Adventures in Star Wars Papercraft

One of the things that has been bugging me for quite some time now is that I don't have any cool geeky stuff to display on my bookshelves. Most of my fellow science fiction geeks seem to have the most amazing Lego Star Wars or Star Trek model kits as props to proudly proclaim their geekiness to the world. Stuff that I could only dream of and drool over.  Local prices for similar items are just insane, and that's in the rare even that they are even to be found over here.

So what's a geek on a budget left to do? Stick to sales and hope some good comes your way. In my most recent book shopping spree I stumbled across some Star Wars books published by Egmont which include some foam board paper models you can assemble.  Those looked like they could be fun, so I decided to give them a try.

Now, let is be known that I'm not crafty at all, my dexterity has a -6 penalty and I struggle with spacial orientation. I was filled with trepidation whether I would be able to pull it off, but hoped my crafting skills would be up to the task. If a seven-year-old can do it, I can do it too. Hopefully.

First up was the models from the Starfighter Workshop which included both an X-Wing and a Tie Fighter. The X-Wing consisted of 26 pieces and was suprisingly easy to put together, without any major snags. The Tie Fighter which only had 20 pieces was quite a bit more complex and the folds were quite finicky. After a couple of hours of folding and inserting pieces into each other I had something looking at least similar to the intended goal.

Then it was time to tackle the AT-ST. For something so small it had the most parts (40!) and entailed some very finicky bending and contortions to get things to fit. When it came to the legs the instructions became unclear. Their illustration didn't match what I had in front of me no matter which way I put the pieces together. In the end I had to rely on my best guess and it seemed to work. However, I somehow ended up with an AT-ST which seems far more interested in the sky than the one depicted in the book. I checked and can't see anywhere where I went wrong, so not sure if it's just the angle of the photo in the book. But it still looks pretty cool to me. The feet were the absolute worst to put together. One foot is still a bit wonky and I just can't seem to fix it. The foam board is pretty fragile so I'm going to leave it as is and not risk any potential damage from tinkering further. At least it's standing upright on its own. That's enough of a win for me.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. They aren't perfect and it might have taken me way longer than most people to put together, but the result seems good enough. The whole process was pretty fun despite the odd frustration. I have finally fulfilled my lifelong dream of owning a X-Wing, albeit a paper one. There's only one problem - the X-Wing and Tie fighter are so big they basically take up an entire shelf of their own. But that's a problem for another day when I run out of shelf space again...

May the Force be with you!