What is the Death Star? The Death Star, from the movie Star Wars, can be considered a hybrid "pumpkin carve/pumpkin sculpt". Pumpkin carving involves using the pumpkin almost as a surface for an image that is carved into the pumpkin. This is pretty much a 2D image. A pumpkin sculpt uses the pumpkin itself as a 3D object. Because the pumpkin itself is the object and not a pattern on a pumpkin, we can probably call it a sculpture. But unlike most sculptures, the way you carve it is exactly how you might do a pattern. So lets get started. If you have questions, please post them in the carvingpumpkins.com forum thread where the tutorial is posted. If its during pumpkin carving season, I will be looking at this regularly (but I might be carving, so wait a few hours for a response!). How Long Does it Take, and Is it Worth It? In all, if you start with a large pumpkin, you can expect to spend anywhere from 4 - 10 hours in making your Death Star. If you've never spent this long on a pumpkin, I can only tell you that if you're hoping for an awesome reaction, you will have a very hard time beating the Death Star. This thing is a HUGE hit with everyone. Even jaded teenagers are blown away. Even online, check out last year's Wired.com's contest for the geekiest pumpkin carves, and you'll see the Death Star sitting HIGH atop some absolutely terrific competition. What Skills Do I Need?: This tutorial assumes you have done pumpkin carving before. Specifically, I am not going through the details of how to do a skinned pumpkin carve, where you can either cut all the way through, cut just the skin off or leave the pumpkin skin on to have a 3-color pumpkin. If you're even mildly fluent with this type of pumpkin carving, you should find that Carving the Death Star is quite easy, if time consuming. If you need to learn the basics, I highly recommend going to the CarvingPumpkins.com Instructions section, and then to visit the Q&A board for questions.