We move on to the next in my long line of Star Wars model kits from the Christmas season - the Corellian Corvette (AKA the “Blockade Runner” AKA Tantive IV). This was part of a double pack with the Millenium Falcon, which makes sense because … uhhhh … it’s Han and Leia’s ships? Sure, I can go with that.
Here is the kit’s single runner.
And here are the decals:
That seems like just the right amount of pieces to me. As you can see, the plastic is a cream color, and as I wrote about recently, this either is or is not color accurate. Regardless, I stuck with this cream color, as it is fairly unique among SW craft. That means no hand painting, which should mean this build is a cinch, right?
Right?
Nope! This build gave me all sorts of heartburn, mostly due to the decals. They are the worst I have ever dealt with in any kit (short of the expired, crappy waterslides that came with my 1⁄72 scale X-Wing). The only way to get them to stay put was by applying pressure with my fingers. I only learned this after trying to use multiple tools to position and set them, only to discover that a) no amount of pressure from any tool helped, and b) several of the tools caused the decals to scratch up. I have had Gundam kits with shiny foil stickers that held up better to punishment than these. Do they use some different printing process, or different materials for these Star Wars kits?
I managed to apply a few of the decals, just the ones I could apply entirely with my fingers. The rest had to be abandoned in favor of painting, and that meant working with my second least favorite paint color - red. In my experience it is extremely sensitive to interacting with other colors, including itself. Even applying a second coat of straight red on top of straight red seems to dramatically alter its tone. As a result, the painted sections are a different shade from the decals, and even some of the other painted sections. I guess it looks close enough from a distance, but I decided to just leave it be rather than mess with it any more.
The other problem with red paint is that it bleeds everywhere and stains everything it comes across. I kept waiting for the moment in which I ended up screwing up and staining a whole swatch of plastic with bright pink residue. To be fair, when I was hand painting, this did not happen. I was extremely careful and precise, and everything looked clean.
And yet I did have that inevitable moment. One night, just before I was about to go to bed, I tried scratching off some excess paint, and ended up scratching off too much. I had cleaned up all my brushes and palettes, so I took the lazy way out, whipping out the red Gundam Marker instead. This bled everywhere as soon as I used it. This caused the rear right engine structure to be stained. I will not be making that mistake again.
At this point, it was time to do weathering and panel lining. This was when I stopped having fun with the build. The Corvette has a lot of detail - too much detail if you ask me. If you don’t fill in all the panel lines, it looks too plain, but doing them all (like I did) makes it look far too busy. You can’t really appreciate the cream color of the hull when you have so much black and grey (and red) popping off of it. The solution, I suppose, is to only do some of the detailing in the most important areas, but I must confess that I do not yet have an eye for what is and is not important.
My other weathering challenge was to try and find a way to cover up all the red paint stains. I used some white weathering compound first, followed by black and gunmetal. I could not conceal all of it, but it looks a lot better here than it originally did.
Finally I had to detail the engines. This is where I got really frustrated. There is a ton of detail etched into the engines, but I was at a loss as to how they should look. The thing about the Corellian Corvette is that everyone remembers it, but it is not on screen long enough for anyone to really remember what it looks like (more on that later). In the case of the engines, are they all supposed to be the same color? Or do all these details represent wires and cables and exposed engine components which should all look metallic? Research suggests it could go both ways, but surprisingly, most depictions of the ship take the former of the two approaches. I ended up carefully and delicately layering a number of colors of weathering compound to give it some color without being overpowering. If I had more patience, or more of a vision of how I wanted this to look, I might have worked even more on this. I would have done more to vary the intensity of the shading, and might have blended things together more. I just did not have the drive to do it this time around. Not for this ship.
Finished Build
So the build sucked, but what about the finished product? Let us take a look.
By now I think I have made it clear that I am not happy with how the results turned out. The stained paint, the busy panel lining, and the multiple shades of red are all my fault.
And yet, looking at the final result it … isn’t as bad as it looked initially? Maybe once the paint dried and my emotions faded away, I was able to see it for what it is.
Let’s talk about the overall look and design of the ship. This model is a stark reminder of something that a lot of fans (myself included) forget - the Corellian Corvette is really quite a long ship. When most people envision this ship, I am pretty sure they see something closer in size to this (bad photoshop incoming):
When in reality, it looks like this:
Basically, we forget the middle section exists. I have to say though, I like the long, canonical design we see here. It makes it feel more like a ship and less like a cockpit strapped to a comically large, Wile E. Coyote-esque series of rockets.
Another interesting aspect of the Corvette is how it blends curves and straight lines. It feels weird and alien in a way that other SW ships do not, which makes it a great choice for “first ship we ever see in a piece of Star Wars fiction”.
And yet - and yet - something about the Corvette pisses me off. Nothing about it really makes sense. It is supposed to be a “blockade runner”, but we never see it outrun anyone. It has only two measly cannons, so clearly it cannot do much in a fight. And I do not believe anyone has ever figured out how big the darn thing actually is, and how many people it can fit. I have seen some estimates that say it is about as long as a baseball field, which seems too small. I have also seen claims that it can transport hundreds or even thousands of people, which is much too big. Basically, the ship looks cool, but it never sells itself as fast, large, useful, or really anything at all. It just kind of exists as eye candy, and like it or not, that is not enough for me. I don’t need it to makes sense in a “hard sci-fi” way, but I do need it to have a clear and easily demonstrable purpose.
Now how about the quality of the kit itself. It’s not great. The engines are a complete mess. They do not fasten together securely, so sometimes they begin to separate. In addition to that, the inside of each thruster is hollow. That means there is no place to paint to make it look like the engines are on. This is my first time seeing this in any of my Star Wars kits, and it looks terrible.
As for other details, you get the radar dish and two gun turrets.
On the bottom of the craft, you can also see that a few escape pods have been jettisoned, one of which perhaps included two Very Important Droids.
So that’s nice.
Here is a fuller picture of the entire bottom of the ship:
As well as a shot of the bridge. I wonder how big it is inside.
Here is how the engines turned out. The weathering is subtle, though you cannot really see the metallic sheen in the photo. Again, I could have added more, but I did not feel like over doing it.
Lastly, here is a nice close up long-shot.
Conclusion
This is the sixth one of these miniature Star Wars model kits I have built, but this is the first one that feels too small. That is to say that this particular ship does not really work at this scale. If it was bigger, the red sections might have been made out of red plastic, or at the very least the decals would be easier to work with. The panel lines would not be so bunched up, so they would likely look a lot better. Also, it would probably be easier to work with them all since there would be more space. As it stands, at this scale there are too many cracks and crevices on this model that are impossible to get to without the tiniest of tools.
I guess the final result looks fine enough, but this kit as whole was a dud of an experience. I will still put it on the shelf, and I will probably warm up to it over time, but for now I think I need to take a break from these Star Wars kits and get back to some real, true Gunpla.
Other Thoughts
- The Falcon model has even more stickers than this did. I fear for that build even more than this one, and I am not sure when I will ever get around to it.
- I recently read someone who claimed that the Corvette looks a lot like its owner, Princess Leia. This person claimed that the ship has a somewhat feminine silhouette, wears white like its owner, and even argued that the head of the ship kind of looks like it is wearing buns on the sides. I usually laugh at this overly deep analysis, but I can kind of see what they are getting at.
Here is a link to the full album if you want to see some of the unused photos I took.