I work as an illustrator and an occasional graphic designer by day. Sometimes I like to relax by making some laid back posters with the toys. And by toys I do not mean just the toys but also the tools, the camera and the computer. These posters are not meant for anything, they are just something to have some fun with and maybe to have something nice to look at.
The first posters of this sorts were with scale model spaceships in the summer of 2013. There was four of them and they got some exposure on social media. They still come up on Pinterest from time to time. After those four posters I switched to Lego spaceships. I figured it could be an interesting way to look at Lego to highlight them by not showing too much.
These are not in chronological order but two of the oldest posters of this particular series are in this batch. The TIE is the oldest here, from 2013.
In this first set of four posters the TIE fighter is the second Lego spaceship poster I ever did. Over the years I have scrapped a couple of the early posters and made new versions of them. For example the first Millennium Falcon poster (top right, the first version) was nice but a few years later I made an updated version of it. For a good reason too I think. The Slave 1 was originally made with the old Lego model, this with the UCS Slave 1 poster is, again, a remake.
I’m not entirely sure where I got that high vertical format but I have used it for all the spaceship posters I’ve made. I like it even though it appears to be arbitrary, just something I figured would look interesting. It may be that I simply had a piece of old paper that I sometimes use as an overlay shaped like that.
Some of the Lego models looked boxy from a straight angle and I had to think of alternative ways to show them. The X-wing worked really well, I still like how it looks in this. The B-wing wasn’t that great. It is an exotic design with a weird silhouette and the Lego construct seemed to amplify that. They say the B-wing was difficult to film for the Return of the Jedi. I can believe that, I certainly struggled with it.
I wanted the posters to look very simple, rough silhouettes and most basic forms suggesting maybe locations connected to the spaceships. The Death Star stencil on the X-wing poster is by far the most complex of them all while the TIE Striker next to it is the simplest. I like the TIE Striker by the way, I liked Rogue One too. The movie had well thought out designs, different and new but all stylistically very faithful to the Star Wars original trilogy universe.
These are the latest ones I made. I guess you can tell by the colours that I found some that please my eye and stuck with that. If I ever do more I must go for something different I suppose. On the left the remade Millennium Falcon poster with the big UCS model. The difference with the old Lego model is significant, the update was a no-brainer.
The third batch of posters. I’m very happy with the last three of these posters, the Tantive IV, the U-wing and the Blade Runner Police Spinner. With them I think I managed to capture a look I like with the heavily manipulated photographs and the graphic elements, spheres and lines.
The Blade Runner Police Spinner is obviously not an organic part of this particular series but it deserved a go too. The model is a MOC by someone who goes by the name Kaitimar, not an officially released set. It is actually quite a wonderful little thing.
I have some more Lego spaceships for future posters but haven’t found a satisfactory approach for them. I haven’t put a lot of hours on them to be honest, this is a relaxation project after all. If it takes too much effort it isn’t relaxing.
In the early 2010’s my photographs with Lego, especially with Lego, were rather experimental. The manipulation of air around the little minifigures with smokes and blizzards was the thing I did. I even coined a name for it: “Forced Atmospheric Perspective Photography”.
The idea was very simple. The Forced Atmospheric Perspective Photography was about adding something in the air to scale it down, make it denser. You can’t scale down elements like fire or water but with air I knew it could be done, I just had to search for it a little. Densifying air will help match it with the small scale of the Lego minifigure thus making them look bigger than they are in photographs, less toyish.
The basic idea is not mine, of course. It originates from special effects and miniature photography in movies. Animators use it too, they simulate it with frosted glass between the elements. I used to read everything I could get my hands on about the subject of special effects, magazines and books. I grew up in Finland and finding this stuff wasn’t always the easiest thing. This was before the time of the internet, mind you. I was a subscriber to early Starlog, Cinefantastique and Cinefex magazines, I found books like ILM, The Art of Special Effects from the big Akateeminen bookstore downtown Helsinki.
From the cloud tanks of CE3K and Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Hades landscape of Blade Runner and more, that's what I had, and the idea of using it for photographing Lego and other toys. It was a different and new look with Lego at the time, it stood out. At least on platforms like Flickr, it was the giant for the photography scene then.
