Hello again!

Sometimes I need a quick and simple project to get the creative juices flowing again and after an extremely testing few weeks away from my workbench I wanted to pick up a “weekend build” that would be fun to assemble and easy to finish.

Inspiration came from the film “Rogue One” and the new UT-60D U-Wing ship featured as a troop carrier and gunship. I think its safe to say that the UT-60D is the Blackhawk Helicopter of the Star Wars universe! In Rogue One the U-Wing is seen inserting troops into battle on the planet Scarif  and is used by the films heroes on their mission to steal the death star plans. It is a true workhorse!

I picked up Revell’s 1:100 scale “Build and Play” model on the weekend and wondered what the contents inside would be like? To my surprise, it was actually quite good. Bearing in mind that this is more a put together toy rather than a model kit I thought the quality of detail and engineering was impressive. The kit comes in loose pre painted pieces that simply click together. It also has a light and sound box that is built into the kit so that it can be played with when one is finished modelling. My idea was further inspired when doing a little research on the subject of U-Wings I came across an excellent step-by step video build by Phil Flory of Flory Models. His build was superb and  gave me some great idea’s.

Building the U-Wing is straightforward, but I wanted to give it a more realistic paint finish so I masked off all the blue and yellow markings and sprayed them with darker colours to match the U-Wing I saw in the film. I also used metallic shades on the engine parts. Once I got stuck in, I also painted up the kits crew figures and instrument console, just adding a little detail here and there can often make a model all the more interesting!

The kit parts out of the box:

Painting and detailing the crew figures and instrument panel. This was quite tricky for me to do in this 1:100  scale!

When all the painting was done it was a simple matter of snapping the parts together in the correct order. A model without glue? Great! Once the U-Wing was assembled I used an enamel weathering wash to highlight the surface details and I added a little paint chipping here and there. All that was left was how I wished to pose the model…

To this end, I made a desert display base and posed the U-Wing in flight. While I was at it, I found a small scale figure that I painted to resemble Cassian Andor and I scratch built my own version of his droid K2-S0. My idea was that I could pose the U-Wing coming into land to extract them both from some secret mission somewhere. I then thought it may be a nice idea to pose the U-Wing with one of its troop door open, there is no space to detail the interior since a large central part of the model sits behind the troop doors, but I did manage to make a door gunner from spares box parts and mount him with a painted background behind him.

Here is what the Cassian Andor and K2-S0look like in the film…..

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story..K-2SO (Alan Tudyk)..Ph: Film Frame..© 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

I think it is fair to say that I won’t be getting any awards for my 1:100 figure work, but is was fun to do!

Here is the finished model, it was exactly what I needed, a quick and easy build that was great fun to do!

Happy Modelling!

Darren.