The Green Leader Project: A Star Wars Y-Wing Fighter Inspired by History and Technology

I'm calling this project "Green Leader" as it is, well, not from any specific Star Wars history but rather I've taken creative license to change things up based on parts that I couldn't find or if I want to do something a little different. The Y-wing, in particular, caught my attention, and I noticed the detailing on the bottom was gorgeous. However, the detailing on top wasn't quite as impressive. I decided to give myself some freedom to make changes and tweaks to better suit my vision.

My design process for these models typically involves designing it in the computer first, which is just the way I work now. Once I have a model, I can decide the best way to bring it to life. The original Y-wing was built using styrene parts, with kit parts glued together and molded into shape. In contrast, my design process has evolved over time, with technology playing a significant role in shaping the final product. I'm now modeling it up in the computer and deciding on 3D printing as the primary medium for bringing the model to life.

To achieve this, I've adopted the technology that's available to me today, which would have been revolutionary if it were introduced back then. The result is a combination of laser-cut acrylic, aluminum parts, and 3D-printed components. For instance, the main spar on the Y-wing is made from laser-cut acrylic, while the armature features aluminum parts and numerous 3D-printed pieces.

I've also experimented with various materials and techniques to achieve the desired surface finish and detailing. My first round of 3D printing produced test prints, which were used to refine my design and create a better fit for the model. However, I soon realized that these prints weren't archival, so I began using resin instead. This not only improved the quality but also allowed me to create more complex and detailed parts.

One of the unique aspects of this project is its open-source nature. I've made all the files for the parts available online, with over 30 people now working on building their own Y-wing fighters using these designs. This has been an incredible experience, as it allows others to contribute to the project and create their own models. The only requirement is that they download the files, 3D print the parts, and assemble their own model.

However, I didn't start out with a full kit in mind. Instead, this project was designed to provide a starting point for those who want to build their own Y-wing fighter but find it daunting from scratch. The design process has been iterative, with refinement and redesigns occurring as the project progresses. In some cases, I've had parts reprinted multiple times to achieve the desired fit and finish.

A significant milestone in this project was when I got these pieces printed by a company in Hong Kong that specializes in printing for manufacturers like Hot Toys and Sideshow Collectibles. They produced exceptional results, and I'm excited to see these pieces come together in rubber form within the next couple of weeks. With each new development, I'm learning more about the capabilities and limitations of 3D printing technology.

Throughout this project, I've encountered various challenges, but the pursuit of accuracy and attention to detail has driven me forward. As a modeler, it's essential to stay up-to-date with the latest techniques and technologies to push the boundaries of what's possible. The Green Leader Project is an ongoing journey, with new discoveries and innovations around every corner.

As I continue working on this project, I'm reminded of the importance of collaboration and community. Sharing knowledge and expertise with others has enabled me to learn from their experiences and incorporate their ideas into my own design process. This spirit of collaboration is at the heart of the Star Wars modeling community, where enthusiasts come together to share their passion for creating intricate models inspired by the beloved franchise.

