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Tydirium Shuttle and Endor Landing Platform

By Tony Chaney






This diorama is my depiction of the landing platform on Endor. It came about after having a MPC Tydirium Shuttle kit laying around in a closet for years, saving it up for really special model project that got forgotten. A year or so ago I saw one on this site that was really well done, which inspired me at the time to dig mine out. However, most of my models are usually set in a diorama, and in doing some research I came upon this artwork of the shuttle landing on the platform on Endor in one of my ILM books, and it was love at first sight. Quickly I realized I would have to make some adjustment to make it a reasonable project: like cutting it in half, reducing the size of the pedestal and gangways and dealing with the perspective of distance.

This is where I started a little less than a year ago: with a 30" wide x 22" deep x 22" high box with a slide-out section so I could work on things in the back once I started putting in the landscaping. I bought PVC pipe fittings for the pedestal, capped it with a plastic container that pies come in from the grocery store and bought trees of different sizes for model railroads. I had another AMT/Ertl AT-AT back there in the closet, so I dug it out too. Two off-duty ground crewmen are watching their spit drop from the gangway. Another crewman waits at the elevator door guarded by two Storm Troopers. A second AT-ST also stands on guard.

I had planned to light it, along with everything else, but I wanted to do just a little bit more, and after seeing a book on incredible cross sections of STAR WARS machines, I decided I'd put in an interior. These figures weren't as good as ones I found later. I sculpted in Sculpey and outfitted two Speeder Bikes in the cargo hold, but unfortunately they are almost unrecognizable. The closest figures I could get, or at least enough and variety of them, are 1/72nd scale HO figures, and not very good ones at that. I ended up repainting all of them.

There are some more figures, circa WWII, waiting to load the AT-AT on the gangway (these all came unpainted). The incandescent lights in the gangways and position lights are all mini-Christmas lights, and the spot lights on the AT-AT and pedestal are mini-Christmas LEDs, all bought at Target after Christmas for $4 (string of 18 lights). When I got down to the end, I found the ground area a little bit sparse and uninteresting, so when I ran across the Hasbro/Titanium Series AT-STs I bought two and put them in the scene, adding the handrails, along with a smaller AT-AT in the background. The shuttle has total of 18 LEDs. I also had to cut down the landing struts to make it fit in the space I had. The spotlights are scratch build with 5 LEDs each and the platform position lights are mini-incandescent Christmas lights. I lit the interior of the shuttle, including the cockpit; here's Vader making his egress. I finished off the diorama by putting in a four man Rebel RECON team, who has just repelled to this very precarious location.

If you would like to see this diorama as a Quick Time movie, you can watch it on YouTube: or put this in the 'search block': Tydirium Diorama

Image: Walker docking

Image: Imperial crew

Image: More crew

Image: Platform support

Image: Shuttle from side

Image: Darth Vader

Image: Rebel infiltrator

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