The last time I cleaned out the garage and was forced to rifle through and sort dozens of cardboard boxes, all I did was complain about it. Animation artist Thomas Richner took a different approach. He turned the less than exciting chore of tidying his basement into a productive and magical experience by transforming a pile of empty boxes into a massive and detailed model Millennium Falcon. How detailed? It has a retractable landing gear. Someone call Rian Johnson and get this guy a job working on the next Star Wars movie because look at how gorgeous:

Richner poured 140 hours over the course of a couple of weeks into the project, and it shows. The build began with an outline of the ship, and Richner referenced images of the Falcon in Sculpting a Galaxy. It got bigger layer by layer, and the cool factor kept going up. For example: The radar dish swivels, and it’s attached with a magnet so it can be removed for transport. And Richner did end up moving it. Once the best ship in the galaxy was finished, Richner took it to the local art school to shoot it against a green screen.

The finished Millennium Falcon clocks in at five feet long. Richner used most of the boxes he had to clean out of the basement and came away with much more than just being covered in dust bunnies. I like his industrious attitude. More pictures of the finished model and work in progress photos in the gallery:

Need to see even more pictures? Richner documented the entire process at Imgur.

HT: Gizmodo