by Marco Scheloske

"Garven Dreis? Who is Garven Dreis?!?" - tcha, the name of this brave pilot, who gave his live in the battle of Yavin, is not very well known, but his callsign Red Leader is! This little diorama shows the very last scene with Red Leader in Star Wars - A New Hope... the plaque shows his last words (so to speak...)

The model is build from two Death Star surfaces bases from Triliance, a pedestal made from cardboard and self expanding foam for the explosion. Red Leader's X-Wing is hyper-detailed, lit, movable parts, photoetch, super-duper paintjob, perfect weathering... of course you can`t see anything from that because it is in the center of the ongoing action...

The smoke trail is made out of colored cotton wool, held in shape with the help of a lot of hairspray.

The Death Star surface was painted in a middle grey basecoat, then detailed by a Payne grey oilcolor wash and two drybrush rounds with light grey and white. Finally the reflected light of the explosion was drybrushed with 4 different tones of yellow.

The explosion was sculpted out of self expanding foam, and painted with 14 layers of color, using several yellow, orange and brown tones, all drybrushed onto eachother while still being wet to blend them together, starting from the lightest tone (hot areas) to the darkest (cooler areas).

Good bye, Garven Dreis!

Image: Front view

Image: Inscription

Image: Cockpit view