From 2011, Early Morning Scout Patrol, photographed with smoke. This was outdoors in direct sunlight using burning paper to create the smoke and hoping to catch some ash too. I was delighted afterwards to realise the tiny ash particles look like insects buzzing in hot morning sun. I lightened the image a bit, the original is very dark and oversaturated. Most of my images from that era are dark and oversaturated, they were edited with laptop using the WYSIWYG method. In retrospect it wasn’t ideal.
Today is February 14th, 2024, Valentine’s day and the 10th anniversary of The Lego Movie in Finland. The anniversary of The Lego Movie is why I brought up those old experiments I did with the brick. They caught the eye of the production team gearing up to make The Lego Movie around 2012 or 2013. In search for the look of the film they called me and wanted to know how and why I did my photographs the way I did.
Now, I must emphasize that the toyphotography scene back then was not like it is today. In the early days there was a moment my photography experiments left me thinking that they were indeed different and I was the village idiot making them alone because everybody else just couldn’t care less. Originally I didn't even have my name shown publicly because of this. I thought that if what I was doing somehow blew on my face I’d still have the protection of anonymity. That's where the “Avanaut” came along. Defying the self doubt was good in the end.
I have signed an NDA concerning the Lego Movie so I can’t say much. I don’t really know if they’d care after ten years, probably not, but I will let them say it for me. Just to be on the safe side.
Here is an article I’ve shared a lot. It's from Craig Welsh, the lighting supervisor of The Lego Movie. In the article on his blog Expanded Cinematography he opens the process of finding the right look for the plastic toy.
The Last Ship to Rendezvous, 2013. This is used as an example in the Craig Welsh blog post. Photographed in smoke filled room for dreamy frozen atmosphere.
Another article in the FX Guide where the film’s production designer Grant Freckelton is interviewed about the very same thing but broader. From the article:
“Animal Logic took inspiration from Finnish photographer Vesa Lehtimäki (also known as Avanaut) who creates realistic scenes using LEGO, sometimes with ‘in-camera’ effects. “We actually talked to him,” recalls Freckelton, “and he described how Douglas Trumbull influenced his work by creating smoke tanks or much much smaller environments filled with much much more atmosphere than you would normally have. That was the same approach we took.”
That's it, ten years ago this was my little adventure with Hollywood. It was grand! Maybe even awesome.
The “Red Jammer” is, as many of you know, the one Y-wing starfighter that never made it to the silver screen, Star Wars (1977). It was the first Y-wing model built, not counting the Colin Cantwell prototype, and is the one the other models were based on. It has slightly different surface detail than the ones used for filming the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars and it was not fully finished on the starboard side. The Jammer was sent from California to London as a reference for the full size studio mock-up used in the Yavin IV hangar scenes.
Sometime in 2012 Nice-N Model Designs released a big 1:24 scale Red Jammer Y-wing model kit. It was an incredible kit, a real gem, and I missed the window to order one! The sell happened at a time I was just only realising these things existed in the first place, big “Studio Scale” resin kits, made in incredibly small numbers. It turned out these were rare as hen’s teeth.
Photographs of the elusive Red Jammer Y-wing model, these were the only ones I found at the time I began looking for images of the original models. Photographer unknown, possibly Steve Neisen of Nice-N. If you look closely you can see the starboard engine is lacking paint, it also lacks details, or “greeblies”, as they say.
The studio scale concept is often misunderstood to mean 1:24 scale in particular but it actually has nothing to do with scale. Studio scale is a replication of a screen used model, whatever the scale is. It is sometimes also said to mean not just the correct size but also the exact same parts and paint job. Studio scale means a replication of an original screen used model as accurately as possible.
I wanted to have a 1:24 scale Y-wing no matter what. I found an unbuilt kit in Belgium in March 2014 after a two year search. The entire production run of this kit was 44 numbered units with perhaps a few unlisted extras made. Mine is number 40 of 44. I believe there was an earlier release with some differences in how the kit was designed. There were also some made later, not the Red Jammer but I think Gold Leader. Or at least there was supposed to be more, I'm not really sure if of this. Nice-N Model Designs website suggests they are not active anymore.
