AMT Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer

Length: 1,600 meters long
Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards
Type: Cruiser
Designer: Lira Wessex, Imperial Engineer

The Imperial-class Star Destroyer has 60 turbolaser batteries, 60 ion cannon batteries, and 10 tractor beam projectorsand carries a full stormtrooper division, 20 AT-ATs, 30 AT-STs, 8 Lambda-class shuttles, 12 landing barges, and6 TIE fighter squadrons.

The first Star Destroyer miniature, Darth Vader's Devastaror, was built by ILM It was about 36 inches long.

A much larger, more detailed Star Destroyer model was built for Empire Strikes Back. It was 101.95 inches in length.

Here I'm trying to duplicate the shot soon after the opening shot of the movie. I layed the model upside-down on a sheet of black velour cloth and side lit it with a flourescent lamp. I then rotated the image in Photoshop.

It's hard to get a sense of scale out of the Star Destroyer. It's pretty much all an even, light grey with hardly any weathering evident. But that won't do for a scale model, so what you see in the pictures is dozens of patches of overlapping patches of various greys, from cool to warm grey. It's really subtle, but I hope it helps to break up the surface somewhat.

To help some of the detail out, I gave an uneven wash of Mars Black artist's oil color, heavily diluted with mineral spirits. This was brushed on in a meandering pattern, then wiped off with a paper towel that's moistened with clean mineral spirits.

A Millenium Falcon's eye view.

The engine deck was given a heavier wash of black.

A very loose approximation of the command bridge. Those shield generator domes sure could use some help!

The docking bay isn't very accurate to the one in the movie. But here it is, where Princess Leia's troubles began.

Here's a view of the turbo laser batteries, and some of the upper deck superstructure.

I gave a heavier wash to the rim trenches to give it more depth.