The force has always been strong when it comes to interest in Star Wars prop replicas, but Disney and Lucasfilm have always relied on licensing official designs and schematics to third-party companies. While the resulting products may hold up well when it comes to sales numbers, they’ve been a far cry from what would be considered a “true-to-life” replica of what’s actually used in the movies.
For the first time ever, prop designers from Star Wars: The Force Awakens are creating a low-run production of precisely detailed one-off prop replicas for the Star Wars Collectibles: Ultimate Studio Edition series.
The series, which includes a total of eight pieces ranging from $1,250 to $3,000, is entirely handmade and created using the original 3D digital data from the actual prop featured in the film in combination with advanced digital manufacturing processes, and then hand-finished by highly skilled artisans:
While the props themselves certainly deserve a high level of praise, the team’s ability to use modern digital manufacturing technologies to create low production runs of high-quality products at a reasonable cost is nearly just as fascinating.
