Millennium Falcon Refactored - WIP Tagged

This is not the Millennium Falcon as we have known it — rather, as it could have been.

The inspiration for this project is threefold:  first, dissatisfaction with the awkward shoehorning of the large interior sets into the hull shape in a bid to preserve the rather undersized dimensions of the exterior versus making the plan work properly;  second, consideration of the operational requirements for a functional space freighter; and lastly, a separate thought-experiment involving expanding and adjusting narrative aspects of the Star Wars saga.

That first point is one familiar to anyone who has noted the many inconsistencies with the Falcon's depiction on-screen, size disparities between sets and models, and concluded that the canon reconciliation is perhaps not exactly representative of the best possible solutions.  The somewhat confused development of the iconic ship has been thoroughly documented elsewhere, so i will not go into it here. Suffice to say, the Falcon practically demands reassessment.

Others have attempted their own fixes and refactoring, not uncommonly scaling the ship's dimensions by various degrees to suit, and I have encountered a fair number.  To put it simply, I concluded I could do better than most I had seen, and was motivated to try my hand.

This new vision of the Falcon also came to serve a specific rethinking of its operational needs based upon a simple question:  what if the ship had a full crew (at least until running afoul of Jabba), rather than just Han and Chewie, who clearly were too short-staffed to operate the ship properly?  The result of this was invention of a cadre reminiscent of the Serenity or Nostromo, a motley crew of a about a dozen, plus droids, that could bring an interesting ensemble dramatic dynamic to  the "expanded saga" I had been mulling.

Shown here is a labelled work-in-progress snapshot of the refactored plan, lacking many details and fittings — which will be derived from canon sources when at all possible — but offering some inkling of the project's direction:  preserving the distinctive character of the Falcon in its expansion.

This is actually my second attempt, which scales the Falcon upward by a third.  The prior aborted refactoring was a 25% enlargement, but this smaller increase actually caused more problems than it solved, even as it demonstrated the basic merits of the enlarged concept.  Some of the prior "glimpses" are snapshots from that earlier version.

It is essential to note that this Falcon does not always conform to canon detail where function is deemed more important — and outright jettisons some things that seemed simply poor engineering, production expediency, or dramaturgical touches, like the ill-conceived turret rotation shown in TFA, or the strangely crude backside of the cockpit bulkhead — but retains many of the familiar aspects while adding new detail and consideration for functional engineering and operations, as well as addressing established narrative demands and inconsistencies.

The added compartments serve as proof of this, of course.

But particularly notable is the significant shifting of the Personnel Ramp to a small lower deck (dash-outlined at the center of the layout here, but will ultimately receive full deck-plan treatment) — a consequence of the emergent troubles inherent to the aborted prior attempt, and entirely separating it from a fully defined, original Docking Complex design of which I have posted some snapshots prior.

The scope of this project is considerable, and I am treating this as something of a show-peice, lavishing great attention upon the illustration and pushing what can be accomplished with pure vector art.  It is also HUGE.  Even if I posted a 300DPI version here, some detail would be lost.  And this is not even including the elevation cutaways or detail call-outs.

Look for more WIP updates in the future, highlighting its gradual development.

Clean WIP here:

 

Other project images in the Millennium Falcon Refactored Gallery.