Dune Atreides Ornithopter

[frank2056]

The Meng Atreides Ornithopter from the Dune movie is a snap (or press fit) kit that comes with some simple decals for the transparencies and optional landing gear. Without the decals, the kit goes together in about 5 minutes and makes a nice display model as is.

Instead... I decided to glue, paint and modify it slightly to represent a scene from the movie, where Gurney Halleck pulls Paul into the vehicle. I found a composite image that someone on RPF used to get the "real" size of the vehicle.



I used those values to calculate the scale of the Meng kit - roughly, 1/245. Let's say 1/250. I was tempted to print some 1/250 figures, but I had some Herpa ground crew in 1/200 that were almost in the right positions. By comparing them to the figures in the image above and doing some creative plastic surgery, I think they came out looking close enough to the image:



Since the Orinthopter comes with in-flight and extended landing gear, I went with the extended gear (in the movie, they're just taking off). The extended rear ramp piece doesn't have a mounting hole for the stand, so I drilled one out.

I'll take better pictures tomorrow when there's some sunlight.

[Dizzyfugu]

It looks tiny?! How long is this at 1:250-something? 

[zenrat]

 

[frank2056]

It looks tiny?! How long is this at 1:250-something? 

The body is around 95-96mm long (depending on how hard you press the parts together) The wingspan is about 170mm fully extended. Pretty small. The Harkonnen Orinthopter has similar dimensions, but fewer wings.

The "real world" dimensions, as calculated by Soswow on the RPF  is - full length (nose to end of fuselage) is 23.2m, wingspan (from the fuselage center) is 26.4m, Height is around 4.7m

So the kit's scale is around 1/242 - 1/244. The nearest kit scales are 1/250 (paper models) or 1/220 (trains)

[Rheged]

I wonder if they will produces a spice harvester and carrier wing?

[frank2056]

Meng has a spice harvester that has potential for many non-Dune applications:



I found the origin al artists' site and he has some renderings with human figures for scale. I haven't calculated the kit scale yet, but looking at some of the doors and railings, it looks like it's between 1/700-1/1000; probably some random scale in that range due to it's being a box scale kit.

I took some pictures of the orinthopter in the "daylight" - the Sun was somewhere behind some heavy overcast all day long:





In my hand, for scale:

[PR19_Kit]

Ahah, THAT'S how big (or small.....) it is. 

Unless you have GINORMOUS hands that is..................

[DogfighterZen]

Cool looking bug!   

[Dizzyfugu]

The body is around 95-96mm long (depending on how hard you press the parts together) The wingspan is about 170mm fully extended. Pretty small. The Harkonnen Orinthopter has similar dimensions, but fewer wings.

Thanks a lot!