The Nice-N model Y-wing kit, unassembled in box. The Finemolds 1:72 scale Y-wing for size comparison. This thing is big, over 70 centimeters long!
Opening the box with the huge Y-wing kit parts inside was probably the most thrilling and profound moment I’ve ever experienced with scale models. This was a dream come true. It was not just the two year wait but the wait from 1977 fulfilled all at once.
My kit was the Red Jammer, the different one. I was only learning the differences between the individual Y-wing models and it turned out I wanted to have something that looked more like the ones we see in the film. I wanted something from them all, not one particular model – and made with genuine parts! There was some serious research ahead of me.
Ten years ago finding information on these models was very different than it is today. I happened to stumble my way into this peculiar niche of model building at a time when there still were some unidentified parts on the models and the data was not exactly public yet. You see, those bits and bobs on the original Y-wing filming models were resourced from vintage model kits, tanks, trains, battleships and whatnot back in 1976. All those parts were researched and identified in the past ten, fifteen years or so, when the Y-wings were reverse engineered by a group of enthusiasts. They went through hundreds and hundreds of old pre-1976 scale model kits in search for these parts, it is an astonishing achievement.
Photographs of the Gold Leader and the Red Jammer existed but they, along with information of parts and the particular vintage model donor kits, were not available to an inexperienced newbie from Finland just like that. It was frustrating at times even though I understand why the secrecy. Gradually the veils opened though and I got access to some high resolution photographs. I bought about a dozen of the vintage model kits for the correct parts, sourced some individual parts through various contacts, some from Australia, Japan etc, and learned to make silicon casts and resin copies of certain parts.
Then the Gold 2 a.k.a. “Tiger Sprocket” surfaced in 2016. It’s the screen used model that was given to Alan Ladd, the producer who greenlighted Star Wars. It was now in possession of Stephen Lane, the founder of Prop Store, an auction house specializing in screen used film props. Lane generously sent me some high resolution photographs of this beautifully survived Y-wing model. This was a superb resource.
The Gold 2 Y-wing model, a.k.a. Tiger Sprocket, from Stephen Lane collection. These images were made public by the Prop Store in 2016. This is not from the lot sent to me.
Today you can find really good images of all of the filming models. With a little research you’ll find kit lists and part maps from builders’ forums. And let’s not forget the incomparable Star Wars: Chronicles, the Japanese book with great photographs of all the models. Unfortunately it is very expensive these days.
The research and altering the model with genuine vintage parts was time consuming. To add to the ambitious build I wanted to have the model light up for photographs. There are lights in the engines, cockpit dashboard and the astromech droid. On top of that I made removable landing gears from scratch with lights in the gear wells. I also wanted the cockpit hatch to open and close. This all took me to a rabbit hole unlike I have ever experienced before or since.
Some photographs from the build process. On the left you can see some vintage kit parts on the white base kit hull. The yellow parts are resin casts, some made by me, some purchased from around the world, some came with the kit. Then the internal structure with aluminium wing plate and mounting points attached on each side. A detail from the side of hull, a busy area, not the easiest to paint. Second from right genuine Aavid heat sinks used for the engines. I bought them from Germany, they are still in production. Magenta leds were a must. On the right a detail of the scratchbuilt front landing gear before paint, made them from styrene and brass.
I knew I was out of my league with this model, it was my first resin model after all. At one point I put the Y-wing on hold and purchased a Salzo V3 X-wing (a remarkable kit as well) to learn about resin and big scale so that I wouldn’t mess this up. I finished the X-wing before proceeding with the Y-wing with the newly acquired skills.
The painting phase was incredibly unnerving, I procrastinated around it for months. The originals are gorgeous, their look, achieved with delicate layers of mist coats, is very difficult to replicate. I knew I couldn’t do it. My Y-wing is an amalgamation of all the Y-wings, it couldn’t be painted as any one of them anyway. I needed it to be a “Gold X”. I used the then newly released Archive-X enamel paints. The Archive-X product line is a remarkable resource for anyone building old Star Wars models. They have only acrylics available today.
