Almodelling

Another repost, another memory restored from the digital ashes ;)
This one was all about giving the podracer a place to belong.

From the beginning, the idea was to display the racer somewhere on Lothal, but I didn’t want the environment to overpower the vehicle itself. So I kept the composition relatively simple: a small piece of open Lothal countryside, with dry ochre soil, muted vegetation and that slightly burnt, dusty feeling I associate with the planet.

I first mapped out the position of the podracer, the cable routing and an access compartment underneath the base so the electronics can still be reached for maintenance.

The main terrain volumes were then built with XPS foam, creating two small raised areas surrounding a lower central path. Besides giving the landscape some variation, this naturally frames the podracer and keeps the composition focused on it.

For the ground texture I used a homemade mix of PVA glue, plaster and sand, before adding stones, grass tufts and static grass to break up the surface.

Then came the painting: black primer first, followed by several brown variations and a sandy filter over the exposed ground. The vegetation received different olive, earthy and rusty tones to avoid ending up with one uniform mass of green.

The last pass was all about subtle variation: individually painted rocks, localized oil washes, light drybrushing and small amounts of dry pigments to blend everything together without killing the contrasts.

And finally… the electronics went into the podracer.
The wiring was secured, the connections completed and the whole machine was permanently installed onto the base.

Seeing the engines and the green energy coupler illuminated above the finished terrain was definitely one of those moments where the whole project suddenly started feeling real.

There’s now only one major step left this weekend: the characters and scenic details.