Wooden Jabba Logo by WoodChuck
I first heard about WoodChuck (aka Chuck Bowman) on Roxy the Rancor’s Facebook page. Chuck had made a wooden logo plaque for Roxy, and I thought it looked really good. I contacted Chuck to see if it would be possible to have one made for me.
I originally thought about having it based on Jabba from Return of the Jedi, but decided that it would make more sense to use the vintage Jabba figure instead, since he’s sort of my mascot. He uses a method called intarsia, where pieces of wood are cut out and sanded before being reassembled to make the finished image. For Jabba, we decided on an exotic wood called Yellowheart, which is naturally yellow and would make a good match for the color of the figure.
If you look closely, you can see the wood grain. The plaque is 2 feet in diameter and weighs around 16 pounds. The lettering and plaque background are red oak, while Jabba’s tattoo symbol is made of dark walnut.
I’m quite impressed with the detail Chuck put into this piece. I have it displayed in a place of honor on one wall of my office.
I made a YouTube video that shows some in-progress photos if you’re interested in seeing more about how this was made.
I just realized that I neglected to link this on the site. I did a quick video overview of the Jabba’s Palace Character Pack for the recently released LEGO The Force Awakens game. The pack was made available as a preorder bonus from GameStop, and includes the playable characters Jabba the Hutt, Slave Leia, Boushh, Oola, Bib Fortuna, Max Rebo, Gamorrean Guard and Malakili (the Rancor Keeper).
“Jabba the Cute” Plushes by Brandon Dicks
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’m a sucker for cute Jabbas. Oh, I like super-realistic figures and statues too, but there’s something about the idea of turning a repulsive alien gangster into an adorable anime-style character that really appeals to me.
This plush was created by Brandon Dicks, based on his “Jabba the Cute” artwork (which he also included a print of in my order — nice!).
He assembles them himself (the tag says “Made in My Livingroom” on the reverse), and I’ll have to say they are quite well done. It’s about 12″ wide. You can still order these on his Storenvy site. Oh, did I mention that he also makes a mini version? They’re listed as being 7″ wide, but I’d say it’s more like 5 or 6. But smaller is cuter, in my opinion, so no complaints from me.
I also made a short video about these for my YouTube channel, which you can see below:
Now on YouTube: “Jabba’s Palace Roll Call: BG-J38”
Here’s a short video I made recently about BG-J38, Jabba’s games droid. I covered the Hasbro figure a few years ago, and it also makes an appearance in this video.
Here’s a nicely done teaser video for Funko’s upcoming Jabba’s Palace edition of the Smuggler’s Bounty subscription box.
3D Printed Faux-Bronze Rancor Statue
My 3D printer has been humming almost non-stop since I got it a few months ago. I posted earlier about the Disney Infinity Jabba that I printed and painted, and I have done quite a number of other prints, both Star Wars-related and not. But this is by far the largest project I tackled. Geoffro is a 3D modeler who often posts things to Thingiverse, and when I saw that he had added this model recently, I knew I had to print it. You can download the model here. It’s available as a one-piece version, which you could use if you wanted to print it off all at once, but if you want it to be large, you’ll want to use the multi-piece version.
I determined that the torso was the largest piece, so I scaled that up as large as I could for my printer (the Dremel 3D Idea Builder). It turned out that I could make it 125% the original size, so I scaled all of the other pieces up by 125% as well. That resulted in a final model that was around 12″ tall, or very similar to the AMT/ERTL vinyl model kit I made a few years ago.
I glued the pieces together and used some Bondo automotive body filler to fill in any cracks. Then I sanded the joints and the piece overall to smooth it out. I attached it to a wooden base, both because it looks nice to have a base, and because it wouldn’t quite stand up on its own without it. I used sand, gravel and pebbles mixed with white glue to texture the base.
Then I painted it using a faux-bronze technique that I came up with a while ago. I think it turned out pretty well. Although you can still make out some of the horizontal banding that is typical of 3D prints in a few places, for the most part the effect is very convincing.
Geoffro apparently has a Gamorrean Guard model in the works to go in the rancor’s hand, and has also designed a Jabba model that I hope will be released soon. I made a YouTube video about making this piece which you can see here:
3DKitbash has created quite a few high-quality designs for 3D-printed toys and sculptures, including a whole range of creature skulls in their “Boneheads” series. And I just discovered that they have started a Kickstarter project to combine this concept with Star Wars. Called “Skull Wars,” it’s a series of 15 skulls from the Star Wars universe. They’re divided into 5 sets of 3 skulls, as shown below. They use clever code names (well, except for “Sand Person”) but I’ve put the actual character or creature after the name in parentheses.
