Staring. I keep having to turn the lower hull of the Millennium Falcon over so I can stare. It’s looking like an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years. It’s glorious. Ember, my eight-year-old daughter, and I have been slowly working our way through the Millennium Falcon partwork from Fanhome for over a year now. The last two issues really saw a lot of our work come together, with the lower hull of the Falcon looking like, well, the Falcon. As a ship that has been at the center of my galaxy for so long, to have such fine details to gaze on has been a bit of a thrill. There were still a few gaps – some I imagine might get filled for this sitting – but the general state of the hull was complete. It has given me a much-needed boost to this project, to see just how far my daughter and I have come.
The last two installments were a lot of fun for me, having to work more on the project than I ever had, as there were some parts that Ember wasn’t comfortable doing. They were big parts, and I was a little selfish wanting to push through them. I needed to get back to ensuring that Ember and I were doing this together. She started this project when she was seven and her skills have grown at an alarming rate. But there were still things she was unsure of. Superglue was one of the main things. Now I remember my father not letting my brother and I near superglue until we were well into our teens. I wish I could condemn him for this decision but as I have grown, I can certainly testify that this was a rather wise decision on his part! With Ember, while I didn’t want her to be directly handling the superglue from the tube, this project would still be needing a lot of gluing. I was going to make a concerted effort to get her more involved with the gluing parts; well that was the intention, we shall see if Ember is willing to!
I also needed to make sure that I wasn’t doing too much in a single sitting for her. The last parts had been overly long. I wasn’t expecting the next issues to be anywhere near that long but I needed to be mindful of Ember’s age. Scouting through the next issues I realized that these were very short, doing two parts together would be perfect for Ember and me. Issue forty-nine had a lot of gluing, maybe that would be my chance to get Ember to try doing some super gluing! In both issues there was no need to do any preparation. I was rather liking this trend that there wasn’t anything that needed doing before I brought Ember in!
Before we get down to the build itself, I do want to talk about a new feature that starts in part forty-eight. A few weeks ago, I had started to think (more like panic) about the painting of the model. This was never going to be a build and leave project. This is a Millennium Falcon that costs a lot of money; there’s no getting away from that. With such an expensive model, I wanted something that looked as close to the actual studio Falcon as I could manage, not just a plastic model that I had built. So, I rushed to get an airbrush and start learning a new craft. Turns out, I could have waited for a prompt from the magazine! The new section is all about painting the model. The section is written by Stephen Dymszo, who has plenty of experience recreating the studio scale of the Falcon and there are some videos on Youtube with him explaining the painting of this Falcon.
These first parts explain the paints and tools you will need. I think this is a great way to explain to noobies what to do and I imagine in future issues there will be some explaining of techniques used. For me, who is a noobie, this should be immensely helpful. I also feel quite proud of myself that I’d already started this journey, so a lot of the things I had learnt about airbrushes were here. Also, the reference photos that are here and in future issues will be fantastic to have in person rather than just on a screen.
Now I do have a couple of issues. The first is the paint that they are using. They point out that you can’t get the colours that they used back in the seventies. While the same brand isn’t available, Archive X does make the same pigment paints so you can have a Falcon as close to the ILM model as is possible. If you’ve been keeping up with my reviews, you’ll know that I have also found a guide by Josh Wraith that explains which of those paints to use and where. In fact, Josh is updating his guide as we speak with even more parts added! The second part, and this is after speaking with Josh, is painting the model in parts. I don’t know about anyone else, but trying to assemble the lower hull without damaging the ramp has been difficult enough. Throw in painting and I’m sure something is going to go wrong! I’d rather paint it as a whole. When I asked Josh, who has painted several of these Falcons, he confirmed he painted them when the model was complete. While these guides might not be directly needed now, I’m really pleased that they are there, ready for when the model is complete for Ember and me to start painting. I would suggest you have a look at the Archive X paint. I have used it for my Star Wars: Shatterpoint terrain and it really does have that Star Wars quality that goes beyond explanation.
Onto the build themselves, issue forty-eight was a breeze. It is assembling the plating for the turret. Ember, realising it was so short, was quite happy to do some gluing… finally! We were able to glue it together and then attach it to the lower hull. Here I have a couple of complaints. The first is that when adding the plate, it tells you to take the support bolts out, reverse them, put the plate on then reverse it again before screwing the plate on. We didn’t do this as it seemed like an absolute waste of time for something so small. The other problem I had was knowing which screws to use; it isn’t very clear. We went with the silver screws we’d been using but Ember and I were there for a while trying to figure out from the photos whether it was silver or gold screws! Once complete, I was really pleased with how the hull was looking and even Ember could take a photo of my excitement.
It was over extremely quickly, and we both agreed it was right to complete a second instalment. The next part was all clipping, filing and gluing. Ember was in her element, identifying the parts and filing them, ready for me to glue. It almost went without a hitch until Ember asked if I’d got the external vanes from issues forty-four and forty-five out. What external vanes?! After much scrambling around I found them but sometimes I wish there was a checklist for the components we’d be using so I could check them off!
All in all, these were simple instalments but after the intenseness of the previous two, meant that we really enjoyed them. Ember I could see had really enjoyed completing these two. There wasn’t too much, and she was involved every step of the way; as it should be. While I like to sink my teeth into the project, the short, small segments really suit Ember. I need to remember to not get carried away!
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