I’ve seen this drawing several times but decided today to take a bit of a closer look. Chris Lauria has been a toy designer since 2001. One of his contracts is for the Bradford exchange who have released a small series of miniature dioramas complete with figures. Chris designed several of these, including this rather nice Millennium Falcon/Space Worm dio.
It’s a shame this only made it to the concept and wasn’t released as i do rather like it.
Mffanrodders's Blog 
Niiiiiice!
His dioramas made it to production, maybe we will see his “Starship Collectibles” someday…
Fingers crossed, this is quite a cool piece. Kind of a cross between Hallmark, eFX and Sideshow’s “That’s No Cave” dio.
Reminds me a lot of the eFX item, which we will probably never see made either. *frown*
Yeah, i’m quite gutted about that. I really want eFX in my collection. 😦 (I’d like a little Gentle Giant too. I was always disappointed that they didn’t ever do the Falcon in their short lived “Customz” line. Still, i’m hoping for some Millennium Falcon book ends.)
eFX just hada Q&A, and the address the Falcon:
http://www.rebelscum.com/story/front/eFX_Collectibles_Midsummer_QA_Session_140194.asp
20. Any progress on the precision cast models? Or is that line dead?
Well, it is not dead, but it is a very difficult item to produce. For example, the tooling for the Falcon would have been more than $100K. This means that if we make 1000 pieces, the tooling cost alone would be $300-$400 per piece at retail! And that does not even include the final product! We are continuing to work with our vendor so that we can retail the smaller Falcon for about $400. So, as you can see, we are still way off.
$400 for the eFX Falcon. I’m still in. 🙂 Just got to stay patient.
Hello! I’m Chris Lauria 🙂 I just stumbled onto your blog post with my Bradford Falcon design. I realize this is an old post, but hopefully someone will read my reply. Obviously, Bradford did not make this specific item. The good news is that I was asked to create a new design for a similar set. The scale is a little better and there is more emphasis on the Space Slug. To replicate the scale in the movie, the Falcon would be really tiny, but I think we have a nice compromise with the new set. I’ve also created some additional Star Wars vehicle sets that should be out soon. Feel free to shoot me any questions or comments. Thanks!
Hello Chris. This is interesting. Do you have any photos, or more information about these items.
Hey mffanrodders – I have the concept art I created of course. I do have a few photos of some of the sets, but I’m not sure where they are with the releases. I don’t know which set is the most recent release. I sketch them up then they come out months later – I don’t really keep track of them. Unless I bug the product manager, I have no idea which sets are out and which ones have not been made yet. Based on that, I’m not supposed to post any artwork for sets that have not been solicited yet. Once they are solicited, I can post my concept art.
I’m not sure if you saw, but I posted my concept art for the following: Docking Bay 94 w/ Falcon -&- Cloud City Platform w/ Slave 1. These are on my Coroflot page: http://www.coroflot.com/ChrisLauriaDesign
I’ve also completed concepts for:
– Asteroid with Space Slug & Falcon (the one I mentioned)
– Sarlacc Pit with Sail Skiff
– Obi Wan’s Hut with Landspeeder
– Death Star Turbolaser Turret with T.I.E Fighter
These should be in development or close to production. Again, not entirely sure.
For all of these sets, I try to gather as much reference as possible. My goal is accuracy, although things get altered due to production costs. The Mos Eisley Cantina is a good example. It got squashed to make it smaller & cost less. The sculpting overall has also been a little less detailed than I would prefer, but they do the sculpts over-seas. From my standpoint, I try to add as much detail as I can in the drawing. What gets lost is out of my control.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any samples of these sets. I’ve only seen photos of them. What I see in the photos, I think could be better, but there is always some compromise with production. For me, it’s just a thrill to be designing the Star Wars sets. To date, I’ve designed all of the Bradford SW Village and vehicle sets. As long as they keep selling, Bradford will keep asking me to design more 🙂
I’ll try to post more when I’m sure it’s ok.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks again!
Looking forward to seeing the designs and will definitely get the space slug and docking bay 94 sets when they’re released. I also really live the Slave 1 set.