Star Wars - Ghtroc 720 Light Freighter

The Ghtroc 720 Light Freighter is a spaceship from the Expanded Star Wars Universe and first appeared in the Timothy Zhan novel The Last Command, the final book in his now “non-canon” Heir to the Empire trilogy. In the book, a heavily modified version of the ship was by Luke Skywalker to conceal his X-Wing fighter. When the ship was caught in a tractor beam, Luke boarded his X-Wing and self-destructed the freighter creating a cloud of debris that the tractor beam had trouble locking onto allowing his X-wing to slip away - a tactic called the Covert Shroud Maneuver. Since the book, the ship has continued to appear in a number of Star Wars publications such as the West End Games, Wizards of the Coast and Fantasy Flight Star Wars Role-Playing Games, as well as other published writings. The ship has a pair of engines mounted on the front and angled to the sides giving the craft a resemblance to a “sea turtle,” a design that has been both beloved and mocked by Star Wars fans.

Ghtroc Industries was a struggling manufacturer of transport ships in the outer rim that tried their best to compete with the popularity of Correllian Engineering’s transports, specifically the YT-1300. With their 720-series Ghtroc offered a ship with a unique forward-mounted engine design that made the craft more maneuverable than the standard 1300, and freed up aft space that made it capable of hauling a 1/3rd more cargo then the 1300-series of the same size. It also came standard with a shield projector and a pair of laser cannons that were fixed in a forward arc position. Despite these incentives the 720 failed to outperform the YT-1300 in popularity and sales and the company quietly declared bankruptcy. Thousands of 720s were sold however, and have found a niche loyalty among many outer rim smugglers who admire the ship’s performance and the fact that parts are still widely available.

ABOUT THE MODEL:

I created this model in SketchUp using the Star Wars Deckplans Alliance entry of the Ghtroc 720 as reference. I made all the textures in Photoshop and actually made the UV-maps by hand! Yes, by hand.  I may make a tutorial on how I did this in the near future but right now all I can say it’s time consuming and a pain in the ass. I’ll get more into that in the future.

I'm making a second Ghtroc 720 which is slightly different that will be used in a scene with my Imperial Customs ships. This will be coming soon!

NOSE ART:

The “nose art” on the ship is a picture of Oola, Jabba’s Twi’lek slave girl from Return of the Jedi, in her famous pose before being eaten by the Rancor. It was drawn by comic book artists Elizabeth Torque. I did request permission to use the art on my ship, but I didn’t get a response, but I used it anyway. By doing so, I claim no copyright on it. Besides I’m not making money off my model in any way. I do these models just for fun. Because I didn’t get permission to use the image however, It will not on the downloadable version of the model. I am just using it for this scene and add some character to my model.

The words around the picture (written in Aurkbesh) say "Ship Happens".

The original image of Oola can be found here in Torque’s gallery: www.this-is-cool.co.uk/the-com…

I did not make the background image.

3D MODEL DOWNLOAD (SKETCHUP REQUIRED)

You can view and/or download the SketchUp model here: 3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model…

NOTE: The 3d model does not have the nose art.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

The Ghtroc 720 is ©1993 Banta Spectra Publications and used under license of Lucasfilm a subsidiary of Walt Disney Company.  

This image and the 3d model were created as fan art which is ©2017 Jay Thurman.