by the game engine which would wrap the picture around the 3D set…
As you can see the final Cloud City in the game is almost exactly the same as TESB:

About the superstructure being bigger than the movie version, I thing it may be just an impression, the POV si lower and closer here so the buildings portion is more affected by perspective and so smaller and less visible… So I think the slicker Cloud City was not intentional, but I agreed, it's kinda neat ;)

Well, here it is, tell me what you think…

(I'll talk about the size of that thing in another post, this one is big enough :p

Hi there everyone : )

just a little something I wanted to share as I haven't really showed what exactly my work on "star wars scales" is all about.

Beyond the obvious pleasure of rethinking and redrawing the visual elements of Star Wars, the idea is to give a alternate point of view about the scale of some ships, buildings and other stuff in star wars, via a series of retro style and elegant wallpaper (right-click: view image, to see full size):

Tell me what you think…

Always awesome.

Are you sure that the Bespin platform is on a pylon or does it have anything under it?

savmagoett, your schematics remind me of the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Awesome.

It has a pylon yes.

I think it has red circular lights but indeed its a pylon.

-Angel

Here is my source for the Bespin platform:

It is from the special edition I think, you don't see the bottom of it in the OT, if I remember correctly…

The lights seems rectangle to me, have you another reference Angel?

The Falcon Platform 327 features circular lights though…

Ah, okay. Haven't been watching those SEs in a long time. :P

Hi there, I've been away for a while, busy with real life stuff, but since the release of Ady's new ESB-R trailer my excitement about Star Wars stuff is up again, so I'm back to work on this god-damn Falcon.

In the mean time here is an analysis of the Rebel Transport I made for Ady a while ago. I wanted to post this after the falcon analysis was completed but since it's taking forever I though: what the hell…

Initial remarks:

In order to analyze a ship in Star Wars I always compare it to the elements next to it in it's various appearances in the movies and possibly some other sources.
The size of the average human figure I placed in all the images is 1.80 m.
The official length of the Rebel Transport is 90 m, the X-Wing 12.5 m, the Y-Wing 16 m, the Blockade Runner 150 m, the Falcon 26.7 m and the Medical Frigate 300 m.
The X-Wing and the Y-Wing sizes are ok, and I think I made a pretty good case for the 150 m Blockade Runner here. The medical frigate is to be analyzed and the Falcon is very much disputed.
Here is my blueprint based on the screenshot beneath but also various references from the movies and the model:

At first sight this matte below seems to be the best way to know the size of the ship because of the presence of an actor next to it, but further analysis shows otherwise…

Before measuring it we have to find out if the ship is indeed aligned with the actor, like it looks like when we consider it's shadow. The problem is the landing gear is masked by a box, luckily the far ship behind has a visible landing gear, so we can pick that one to do the measurement.
One thing to notice is that the landing gear in this matte is rather different from the one visible on the model (even if we consider the model one to be retracted), and places the ship higher from the ground than my first screenshot. Another strange thing is that the other far ship on the right side has the proper model landing gear and doesn't touch the ground. It also lacks the cockpit/pod.
With this different landing gear we can tell the ship is indeed at the same alignment as the actor, which imply the ship is at scale with the actor.
So the ship here is 26 m. A rather curious size considering the pod at the summit screams "cockpit"! Not to mention it would actually be smaller than the Falcon set!! Seem very wrong to me…

Here is the official length of the ship, 90 m is better than 26 m but seems a little small compare to the X-Wing and to fit a pilot in the cockpit:

Here are several concept sketches that give an approximated length of 120 m:

Note: given the quite different proportions of this concept version of the ship I adapted the landing gear to have a better comparison.

(the red circles here are indicating the part to consider for scale reference)

120 m is quite larger than the official 90 m length but it works better in my opinion with what we feel elsewhere in the movie (not to mention the pilot would feel much more comfy):

This one below is not exactly from the movie, it comes from Chronicle book, but it seems consistent with the movie:

In this shot from ROJ the Falcon and 3 X-Wings are maneuvering quite close to the the Rebel transport, it is reasonable to think the Rebel transport appear a little smaller here. So, whatever is one's position about what the size of the Falcon is or should be (26,7m or more), the Rebel transport here is at least 120 m:

Here are some shots where the 120 m Rebel Transport works very well with the other ships in their official size:

Note: I could never found an accurate blueprint of the medical frigate, I guess it never existed, ILM guys must have build it from scratch using Nilo Rodis-Jamero's concept sketches. All the blueprints attempts I could find in Star Wars literature where very far from the real thing, as a matter of fact this ship is one of the hardest to grasp and less documented ship in the trilogy. So I reconstituted one myself using screencaps and a lot of pictures of the model taken at an exhibition, I spend a lot of time and dedication to it and I'm quite proud of the result : )

You may want to check all these comparisons in motion to better feel the size of all those ships…

So what do you think?

TV's Frink said:

savmagoett said:

Hi there?

I'm trying to figure out how to answer this.

Irregardless, welcome back!

oops, I misspelled :p => correcting it…

Remember that, if the screenshot is from ESB, the interior cockpit set was too big to fit into the exterior model.