- Set 1: 001 Green Master (Yoda), 002 Sand Person (Tusken Raider), 003 Second Shooter (Greedo)
- Set 2: 004 Sleeping Bag (Tauntaun), 005 Space Yeti (Wampa), 006 Lizard Hunter (Bossk)
- Set 3: 007 Dog Man (Gamorrean Guard), 008 Majordomo (Bib Fortuna), 009 Monkey Lizard (Salacious Crumb)
- Set 4: 010 Pit Beast (Rancor), 011 Space Bear (Ewok), 012 Trap Spotter (Admiral Ackbar)
- Set 5: 013 Speed Racer (Sebulba), 014 Creepy Cloner (Taun We/Kaminoan), 015 Accident Prone? (Jar Jar)
If you back the project, you can decide to buy physical versions of some or all of the skulls that will be 3D printed and sent to you, or you can choose to just get 3D models that you can print on your own. The prices range from $20 for one physical skull to $275 for all of them (plus $5 shipping). Or if you just want the 3D models to print on your own, they range from $25 for a set of 3 to $110 for all 15. I wouldn’t call these prices cheap, but they will be using an SLS printer to print the skulls, which is higher quality that you typically get with a home 3D printer.
I backed at the $50 level because I wanted the 3D models for sets 3 and 4. The prices for the 3D models in particular might be a hard sell to some, since the 3D printing community has a strong open source streak, and many people are accustomed to designs being free. Still, I don’t mind paying for high quality designs, and these are right up my alley in terms of source material. And the big advantage of getting the 3D models is that you can print these at any size your printer will allow, so I plan to print these at a much larger size than the 2″ wide ones that they will be creating. If you’re interested, there’s only 7 days left in the project, and as of this writing they haven’t yet reached their goal of $20,000 so I suggest you give it a look.
I have asked about whether they would consider making a Jabba skull (although whether Hutts have skeletons in the first place is definitely open to discussion…), so we’ll see.
Jabba’s Sail Barge Pin from Disney Weekends 2015
This is a metal pin that comes on a large cardboard box/base that seems to serve no purpose but to make it seem a little bigger and fancier. I had seen this pin many times on eBay before I realized that it actually opens up to reveal Jabba and Salacious Crumb, which makes it a lot more appealing to me. It retails for $24.99, which is frankly pretty expensive for a pin that’s around 3″ long, but I managed to get a great deal on it.
I’ve got quite a few enamel Disney Jabba pins, including one of Jabba’s head, one of Jabba and Leia from 2006, and a “pivot” pin with Jabba and Leia from 2013, as well as a plain round pin with Jabba’s picture on it.
I’ve wanted one of these black prototypes ever since I first saw one a few years ago. While I don’t like the POTF2 Jabba figure very much, he does look sort of cool all in black.
In addition to the difference in the color of the plastic (and the fact that it’s unpainted) the prototype also lacks the pupils behind the transparent eyes, and has a different construction on its bottom. Below is the production figure. Note the ridges that go around the bottom and down the center.
And here is the bottom of the prototype. It’s completely flat, without these ridges. I’m convinced they added these for reinforcement.
The prototype is also missing this ridge sticking up on the middle tail section:
As you can see here, it’s flat like the rest of the tail:
When I received the prototype, this middle section had gotten pushed into the body of the figure because all that is holding it in is a little nub. I was able to pull it out with a little work, but that problem can’t happen with the production figure because of the ridge they added.
Han is also in black, and I didn’t notice any other major differences with the production version of the figure.
I also made a short YouTube video about this prototype:
Jabba the Hutt Sketch Card by Brian DeGuire
I’m a fan of the sketch card concept, because it’s a relatively easy and inexpensive way to get some original artwork in your collection, and in my book original art pretty much always trumps reproductions. I actually won this card from Brian DeGuire as part of an impromptu contest held in Brian’s thread on the Rebelscum forums. I’ll have to say, it looks very impressive in person. I had a little trouble getting a good picture of it. My scanner didn’t seem to be up to the job, so I took a photo with my camera, but even that isn’t quite as good as the real thing.
Here’s Brian’s Facebook page if you’d like to see more of his artwork.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 