The T-6 Shuttle is an unarmed spacecraft used by the Jedi Order in the Star Wars franchise.
Background[]
The T-6 shuttle featured a rotating engine block and cockpit that oriented with the rest of the ship when landed or in flight. In its landing configuration, the ship sat horizontally, supported by a trio of landing gear. The cockpit, somewhat conical in shape, remained aligned with the body of the craft, with the three engines likewise horizontally aligned with the body of the ship. When in flight, the cockpit and the engine block rotate ninety degrees. One loading ramp is located on the port side of the engine block.
Due to its role as an ambassadorial craft, the T-6 shuttle lacked weaponry, but was equipped with a hyperdrive. Furthermore, the craft's spacious interior provided for reasonably comfortable space travel. The also featured a training room which doubles as a dining room with a table and chairs accending from the floor. The trianing room is supplied with all the necessary equipment for Lightsaber training, such as wooden blades, blast helmets, and lightsaber training dones.
When pressed into service during the Clone Wars, T-6 shuttles were adorned with a Galactic Roundel and painted in the red-and-white color scheme of the Grand Army of the Republic, though they remained unarmed. Decades later, T-6 shuttles became equipped with weaponry, such as an aft turret gun.
Behind the Scenes[]
The T-6 Jedi Shuttle was originally created for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was redesigned to be more detailed compared to its animated counterpart for the live-action series, Ahsoka. The CGI model was also modified to include more detail in Tales of the Jedi.
Development[]
John Goodson and his model of the T-6 Jedi Shuttle.
Like the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian, a phyisical model was built by model maker John Goodson for filming. Goodson spent nearly four months building Ahsoka's T-6 shuttle with help from machinist Dan Patrascu who added the mechanical innards. Goodson vacuum formed and fabricated individual parts, instead of simply 3-D printing the majority of the model from a digital file. 3-D printed parts were considered too delicate, and for a model ship that would be mounted to a motion-control rig for countless shots, sometimes colliding with the camera during production, would result in pieces not being sturdy enough to survive the process. After cutting out wooden patterns, Goodson used heated plastic sheets to create the base of many of the model's bigger pieces. Some of the largest elements, like the shuttle's massive rotating wing, required the usage of the same equipment used by ILM for the original trilogy.
T-6 Jedi Shuttle model weighs in at about fifteen pounds with a rotating wingspan that stretches about thirty inches across. There are about three hundred and fifty individual parts on the model, which includes everything from the smallest greeblies pulled from a long-forgotten model kit to the large vacuum formed segments.
Goodson also added two small figures molded to look like Ahsoka and Huyang, seated in the cockpit, which also had working interior lighting for the instrument panel. On the back of the ship, a trio of engines were 3-D printed and lit with small LED bulbs alongside a custom ball turret.
In the midst of the model build, showrunner Dave Filoni added a mechanism to the shuttle that would contract part of the fuselage while the wing is in motion to give the ship a sleeker look. This was to make it look a little more svelte, but there was nothing (commercially) available that would do as Filoni requested. So, a new mechanism was designed. Filoni also added the signature red detailing on the ship’s exterior.[1]
Filming[]
Filming the T-6 Jedi model was done using the original motion-control camera system rig built to capture aerial cinematography for Star Wars: A New Hope. However, the unique design of the T-6's rotating singular wing posed a new challenge. The only place to mount it was at a 45-degree angle. With a singular wing rotating around the fuselage to propel the T-6, the team had to balance the weight of the five-pound wing piece on a tiny gear, about three inches in diameter. The mechanism driving that movement was another puzzle for the model making team. One-of-a-kind mechanical parts were fabricated to power the small motor tucked away in a three-inch tube at the model's core. Digital representations of the shuttle were also used in visual effects shots and on life-size sets of the interior.[1]
Gallery[]
.png "Ahsoka (38).png (842 KB)")
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.jpeg "Ahsoka - T-6 Jedi Shuttle (1).jpeg (103 KB)")
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.png "Ahsoka (30).png (616 KB)")
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.webp "LEGO Ahsoka Tano's T-6 Jedi Shuttle (1).webp (650 KB)")
.webp "LEGO Ahsoka Tano's T-6 Jedi Shuttle (3).webp (492 KB)")
.jpeg "T-6 Jedi Shuttle ILM Model (1).jpeg (122 KB)")
.jpeg "T-6 Jedi Shuttle ILM Model (2).jpeg (106 KB)")
.jpeg "T-6 Jedi Shuttle ILM Model (3).jpeg (111 KB)")
.jpeg "T-6 Jedi Shuttle ILM Model (4).jpeg (109 KB)")
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "How the ILM Model Shop Brought Ahsoka’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle to Life". Star Wars (September 22, 2023).
External links[]
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