Gino Dykstra’s Corellian XS Light Freighter

Here’s an interesting one you don’t see every day, the XS Corellian Light Freighter from Star Wars as featured in the Knights of the Old Republic game. This resin kit engineered by Stefan Hacker comes in approximately 20 pieces, including frosted clear pieces for the drive units. All the pieces exhibit the crisp detail found in pressure casting, and for the most part were to a very high standard.

Commissioned to make this kit, I studied every picture of this ship I could find on the internet, and came to the conclusion that it is intended to be essentially a heavily weathered, bare metal finish – something you don’t see in the Star Wars universe all that often. Taking the finish as an intriguing challenge, I began assembly. Since the kit I was supplied with lacked instructions, I downloaded these from the internet and examined them carefully first. I was surprised to see a couple of missing parts in my version of the kit – some minor detail pieces as well as a third optional cannon assembly for the outrigger.

The kit offers a choice of scale, either 1/144th or 1/72nd with separate cockpit shell, instrument panel/seats and back plate. Surprisingly, no similar effort was made with the gunnery cockpits, which offered only 1/72nd scale gunnery seats. Still, since my customer specifically wanted the 1/72nd scale version, this oversight didn’t prove a major problem.

However, the same couldn’t be said of the cockpit. The 1/72nd cockpit shell is markedly different from the version shown online, and my customer wanted it to have the same look. Somehow, I was going to have to shove a 1/72nd scale cockpit into a 1/144th scale shell! I first removed the seats and floor from the 1/144th scale unit. I then removed the 1/72nd scale seats from the other unit and drastically cut them down to fit in the other shell. Pilots tailored to the seats were also cut down – pretty much everything below the knees disappeared. Still, I got everything to fit, although the pilots don’t have a very good view upwards.

For the most part, things fit together very well. I was surprised, however, at the total lack of detail for the rearmost sidewalls by the engines. It’s as if he simply lost interest in this area after detailing every other part. I slapped some ridged plastic on this are just to give it a little something and called it a day.

Now for the fun part – the paint job. To get the weathered metallic effect, I first sprayed the entire model with a mix of silver and dark gray. I then misted straight silver over this to show some depth and texture, then masked and painted the various stripes, taking my time with this somewhat involved process. Other small panels were masked off and painted with straight silver. I weathered with oil paints and added appropriate wear with dabs of straight silver once again. As my customer preferred painted effects over lighting, I airbrushed the engine areas with light blue followed by white to create the illusion of lighting.

Gino Dykstra