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The Ultimate 1:6
Announcing a new work in progress: my stupendously amazing* 1:6 scale model of the EVA (extravehicular activity) pod from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: a Space Odyssey.
Basically, since late 2020 I’ve been researching, designing, and now building a superdetailed 1:6 model of the little one-person spacecraft from the movie.
The digital model is complete, and I’m working on making it into a physical reality.
* Unbiased and utterly objective view. For varying values of “ultimate.”
WHAT WAS THE GOAL?
WHAT WAS THE GOAL?
Very simply:
To make the most accurate model of the 2001 EVA pod ever made. Museum quality, with the fewest compromises possible.
2001 was one of the first genuinely serious science fiction films, and its director, designers, and art directors treated its spacecraft designs with enormous care. I wanted to reflect that legacy by making the best model I could.
How hard could that be?
What was the starting point?
What was the starting point?
This model has, as its germ, a tiny 65mm (about 1:32 scale) EVA pod that I built in 2019 for display as part of the official Stanley Kubrick Exhibition. That thing was so small since it was designed to match the scale of an existing 11 foot Discovery model owned by the German Film Museum (DFF).
The 65mm mini pod on display at the Kubrick Exhibition. The Design Museum, London, 2019.
At 1:6 scale, my new pod is considerably larger in size – about 1.5x larger than a football/soccer ball. And in late 2025 I hit a milestone, getting the first major parts of the exterior shell made.
Pod in progress: experimenting with priming, sanding, line engraving. 330mL drink can for scale.
What’s so ultimate about it?
What’s so ultimate about it?
Yeah, it’s a rather pompous claim. To be more fair, it’s probably the most accurate model of the EVA pod yet made.
Thanks to the Kubrick Archives I was able to view original production photos, many unpublished, which allowed me to construct the highly accurate digital model shown on this page. Almost every detail is present and correct, including many aspects to the pod never correctly reproduced before.
Only production images, created from 1965 to 1966, were used as references for this model.
The exterior is a 1:6 model of the full-sized pod used in the space scenes in the film, which was a modified version of a full-sized pod bay pod. My model has a full interior, accurately reflecting the separate full-sized cockpit set built for the film (not the rudimentary interior seen in the pod bay scenes).
My digital model is mostly 3D printed, and its size matches the main original shooting miniature. That’s 13.5 inches tall, or 343mm in modern units.
A technician working on the original 13.5" filming miniature, giving an idea of its size.
What’s it made from?
What’s it made from?
The primary material is 3D-printed industrial resin, reinforced with fibreglass and a lightweight aluminium subframe. Smaller parts mostly use lighter-weight resins capable of printing to higher levels of detail.
Other materials include custom-machined aluminium, sintered PA 12 printed nylon, brass and aluminium tubing, custom-etched sheet metal, glass watch covers, miniature glass optical lenses, neodymium magnets, PETG sheet plastic, nylon and styrene posts, and sheet styrene.
Test parts: 3D-printed resin and machined aluminium details.
The electronics consist of four ESP32-S3 microcontrollers driving high-resolution animated displays, and secondary microcontrollers driving arrays of smart LEDs.
Paint is primarily airbrushed acrylic with a bit of enamel.
Is it an easy model to make?
Is it an easy model to make?
No.
Admittedly I’m no expert model maker. But the original EVA pod design is surprisingly complex, with a lot of deceptively simple-looking elements. It’s not just a white ball with arms.
It’s taken five entire years of research into the original sets and miniatures to design and build the CAD version. I created the digital model entirely from scratch.
Countless hours were spent comparing photos and screenshots, to determine the exact positioning of various details. I was able to decipher over 85% of the original text labels on the pod, and I created three new digital fonts based on scans of Letraset sheets.
The interior screens won’t be static slides. They’ll be electronic and fully animated, using vector drawings that I’ve created based on the original screen displays.
Who’s making it?
Who’s making it?
Me. NK Guy.
I bounce ideas off friends from time to time (perhaps more frequently than they’d like!), but nobody else has worked on the design, assembly, or painting.
I don’t have a large industrial 3D printer, a laser cutter or a CNC lathe, so the printing of larger parts, the laser etching, and the metal machining was subcontracted.
When will it be complete?
When will it be complete?
No idea.
There’s a lot of work to do to build the thing. As you can see in the photos, the 3D parts are pretty rough despite being resin-printed, and require tons of work to render usable. The interior, especially the laser-cut metal panels, the lighting, and video animation, is very complicated indeed.
Every detail – inside and out! No, I’m not going to make one in clear acrylic plastic, though that would be pretty cool.
Making a complex 3D printed model from scratch isn’t, contrary to some peoples’ imaginations, a matter of pushing a button and walking away. The process can be as challenging, tedious, and time-consuming as building any proper model.
So. 2026? 2027? The odyssey continues.
Will kits be available for sale?
Will kits be available for sale?
No.
This build is a one-off personal project. Regrettably I have no plans to make a kit or digital files available. Sorry about that.
How about a poster?
How about a poster?
Yes, I’ve thought for a while that the images of the pod would make for a great wall poster. However, the raster data I have just isn’t high resolution enough to look good on paper. It’s going to take a ton of manual work to convert it to nice sharp vectors, so it might be a while before I get such a thing done.
How do I get updates?
How do I get updates?
I created a mailing list for discussing matters related to the making of 2001 a while ago, but it never got off the ground. I can post poddy updates to this group if there’s interest:
https://groups.google.com/g/2001-making-a-masterpiece
Note that the “masterpiece” in question refers to the movie, not my pod!
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