So, the colours were right even if the paint scheme was going to be my own. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t succeed in painting the model quite like I had hoped. And sure enough, I made mistakes and the layers of paint grew thickness and developed grain. It was not as good as it could have been. The paint looks nice from afar but in close inspection it leaves room for improvement in some areas. I have planned to partially repaint the model, just the head and the engine nacelles, to give it some of the qualities I feel it’s lacking. Maybe some day.
The irony is that I love the big and beautiful Y-wing model despite the shortcomings with the paint, It looks amazing to the naked eye, I just don’t seem to like photographing it very much. That was the real surprise with this model, I have taken just a few photographs of it.
For this blog post I decided to take some studio photographs of the model as it is. I realised I had not really done even that before.
The landing gear installed. The twist in this was that the engines aren’t level, one sits a little bit higher than the other. The landing gear are therefore different height to keep the wing and body levelled when parked.Side views of the Y-wing I built. I can not look at it without thinking where this and that part belongs to originally. I do not know nearly all of them but I know many. The belly. Please note how the locations of the landing gear are concealed. There was no point trying to make them visible in this configuration. There are no landing gear bay doors in the filming miniatures, no need to create any such thing for this either, this thing needed to look like the real deal.
The thing is that my Y-wing is a relic of a bygone era. I built it the old fashioned way while watching 3D printing evolve from the crude early Shapeways products to what it is today; a new medium with affordable home printers with quality indistinguishable form plastic injection mold items. There will be those who still do this by hand but many have already moved to printing. Especially those who think of doing this commercially. While it is sad in some ways, it is also the beginning of a new, glorious era of modelmaking. I hope I have it in me to find a way to make use of it myself.
Back in 2011 I had already had some media exposure with my Lego and action figure photographs and I figured it was time to resurrect my teenage idea of photographing scale model spaceships. I had taken a few photos and tried to build some models of my own in the early 1980’s but it didn’t go nowhere. Then again in the early 1990’s, still no go. I looked up what was available this time around and found the Finemolds 1/72nd scale Y-wing.
The Y-wing was at the time my favourite of the classic Star Wars spaceships, probably still is, and I’d never had one before in any form, except the one I built from Lego when I was a kid, so the choice was easy to make.
The scale modeling scene had changed since my youth and the availability of tools and materials was now so much better. One of these new things was the Tamiya ultra thin liquid cement. The minuscule plastic bits and bobs were easy to glue on to the model with it. Also the camera technology had changed. I now had my first DSLR camera and I knew a little bit about Photoshop. So, all this seemed like a perfect setup for what I was about to do.
The 1/72 scale Finemolds Y-wing scale model. This one didn't have anything extra, it's a straight out of the box build.
I was so pleased with the Y-wing model, it turned out looking great. Furthermore, despite the small size it worked much better with the camera than I had hoped for. I made some tests and posted the first photograph of the model on Flickr. There was great potential in the idea, I thought.
A variation of the header image, a leftover from the same photo session.The coldest days of that winter photographing the Y-wing. Almost lost some toes, and that’s only half joking.
As it turned out, I was right about the potential but not quite the way I had hoped for. Being new to the toyphotography scene, I was not that familiar with what was already out there. I was shocked to find Cédric Delsaux’s fantastic Dark Lens book. He had already cleaned the table with it and I’d had no idea of it even existing.
I value the originality of ideas and I wowed myself to not proceed any further with scale models because of Dark Lens. Really, this was such a disheartening moment because the last thing I wanted was to come across as a copycat.
But, you know how it is, days went by, I took some more photos of the tiny Y-wing and I loved it regardless of the circumstances. I changed my mind and ordered the 1/72 scale Finemolds Millennium Falcon while making even more photographs with the small Y-wing. I figured by making the models myself, customizing them with lighting and more I might be able to find a way to do this my way after all.
Not all the images I have taken of the Finemolds model is about the Y-wing being parked somewhere. They just work well, I think.
There are only two photogalleries on this website, The Scale Model Project and Danish Plastic, both clear in what they’re about. There is more diversity in my photographs than meet the criteria for the two galleries however. Some photographs have been left out.
