Classic Galactica Shuttle

This model is testament to how much things have changed in the last 10 or so years. I originally built a version of this back in the dim and distant years of the last century - 1999 to be exact. The original was based off some very fuzzy screen captures made by freeze framing the original Galactica pilot - 'Saga of a Star World' - on VHS. Remember that format - $20 per tape - each tape only containing 2 episodes - each tape at considerable risk of being eaten alive by your misbehaving VHS player, never to be played again. Now we grizzle if a season box set on DVD or even Blu-Ray is more than $60, and chewed tapes are replaced by DVD rot!

At the time, I was rather chuffed with this version - even released it out on to the net for other people to use - oh, those heady, young naive days of the early internets. Oddly enough, even now, a decade later it is still hanging around on a few websites, forlornly waiting for someone to download it.

Fast forward to about 2006. The 'net is now awash with reference material of the original shuttle model, there are photos by the bucketload and even a few decent garage kits making it onto the market. The model even makes a guest appearance in the pilot mini-series for RDM's re-imagined Galactica. I look at my old shuttle model and set myself the task of redoing it and upgrading it to get a closer representation of the original.

If wishes were horses...

2010 arrives. Now I have discovered the wonderful world of studio scale modelers. These obsessive compulsive types spend hours analysing the old kit bashed miniatures of the pre digital VFX age, drawing up lists and references of the various kit parts that were used by the likes of ILM and Apogee to decorate their construction. Now I not only have reference images of the original, I also have a list of the parts used and reference images for those individual parts! I finally set to work...

Thanks to the ever, nay exponentially, increasing availability of information via the 'net, I am now able to build a much more accurate version of the original with reasonable approximations of the sundry kit pieces that adorn its shell. Not to mention that computers are now powerful enough to handle all of that detailed polygonal data without keeling over and quietly expiring.

Now I just have to get around to texturing it...