For those interested in building their own Y-wing fighter or learning more about 3D printing, I encourage you to explore David's work and follow his progress. He also shares content on Tested.com, providing a wealth of information and inspiration for modelers and enthusiasts alike. Until next time, it was great to share this project with the RPF party 2016 attendees, and I look forward to continuing our shared passion for Star Wars modeling.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's Norm from test I'm here at the RPF party that's the replica prop Forum as part it's a gathering of prop makers including Dave Goldberg here Dave we met a while ago online we did you were working on like the plade runner Blaster you helped one of the the barrels uh yeah I made Metal Blaster metal barrels to go on the to minuki Blaster and it's great to see here at the party and you have some projects that you've brought now you've been model making for years now uh 35 years now yeah wow and so you've seen all the process I'm obviously a big fan of things like Star Wars building model kits and you love building things like based on the original Studio Scale Models yeah uh I I worked for years and years building Studio scale models we didn't never called it Studio scale and building models for the movies I never got to work on Star Wars unfortunately um so now I'm kind of reliving that dream and building Star Wars Studio Scale Models as a hobby now when a lot of people think of Studio skill they think okay these are the Miniatures that were used for filming some of them like you may have seen on tour with the Star Wars tours were hero props you've seen the giant 5 for Millennium Falcon but there are a lot of Miniatures that maybe didn't get that aren't the hero props that are still cool as a model builder like this guy here can you explain what this is um this is the uh X-Wing Fighter this is actually um this is not an original from the movie by any means but it is uh the castings for this model are from the original castings but not a hero one a it's a pyro model so they built two different types of models they built the hero model that was Luke's X-Wing and several of the other x-wings and they had the motorized wings and they were designed for closeup but they had to blow up a bunch of them and so they did a they they did another one it was a different mold very similar um had some slight different details on it uh and then from that mold they cast up uh Parts out of uh a skinned foam that was very fragile and they would make an next swing out of that then blow it up into little pieces and from those molds an original set of rigid castings was made and squired Away in the model shop up on the top shelf and Grant mun found those castings in the early 80s and um he assembled them into a model that was in his office for years and years but before he did that they made a mold off of them and started making castings and these castings were for the most part traded I ended up trading a set of castings of from um the abyss that I had worked on for a set of castings from this X-Wing so there's definitely a pedigree there there's a pedigree this is what would be called a second generation casting it can be traced back to the original um a lot of the details you can see are the same as the original and I had these castings for many many years and finally about a year ago I decided I might as well put them together so I put them together detailed it out painted it and uh wound up with my own Studio scale X-Wing Fighter now you said the original pyro model was made out of foam and yours is not foam it's cast uh whatever they cast is it a resin it's a it's a rigid resin rigid resin so you're not precious about recreating with the exact same materials or the exact same process what is it about the model making process excites you um what excites me is having the while I love the process all different methods of doing it but I also like the final piece and if a methodology is different used to create the final piece than the original that's fine if it looks like what it's supposed to look like even if it's not 100% I mean there are people who will get in and you know say oh well that panel line that should be qu of an inch long looks like it's an eighth of an inch long I don't care about that that's a little bit too anal retentive for me and I'm pretty anal retentive um I just love that it looks like the like the original does um and it may or may not use the same materials as the original and you're working on a lot of projects at the same time and your most recent one is one we have here which is it's a y-wing is it also based on like the Pyro model um yes and no it's not as clear-cut which were the pyros and which weren't uh for the originals most of the photo reference that's available of the y-wing is of remaining existent her hero models the photos that I've used for the most part are of a hero y-wing that uh was given by George Lucas to Allan lad then president of fox and he's the one that basically green lit Star Wars so as appreciation he gave Allen lad uh a y-wing model that model um later wound up uh from his estate going on auction or being offered to Prop Store of London the owner of Prop Store said I'm not going to sell this I'm going to keep this for my private collection so he basically bought it kept it for his private collection he shot some really really good photographs of it very hot well lit high resolution in Focus which is difficult to find in focus and I've used those photos primarily as the reference for creating this model so it's a replica of a very specific artifact in Star Wars history well yes and no it is I use that as the basis for it but again I'm calling this the green leader project green leader was not from any so I'm giving myself a little bit of creative license to change things up based on parts that I can't find or if I want to do something a little different um when I look at the at the y-wing I think the detailing that did on the bottom is gorgeous the detailing on the top I'm not so wild about so I'm giving myself a little bit of freedom to change things up a little bit I look at this model which is in progress and I see a lot of different types of materials you got what looks like here laser cut acrylic looks like you have some 3D printed Parts what is your bu design and build process for this um my design process for for these models I design it in the computer first that's just