Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection

I haven't seen anything discussion of Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection yet.

I would think they could just recycle a bunch of old WEG schematics, but apparently Chris Trevas is drawing new illustrations.

Fixy linky.

 

I was thinking the same thing--just whip out the blueprints from old sourcebooks and the original Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels--but DK probably doesn't have the rights to directly reproduce material from, respectively, WEG and Del Rey.

Obviously we'll get the same old Falcon, X-wings, TIE fighter et al, but I really hope there's also some vehicles and ships that have never been blueprinted in any sourcebook or in the DK Cross-Sections. Maybe even some that have been described in novels but never pictured at all. Yeah, that would be nice.

 

Here comes the inevitable "re-adjust" retcon for the capital ship sizes.

LFL owns the rights to any previous schematics...especially in the case of WEG materials...any publisher of it previously has a royalty right on what they produce...but LFL owns the property and can give permission to DK if they choose.

My guess is that it will have more to do with an artistic style of the book then anything else...make it all look the same, rather then an encyclopedic compendium of different sources.

And as I said...this allows them to change things if they want.

I'd love to see some designs for late generation ships...though if they try to blueprint a Vong Worldship, I'll cry shenanigans...why waste pages on atypical rocks...honestly.

 

Why especially WEG? Simply because they no longer exist so rights default completely back to LFL?

Also, I know this has been covered elsewhere before, but does that mean LFL could reprint the WEG guides wholesale if they liked? Perhaps as fullpage scans on Hyperspace? Obviously it's already coming out in bits and pieces there, but that's different....

 

Well they would license out the reproduction to the publisher of choice. But in this case, rather then simply repackage the old...they're going to go new, which allows them to change things and give things a fresh and cohesive face. No doubt we'll see PT ships in the same detail and scale as OT ships...and perhaps EU stuff as well...all in the same form...makes the book better looking and a more attractive sell.

As far as hyperspace stuff...that's one way to reuse and existing commodity...tossing them up on the databank eventually would be another.

Keep us buying, keep us buying...the ones who already own WEG books...they need to appeal to us...thus brand new schematics.

 

Well, they do still exist, but they went through a major bankruptcy and anyone they owed probably got pieces of WEG property, including, I would think, their intellectual property. Not much related to SW was owned by them, I'm sure, but I would imagine if anything was, it reverted to LFL as part of bankruptcy settlement (minus the D6 system itself).

No, I think they'd have to leave out material specifically related to the D6 system, since that's still the intellectual property of the new WEG. But yes, the majority of the sourcebooks could probably be reprinted, minus stat blocks and rules sections, verbatim by LucasFilm if they so chose. I doubt it would be profitable enough for them to bother, though.

 

I think its going to be much more limited than that. The cover describes only five double-sided blueprints. Combined with the fact that Amazon lists the book as having 10 pages, it'll probably be limited to what's advertised on the cover.

[image=http://www.starwars.com/eu/lit/ref/img/20071105_bg.jpg]

And I thought DK Publishing couldn't get any thinner than their Visual Dictionaries (64 pages) Inside the Worlds (48 pages) and Incredible Cross-Sections (32 pages) series. Yeeesh!

danielc56

 

Oh good gravy. You're right. I had assumed this was going to be comparable to the Incredible Cross-Sections and VisDics.

In fact, if the cover text is to be believed, it appears we have
Death Star
Darth Vader
R2 and 3P0
the Falcon
lightsabers and blasters



Well, there goes my interest level. What a waste....

 

That depends on the size of the blueprints. If these are actual poster-sized blueprints, it might be a reasonable value.

If.

 

First of all, thanks to Rogue_Follower for unlocking this thread.

I just got this today and my feelings are mixed, leaning towards positive.

As far as the art is concerned, I'm afraid I can't really judge, since they are, well, blueprints. It does get the job done.

In terms of the text, it points out quite a bit of standard minutiae, including Han's lucky dice however, there are some odd bits of trivia scattered in there. Among this there appears to be some original material, discussing exactly what types of droid brains the Falcon had, a picture of a midi-chlorian, and the extent of Threepio's memory wipe (he remembers a distorted image of young Anakin, but is unable to put a name to the face). I have a feeling that the preceding is not the full extent of this, as I've had only had a limited time to go over these.

The one gripe I have with this was the format. On each of the five posters, we get one blueprint, but the other side is a poster with 3/4 of its space devoted to a movie still. The rest of the space includes the title of the subject of the blueprint and three smaller movie stills with accompanying text.

Overall, despite that disappointment, I liked it and I look forward to additional sets of blueprints in the future.

 

Anything else in it besides the above list?

 

I was looking forward to this for awhile, until discovering about the 10 pages. I'm sure it is likely to be done nicely, just that I cannot justify spending money for that few amount of things in it. I had been dreaming about seeing some ships in there -- something like a Theta- or Lambda-class shuttle would have had me scrambling.

 

A . . . picture of a midi-chlorian? Awesome. It sounds like Windham has gotten in some really interesting material for a blueprints book -- I'm liking this guy more each day.

 

Damn... I saw this in the store today and didn't bother to even look at it. For some reason I confused it with the old Cross-Sections books...

 

It sounds like a great idea, but it's a pity that the book didn't include more ships and vehicles (I think it's too short to be called "Ultimate" ).

 

Exactly, on both fronts.

 

http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/html/features/starwars/popupimages/3.html

[image=http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/html/features/starwars/popupimages/3.html]

DKs homepage got this beautiful preview

thx to starwars-union.de who let me notice it

there is more art out of their other works: http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/html/features/starwars/index.html

 

I rather liked the art in that preview. The text looks to have been recycled though.

 

I didn't know anything about this book. Judging from the talk on here, it doesn't sound all that spectacular. So, I guess it's too much to hope that the Dusty Duck is in there, somewhere isn't it?

Sigh...