Joe Johnston Sketchbook Y-Wing
This is a very special project for me on multiple levels. “The Star Wars Sketchbook” was something that I poured over, growing up, aspiring to one day be able to design and draw like Joe Johnston. This was of course in tandem with wanting to be like the model builders at ILM, who made magic and set the tone for decades of fantasy space ship design. As I am getting more comfortable with Rhino and now armed with a Form 2 printer in my home, I set out to try to make something entirely of my own, using the Sketchbook drawings as a guide. This was a good way to test my Rhino prowess, my ability to translate things into the physical world via the Form printer, and scratch that evergreen itch where I wanted to “be” an ILMer. I always assumed the sketches were done by Joe, the Art Director, and used as a template for the model fabricators to follow. How could I not attempt the same thing conceptually!
So here it is, the Joe Johnston Sketchbook Y-Wing Fighter, as not seen in Star Wars. The quick and dirty iPhone pics are of the Sketchbook pages I pulled from, taking elements from different sketches and rectifying things in the real world where lines simply could not intersect except on a piece of drafting vellum. The final photo is the finished model alongside a complete set of parts I grew afterwards, to give you a sense of what had to be grown to make this model. The only non-Form 2 parts are the 8 “T-Strips” on the engines, and a dozen or so styrene model parts that were added for additional texture.