the way I work now um and I model it up in the computer and once I've got that model I can decide the best way to make it the original was built up out of styrene parts to build a box they glued kit parts to it they did a mold what I'm doing is I modeled it up and decided to 3D print a lot of it yeah um I'm using basically the technology that I know if they'd had available to them back then they would jump yeah absolutely um so yeah a lot of the Parts here it is the laser cut acrylic for the main Spar for the wing and there's some aluminum parts for the Armature um and then a lot of 3D printed Parts your domes I see some 3D printed test prints which look beautiful uh how do the Pieces come together like I see this 3D printed piece and you designed it so the seams are off on the side here yeah uh this was the first round of of 3D printing this was sort of a test print just for massive um so this was I knew I wanted to mold then cast these shells um for a couple of reasons one the 3D prints are not archival in spite of what anybody will say um where the resin is much better and also I want to make more than one of these you're making kits I'm you're desig kits I making parts so that other people can get some of these parts I am definitely not doing a full kit one of the things that I haven't mentioned about this this is an open- source project I've all of the files for these parts I've posted on online so for people that want to make their own y-wing fighter and there's 30 or 40 people now in the process of doing it they can download my files 3D print these parts and and use them to assemble their own y um and it's it's great cuz it's it's not definitely not a kit requires a lot of sort of Hands-On do-it-yourself still a lot of detailing but it is kind of a step in that you know helping it gets over an initial hurdle the y-wing in particular is a very difficult model to kind of figure out from scratch so this kind of gives you a bones to work from um but these are this was the first round of 3D printed Parts I I had done for the the forward fuselage uh and they fit together but also they're designed with internal ribbing and structure that attaches to the Armature they're keyed to go together uh there but when I got these I I really wasn't completely happy with them I wasn't happy with the seam on the side um I wasn't really happy with the degree of surface finish that it had so I ended up instead having them reprinted and redesigned a little bit I redesigned them wow these pieces look so nice and I had these printed by a company in Hong Kong I redesigned them so you can see now the seam line is on the bottom so it's much easier to clean you don't have this big seam on the side um it still has all sorts of internal rib structure for support uh but these parts I had printed at a company in Hong Kong they do a lot of printing for um uh to manufactur to manufacturers for hot toy and and um uh Sideshow and Disney Collectibles and so they're really into doing just gorgeous parts so I had these printed there and I just got them this week I'm very excited about it and I'll be getting these into rubber the next couple of weeks and and start molding and casting them awesome well thank you so much DAV for sharing with us your projects you can follow David's projects on the rfpf he also has posted some stuff on tested as well so good to see you in person thanks for coming down and we'll see you next time more stuff from the RPF party 2016 I'm Norm byehey everybody it's Norm from test I'm here at the RPF party that's the replica prop Forum as part it's a gathering of prop makers including Dave Goldberg here Dave we met a while ago online we did you were working on like the plade runner Blaster you helped one of the the barrels uh yeah I made Metal Blaster metal barrels to go on the to minuki Blaster and it's great to see here at the party and you have some projects that you've brought now you've been model making for years now uh 35 years now yeah wow and so you've seen all the process I'm obviously a big fan of things like Star Wars building model kits and you love building things like based on the original Studio Scale Models yeah uh I I worked for years and years building Studio scale models we didn't never called it Studio scale and building models for the movies I never got to work on Star Wars unfortunately um so now I'm kind of reliving that dream and building Star Wars Studio Scale Models as a hobby now when a lot of people think of Studio skill they think okay these are the Miniatures that were used for filming some of them like you may have seen on tour with the Star Wars tours were hero props you've seen the giant 5 for Millennium Falcon but there are a lot of Miniatures that maybe didn't get that aren't the hero props that are still cool as a model builder like this guy here can you explain what this is um this is the uh X-Wing Fighter this is actually um this is not an original from the movie by any means but it is uh the castings for this model are from the original castings but not a hero one a it's a pyro model so they built two different types of models they built the hero model that was Luke's X-Wing and several of the other x-wings and they had the motorized wings and they were designed for closeup but they had to blow up a bunch of them and so they did a they they did another one it was a different mold very similar um had some slight different details on it uh and then from that mold they cast up uh Parts out of uh a skinned foam that was very fragile and they would make an next swing out of that then blow it up into little pieces and from those molds an original set of rigid castings was made and squired Away in the model shop up on the top shelf and Grant mun found those castings in the early 80s and um he assembled them into a model that was in his office for years and years but before he did that they made a mold off of them and started making castings and these castings were for the most part traded I ended up trading a set of castings of from um the abyss that I had worked on for a set of castings from this X-Wing so there's definitely a pedigree there there's a pedigree this is what would be called a second generation casting it can be traced back to the original um a lot of the details you can see are the same as the original and I had these castings for many many years and finally about a year ago I decided I might as well put them together so I put them together detailed it out painted