by Jack Grey

What

Slave 1 was a complicated vessel and for years after the final death of Boba Fett it languished in disrepair and finally got sold to a family member who crashed it straight away on a drunken training flight. Eventually it was declared unfit for space travel and was left in storage with the other Fett family heirlooms. After three generations it fell into the hands of his great granddaughter, Jo-Jo who inherited a hanger full of the tools of the bounty-hunting trade. She chose to sell what was out of date and follow her late ancestors trade. The ship was rebuilt to her own specifications with many upgrades including much larger blasters and sensors, a very large Ion-cannon turret, outsized sonic cannons, rebuilt engines and a full set of blue neons...

The ship was repainted in her own style in a color scheme that was hard to ignore. She may not have achieved the status of her great grandfather in terms of hunting bounties but the Slave 1 was once again a ship that got noticed in the space lanes.

How

I hunted around for the right model to pimp and opted for an ERTL Slave 1, mostly because I wanted a Fine Molds and couldn't afford one but also because it was a cool design that can be bought on Ebay for very little, as this one was. I toyed with various ideas, many of them far too radical and in the end I decided to simply build the model with a host of garish and impractical extras but leave it recognizable. Firstly I built up the add-ons, making everything larger and sillier but the fit was just terrible and the model was a hopeless case to build out of the box. In their day these kits were ok but now they are just poor with lousy fit and soft detailing. The styrene was twisted out of shape, or was built so badly that the panels just would not marry up in most cases. This one resisted all attempts to stick together so my girlfriend's continuing demands that it should be painted pink seemed a suitably fitting revenge on a genuine piece of irritating junk.

I watched many episodes of “Pimp my ride” as research (the US one, the UK one has the most annoying presenter ever) and got the idea to outrigger it with huge wings with spoilers on the fronts, big guns on the blades and a huge multi-barreled Ion-cannon at the base, B-Wing style, bulging engines and “sonic cannons” which are a euphemism for gigantic speakers. The neons are strategic LEDs which reflect over the newly pimped detailing inserted in the added cutout and under the arches. The paint was Tamiya acrylic and hand-mixed Humbrol enamels. The roses were children rubdown tattoo transfers, which were terrible to work with but look great. After gluing and filling, some of the seems still split open so they were plated over with details to hide the many crimes against sci-fi. The hull is littered with new paneling as once I started with the look I felt it suited a rebuilt looking vessel.

Weathering was gentle as I wanted to portray it as a recent rebuild, although it's still Star Wars and couldn't look brand new.

Why

I had to rush it a bit to meet the deadline but I'm reasonably happy with the way she turned out. Not as happy as my girlfriend who chose the color. Of course once it was painted over in base pink she commented that it was now “too pink”. I had already planned a kind of prequel style coloring so that worked out ok. It was certainly nice not to build yet another grey model and it is great to see one finished for a change! The lights came out way better than I hoped and it actually looks pretty good...considering. Now it's pictured and I have a bit of time I'm taking it apart to refinish a few seams and mount it on a base for display. Also the little Boba Fett pilot has had a pink makeover and needs seating in her custom red leather chair but I didn't get it done by the deadline.

Image: Left/front view, lights on

Image: Closer look

Image: Front

Image: Right/front

Image: Above

Image: Head-on

Image: Left/front, lights off