Sorry I didn't see you replies earlier guys… My personal life kept me from working on those scale issues and posting them here. But I'm still willing to be active here when I can :)

@Iván Antilles: I don't quite understand what you mean or what part of this tread you want to talk about, also, except for wikipedia, none of links you provided are working (not anymore I guess…)

@timdiggerm: Are you talking to Iván Antilles or me? and Which screenshot?

can you both clarify so I can answer you?

Hello, I was just about to do a similar research about the "accurate" size of the Rebel "Gallofree" transport when a Google image search and in particular savmagoett's schematics led me to this thread.

Obviously being rather late to this party I wonder if it's okay to re-vitalize this rather interesting topic, alternately I'd be more than happy if a fellow fan or old fossil could direct me to a current one.

(I also have to voice concerns with Adywan's curving of the "first catch of the day" Star Destroyer Bridge - the images in SW The Blueprints on pages 124-125 and the production skill on page 126 - in color in the Empire of Dreams documentary - strongly suggest, IMHO, that flat bridge windows (corresponding with the conning tower of the large VFX Star Destroyer model built for ESB!) was an original studio set concept that survived at least in the "first catch of the day scene (even though it was actually photographed in the port alcove of the control deck set)

From what I read I concur with savmagoett's approach and methodology.

Rebel "Gallofree" Transport:

It appears that the process of overimposing the model of the ship in the foreground of the matte painting was erroneous (yielding the 26 m figure).

The two transports in the back (one probably lifted for repair works, hence the missing cockpit pod and aft landing gear?) look like sitting inside a much higher ice hangar compartment and seem bigger.

The ESB Sketchbook also had a size comparison page with the Rebel "Nebulon" Cruiser, the Falcon and the Rebel transport ship which looks like the 120 m figure (ROJ fleet fly-by) is accurate.

The ESB screenplay 4th draft from October 24, 1978 featured a scene inside the cockpit (pod):

"181. INT COCKPIT - REBEL TRANSPORT

The pilots are getting nervous, the captain leans over one.

CAPTAIN

I don't know if there's anyone left alive in there. Give it one more try.

PILOT

Control unit 33, this is Transport XJ...we can't wait any longer..."

Apparently the cockpit pod must be large enough to accomodate at least three people, something also suggested in the ROJ novelization reffering to (transport ships converted into "fire ships") "crews abandoning their ships to an unknown fate".

small Corellian battleship (ROJ screenplay designation aka Rebel Blockade Runner and/or Corellian Corvette):

I'm not convinced with the 150 m figure. I had the opportunity to examine the original VFX model at the Marin County Fair back in 1988 (i.e. before the SW teaser poster was added to cover the doorframe - IIRC, 16 padding elements each - on the cockpit's starboard side) and my impression was that of a scale of 1:48.

However, IMHO, the actual element that determines the real size can only be the life-size escape pod's landing module from the Tunisian desert shoot matched against the escape pods on the "wings'" underside of Princess Leia's consular ship.

I'm currently not aware of a study examining this particular detail and the results that it would have on the overall in-universe length of this iconic SW ship.

Nevertheless, an "accurate" result inevitably has ramifications regarding the in-universe size of the Devastator- or Corellia-Class Star Destroyer featured in ANH because of the holding bay VFX composition.

size of regular Star Destroyer

I don't buy that all Star Destroyers have to share an equal length of 1 mile, because that particular figure was officially introduced for the large VFX model built for ESB.

On the contrary, the ROJ novelization explicitly mentions a "larger" Star Destroyer and having compared the conning tower proportions of the smaller ANH model vs. the bigger ESB model, my bet would be that the ANH model could be the "larger" one in-universe (ultimately pending on the most accurate length figure for the Blockade Runner).

Executor vs. nameless Super Star Destroyer of the Emperor

Both the ESB Sketchbook and the Art of ESB established that the name of Vader's Star destroyer seen in the film is Executor. It was further established that the conning tower of Executor is the same size as the one of a regular Star Destroyer (nicely visualized in the Imperial fleet's approach to Hoth) and the card of the ILM guys at the 1988 Marin County exhibit clearly stated the length of Executor to be 11 miles (the erroneous 5 mile figure comes from an unfortunate mis-transcription from Glut's ESB novelization into Velasco's SW guide, adopted by the folks at West End Games).

Based on my own and independent research I concur with savmagoett that the Falcon attached to the Avenger's conning tower in ESB confirms the official 1 mile length figure and that the corresponding, accurately dimensioned forward bridge is - indeed - the one briefly seen on the large conning tower VFX model in the scene with the Rebel Starcruiser flying overhead.

If I correctly followed the discussion in this thread, then Adywan has outruled this possibility because of the Tydirium fly-by scene in front of the Super Star Destroyer's coning tower in ROJ, suggesting a much larger conning tower (with the smaller VFX bridge model module).

Inevitable question: Can we be certain that the Super Star Destroyer in ROJ is - indeed - the Executor and not just the Emperor's personal and bigger Super Star Destroyer?