it and uh wound up with my own Studio scale X-Wing Fighter now you said the original pyro model was made out of foam and yours is not foam it's cast uh whatever they cast is it a resin it's a it's a rigid resin rigid resin so you're not precious about recreating with the exact same materials or the exact same process what is it about the model making process excites you um what excites me is having the while I love the process all different methods of doing it but I also like the final piece and if a methodology is different used to create the final piece than the original that's fine if it looks like what it's supposed to look like even if it's not 100% I mean there are people who will get in and you know say oh well that panel line that should be qu of an inch long looks like it's an eighth of an inch long I don't care about that that's a little bit too anal retentive for me and I'm pretty anal retentive um I just love that it looks like the like the original does um and it may or may not use the same materials as the original and you're working on a lot of projects at the same time and your most recent one is one we have here which is it's a y-wing is it also based on like the Pyro model um yes and no it's not as clear-cut which were the pyros and which weren't uh for the originals most of the photo reference that's available of the y-wing is of remaining existent her hero models the photos that I've used for the most part are of a hero y-wing that uh was given by George Lucas to Allan lad then president of fox and he's the one that basically green lit Star Wars so as appreciation he gave Allen lad uh a y-wing model that model um later wound up uh from his estate going on auction or being offered to Prop Store of London the owner of Prop Store said I'm not going to sell this I'm going to keep this for my private collection so he basically bought it kept it for his private collection he shot some really really good photographs of it very hot well lit high resolution in Focus which is difficult to find in focus and I've used those photos primarily as the reference for creating this model so it's a replica of a very specific artifact in Star Wars history well yes and no it is I use that as the basis for it but again I'm calling this the green leader project green leader was not from any so I'm giving myself a little bit of creative license to change things up based on parts that I can't find or if I want to do something a little different um when I look at the at the y-wing I think the detailing that did on the bottom is gorgeous the detailing on the top I'm not so wild about so I'm giving myself a little bit of freedom to change things up a little bit I look at this model which is in progress and I see a lot of different types of materials you got what looks like here laser cut acrylic looks like you have some 3D printed Parts what is your bu design and build process for this um my design process for for these models I design it in the computer first that's just the way I work now um and I model it up in the computer and once I've got that model I can decide the best way to make it the original was built up out of styrene parts to build a box they glued kit parts to it they did a mold what I'm doing is I modeled it up and decided to 3D print a lot of it yeah um I'm using basically the technology that I know if they'd had available to them back then they would jump yeah absolutely um so yeah a lot of the Parts here it is the laser cut acrylic for the main Spar for the wing and there's some aluminum parts for the Armature um and then a lot of 3D printed Parts your domes I see some 3D printed test prints which look beautiful uh how do the Pieces come together like I see this 3D printed piece and you designed it so the seams are off on the side here yeah uh this was the first round of of 3D printing this was sort of a test print just for massive um so this was I knew I wanted to mold then cast these shells um for a couple of reasons one the 3D prints are not archival in spite of what anybody will say um where the resin is much better and also I want to make more than one of these you're making kits I'm you're desig kits I making parts so that other people can get some of these parts I am definitely not doing a full kit one of the things that I haven't mentioned about this this is an open- source project I've all of the files for these parts I've posted on online so for people that want to make their own y-wing fighter and there's 30 or 40 people now in the process of doing it they can download my files 3D print these parts and and use them to assemble their own y um and it's it's great cuz it's it's not definitely not a kit requires a lot of sort of Hands-On do-it-yourself still a lot of detailing but it is kind of a step in that you know helping it gets over an initial hurdle the y-wing in particular is a very difficult model to kind of figure out from scratch so this kind of gives you a bones to work from um but these are this was the first round of 3D printed Parts I I had done for the the forward fuselage uh and they fit together but also they're designed with internal ribbing and structure that attaches to the Armature they're keyed to go together uh there but when I got these I I really wasn't completely happy with them I wasn't happy with the seam on the side um I wasn't really happy with the degree of surface finish that it had so I ended up instead having them reprinted and redesigned a little bit I redesigned them wow these pieces look so nice and I had these printed by a company in Hong Kong I redesigned them so you can see now the seam line is on the bottom so it's much easier to clean you don't have this big seam on the side um it still has all sorts of internal rib structure for support uh but these parts I had printed at a company in Hong Kong they do a lot of printing for um uh to manufactur to manufacturers for hot toy and and um uh Sideshow and Disney Collectibles and so they're really into doing just gorgeous parts so I had these printed there and I just got them this week I'm very excited about it and I'll be getting these into rubber the next couple of weeks and and start molding and casting them awesome well thank you so much DAV for sharing with us your projects you can follow David's projects on the rfpf he also has posted some stuff on tested as well so good to see you in person thanks for coming down and we'll see you next time more stuff from the RPF party 2016 I'm Norm bye\n"