For those who can’t afford the LEGO version, the paper Falcon from here is pretty sweet. I haven’t tried building it yet, but the AT-AT and Star Destroyer from that site came out pretty well.
Just don’t let your cats walk on them. They don’t look so good after that.
Concidering the amount of pieces… A whole lot.
Sweet! Have you found that a particular weight of paper stock works best?
Looks like the large format printer at work is about to get a workout!
My son is a couple of days from being born. He is sooooo getting a mobile made out of these bad boys! Let’s see, the Falcon, Enterprise, BattleStar Galactica, and the Eagle.
Yep, sounds about right. Should be done in time for his 4th or 5th birthday…
Here is my geek card, and I’ll punish myself by watching 1, 2, and 3 four times in a row.
It says that it is made to minifigure scale and that minifigures can sit and man the controls. I take that to mean that there are some controls in the interior.
At any rate, I don’t dig these new sets with panels at all weird angles. To me, the fascination with LEGOs was the pixelated look of things made with orthogonal blocks.
More pictures of the falcon. (Scroll down for interior shots. This model seems to be a prototype)
I’ve been using 24 pound Office Depot laser paper. It seems to be rigid enough for these models – the AT-AT would stand unassisted (right up until the unfortunate cat incident). There is stock made specifically for papercraft which might work better, but I have not experimented with it yet.
Cool. Thanks for the pointer to that site. There are some great-looking models on there. The Galactica is huge! Unfortunately they didn’t use .pdf for the parts pages, so it may take some fiddling to get them a uniform size.
I was considerately given the Lego Arc-170 Starfighter as a birthday present a couple of years ago. Offhand I’d estimate that perhaps half the pieces are generic Lego blocks, while the other half are customised pieces designed for the specific kit. Or at least are sufficiently weird that they’re nor what I’d consider legit blocks, based on what I was familiar with from extensive playing with the stuff as a kid a few decades back. There were a few kits back in the Seventies that were beginning to have specialised blocks, but it wasn’t the norm.
There are a couple of suggested alternate models using subsets of the same set of bricks, but I built the Starfighter and left it like that, apart from repairs when it gets knocked over. [sub]Or, umm, crashes.[/sub]
Many of these currents kits are extremely cute - and I’d love someone to buy me the Falcon - but there’s a part of me that still nostalgically insists that, dammit, they’re not proper Lego.
Two or three years ago I was watching tv with my roommate when a commercial for the Lego X-wing came on. It was November so toy commercials were all over the prime time. I sort bitched about how they didn’t have that when I was a kid. It would have been the coolest thing ever.
Sure enough, he got it for me for Christmas.
It has a place of honor on my shelves.
I’ve built the Lego Imperial Star Destroyer, and while almost none of its 3000+ pieces are the traditional 4x2 rectangle, there are also almost none that are unique to the ISD model. There are lots of “standard” lego pieces these days that are used for lots of models which are pretty far out there by several-decades-ago standards.
Which is not to say that there are never 100% unique custom pieces for sets.
I believe the people who work for Lego have been taking cues from the fan community. The concept is called Studs Not On Top, or SNOT (don’t look at me like that, I didn’t invent the term). Take a look at some of these crazy ass fan creations and tell me they aren’t totally awesome:
the Nebuchadnezzar hovership from The Matrix
a Valkyrie VF-1S from Robotech
a custom six-legged artillery mecha
a custom bounty hunter’s spaceship
a spaceship I made
Thanks for that link. Those look awesome. I will definitely have to try building some with my daughter (who is becoming a big SW geek).
Do you have to print them on a large format paper or does normal letter/A4 paper work?
Letter works fine. I don’t know about A4.
I’m currently building the AT-ST using light card stock and finding it a lot easier to work with than ordinary laser paper. I’d recommend using it if possible.
Ya’all are gonna love this:
The last 30 seconds or so is the best part, I think.
So that’s how Peter Gabriel builds the Millenium falcon.
Personally, I’m in love with the larger Ferrari models. They make me drool more than the cars themselves! That said, the Millenium Falcon is every kind of awesome. 
NO! THAT ONE GOES THERE and THAT ONE GOES THERE! Got it?