Insight Editions / Palace Press continues to redefine just what a book can be with their limited edition of Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop by Lorne Peterson. As collectors and fans of Star Wars books can attest, the publishers raised the bar with Dressing a Galaxy: The Costumes of Star Wars, which included in its Limited Edition prop replicas, fabric samples, and a massive clamshell case that made the book truly stand out as a bookshelf marvel. Sculpting goes even beyond that impressive benchmark.
The Limited Edition of 3,000 signed and numbered copies comes in a massive tri-fold box, with a die-cut window that exposes a modeled portion of the Millennium Falcon's rear section. This is historically noteworthy as the greeblie-covered hindquarters of the Falcon was one of the models that ILM veteran Lorne Peterson was tasked to create and detail. Opening the book reveals the Falcon's silhouette on the inside cover. A series of magnets keep the tri-fold box sealed.
Opening the next cover exposes a foam tray filled with a treasure trove of extras. On the inside cover opposite the die-cut Falcon window is an envelope sleeve that holds an exclusive DVD produced by Van Ling. The DVD includes modelmaking documentaries as well as many never-before-seen photos from the Lucasfilm Archives and Lorne Peterson's personal collection. Also in the sleeve is a small booklet that explains the origins of the models contained within the foam tray.
At the top of the tray is a replica landspeeder, reproduced from Peterson's hand-crafted recreation of a fabled "lost model" from Star Wars. As the insert booklet explains, a version of the landspeeder in this scale was originally made for a distant shot in A New Hope, and then given away to a Japanese movie executive as a gift from George Lucas. As such, this model does not exist in the Lucasfilm Archives, and since it was created early in the production of Star Wars, very little photographic documentation of the craft exists. Peterson used similar techniques to remake the vehicle, and included removable figures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, C-3PO and Luke Skywalker. The speeder comes with a reflective base, meant to recreate the low-tech floating solution engineered for A New Hope's full sized landspeeder: a mirrored skirt that reflects the surrounding desert to make it appear the vehicle is actually floating.
Also in the foam tray section are cubbyholes containing seven hand-painted reproductions of the Death Star surface panels from the original Star Wars molded by Lorne Peterson. This too has historic significance, since at the start of Star Wars production, Peterson was brought aboard to help create the many modular panels required to represent the Death Star's surface from varying altitudes. In the film, a series of panels was mixed and matched to provide a veried surface. Six of the tile designs are included, along with a longer section representing a vertical canyon wall. Collectors are now free to lay out the tiles in their preferred configuration, offering insight into what the model makers had to accomplish over 30 years ago.
Pulling the panel at the left of the foam tray down reveals the slotted compartment that contains the actual book. Tugging a ribbon pulls the book from its slot. The Limited Edition version of the main book contains all the text of the standard edition, plus extra inserts inside, including accordion-fold booklets with cardstock starship punchouts, embossed postcard recreations of Palpatine's sculpted frieze from Episode III, additional photo-booklets on puppet characters, concept models and pyrotechnics and more.
Also occupying its own slot is an exclusive 32-page soft-bound book, From Putty to Pixels, which showcases computer graphic renderings of digital models from the Star Wars films.
Allerdings führt der Preis doch zu einer leichten Atemnot... von daher gebe ich mich doch lieber mit der normalen Auflage zufrieden.