It occurred to me to shed some light on these choices now that this website is live.
I haven’t photographed action figures nearly enough to make a gallery solely of them. Nor black and white images, there are just a few of them.
The Alien Xenomorph action figure. The quality leaves much to improve but it looks great.
There are also studio photographs of the scale models I’ve built, just documentation of how they actually look like. This material would be fairly easy to expand a little, build volume. But perhaps this would be a bit catalogue-ish to make an entire gallery of.
A TIE Fighter built from a Hasbro toy. Today there is a really good 1/32 scale model kit available but at the time I built this (2020) there were only very small models around. Too small for me.
There are also the posters I do from time to time but, again, not enough. They’re certainly worth a lengthy blog post of their own later.
Putting these all together to make one “Miscellaneous” gallery would create a restless mishmash of this and that, just what I tried to avoid with this whole thing. So, two galleries it is, clean and simple, prioritized. I won’t rule out that some day a third gallery might show up though. If I figure one out.
Lots of things have happened since the summer of 2009 when I put my first photographs on Flickr. The arrival of the affordable DSLR cameras was just in, the rise of social media and the ebbs and flows of popular culture and the entertainment industry were making a huge impact not only to toyphotography but on everything. The noughties now feel like a different world entirely.
I was very lucky with timing. Posting my photographs online when Flickr had just peaked, giants like Facebook and Twitter were still basically taking baby steps and Instagram didn’t even exist, it couldn’t have been much better. The new platforms were attracting people by the millions, it was all new and exciting. With my images I had managed to find something that hadn’t been seen before, there was originality which tangled with the new platforms and the users’ desire to find something new. That's how I see it, timing and originality, they both had to be there.
My fifteen minutes of fame were years 2011 to 2016, or thereabouts. The photographs made rounds on most of the big news media platforms with interviews to boot. I tell you, it was truly wild at times, quite an adventure.
Of course, on the shallow internet event horizon all of this is already ancient history.
My photographs are are here and there, scattered on several platforms, now also on Bluesky and Mastodon, as if it wasn’t confusing enough already. Flickr was my first platform, the photographs are there in their most raw form, warts and all, original posts never polished or re-edited after their original time of posting. I've never manipulated the Flickr galleries to make it look better, the misfires and regrets are all still there. I think there is value in that, that is if one appreciates a transparent process and a visible learning curve. Instagram has a bit more muddled timeline and honestly the small format does not do justice to anyone’s photographs there. On my Facebook page there are other posts as well, it’s not a gallery at all, it’s more like a chatroom. These all platforms have their perks but thinking of the big picture, something has been missing.
Avanaut.com is a long overdue project. I mean LONG overdue! It is designed to host a curated selection of my photographs the way I’d like you to see them. It’s not all the photographs, just a selection which I will update from time to time. The photographs on this website are bigger than they’ve ever been online. This is a bit unnerving but if I don’t do this you’ll never see the images as they’re meant to be seen: in big size. That’s what I photograph and edit them as and it bothered me that there was no way to let you in on that. Not before this, that is. I have made some of the older photographs look better than they were at the time I first released them, but in my defence the original versions are still on Flickr and Instagram.
This website is about the viewing experience, like any gallery should be, physical or digital. The web page design is calm and simple, decorative elements have been left out to focus on the content. I heartily recommend to view the galleries on a big monitor full screen, that’s what it was designed for. The page is responsive for portable screen viewing also, it was designed separately to be as good as it can be.
My photographs are often accompanied by stories. They practically write themselves as I post the images. It’s a lot of fun, actually. We made a decision to prioritize the gallery experience here, keep it as clean as possible, therefore we moved the stories to a separate compartment below the gallery. They are there if anyone’s interested but they do not interfere with the main thing.
There is also a blog. Does anyone read those anymore? I don’t even know. I felt I should write down something about the models I built for my photographs however, perhaps a few words about the things that the photographs have brought my way over the years too. So, the blog is a chronicle of a sorts and with the gallery I hope it paints a cohesive picture of what I’ve had in mind with the photographs I do.
