Legos, anyone?

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, Lego and Namco release their latest collaboration kit:

More pics here 😀

 

Thanks to Vifam 7, Gabe Q, and M'kyuun for helping me ID some pieces!

Edited March 29, 2022 by Valkyrie Hunter D

[sh9000]

That looks awesome.

[F-ZeroOne]

Thats really nice! So... when are you doing a Typhoon...? 😉

[Chronocidal]

Beautiful!  I do wish they'd get some more variety of cones and compound slopes for those complex curves, but that's a really good shape for it!  Also.. ugh, canopies..  

Probably the last update on the shuttle, though I might take some better photos later.  The parts I needed for the pad base came in, and I would be lying if I wasn't tempted to actually try and finish the crawler next.  

Made quite a few small tweaks to the design, so I'll probably post a few photos to the Rebrickable page as soon as I get a better background.  Rebuilding the nose structure and tail were the biggest changes, but I also modified the boosters on both ends.  The normal cones actually felt too pointy for the tips, so I used a more stunted tip to get a closer length overall, while I felt the 3x3 cones actually give a more natural nozzle shape.  Ideally, both the barrel and nozzle piece should be wider diameter, but we kind of get what we get.  

[M'Kyuun]

18 hours ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, Lego and Namco release their latest collaboration kit:

More pics here 😀

 

Thanks to Vifam 7, Gabe Q, and M'kyuun for helping me ID some pieces!

Lovely job. Read your write-up. I was thinking the cockpit slope was achieved using the ratcheting plate hinges, but to know it's a Technic liftarm in there is interesting. Anyway, Daniel's original is a great looking model, and your mod to his design turned out beautiful. I'll echo Chronocidal's lament over the need for better cockpit pieces and more cones and complex curved slopes to better compliment shapes such as this. I still can't believe LEGO has never made a shorter complimentary analog to that canopy.  Seems a no-brainer piece for them to make, and yet it only exists in our dreams.

@Chronocidal Ambitious build with your STS stack. Great job, man.  Your tail solution looks nicer than the original. Hope you'll do the crawler, too- kinda completes the scene, ya know?  

So, for the Classic Space afficionados out there, Disney's Lightyear's director, Angus MacLane, who also happens to be a prominent AFOL, wanted a new windscreen in trans-yellow, so Buzz's ship in the movie has one. Of course, LEGO is no stranger to Disney, and as one would expect, here's the set:

XL-15 Spaceship 76832 | Disney™ | Buy online at the Official LEGO® Shop US

 

It's not CS, but it is a sci-fi ship that's not Star Wars, and at this point I'll take whatever LEGO gives me in that regard.  Kinda has a Colonial Viper vibe going on. Anyway, looking forward to picking this up in April.  Really looking forward to seeing the film, too. "To infinity...and beyond!"

[Dobber]

Oh I like that. I may pick that one up. 
 

The Shuttle and Flanker also look amazing. Good work guys!

Chris

[mark-1s]

5 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Lovely job. Read your write-up. I was thinking the cockpit slope was achieved using the ratcheting plate hinges, but to know it's a Technic liftarm in there is interesting. Anyway, Daniel's original is a great looking model, and your mod to his design turned out beautiful. I'll echo Chronocidal's lament over the need for better cockpit pieces and more cones and complex curved slopes to better compliment shapes such as this. I still can't believe LEGO has never made a shorter complimentary analog to that canopy.  Seems a no-brainer piece for them to make, and yet it only exists in our dreams.

@Chronocidal Ambitious build with your STS stack. Great job, man.  Your tail solution looks nicer than the original. Hope you'll do the crawler, too- kinda completes the scene, ya know?  

So, for the Classic Space afficionados out there, Disney's Lightyear's director, Angus MacLane, who also happens to be a prominent AFOL, wanted a new windscreen in trans-yellow, so Buzz's ship in the movie has one. Of course, LEGO is no stranger to Disney, and as one would expect, here's the set:

XL-15 Spaceship 76832 | Disney™ | Buy online at the Official LEGO® Shop US

 

It's not CS, but it is a sci-fi ship that's not Star Wars, and at this point I'll take whatever LEGO gives me in that regard.  Kinda has a Colonial Viper vibe going on. Anyway, looking forward to picking this up in April.  Really looking forward to seeing the film, too. "To infinity...and beyond!"

I thought that's what it was before i read the description.

It looks great too. If Lego did a whole line in this vein, I'd be all over it.

 

[wm cheng]

Beautiful @Chronocidal!  The tips of the SRBs always bothered me, but what you did there was perfect.  Someday I might hit you up for your mods.  I'd love to do this shuttle stack someday, just too many things going on at the moment.  How much did it come out to?

[Chronocidal]

So, my total is going to be a bad estimate, because I didn't shop around for the best deals, focusing more on getting less total orders.  I also didn't order only the parts I needed for the shuttle, because I added spares of a lot of the elements, as long as I was ordering.

All told, not counting the pad (which I had most of the parts for already and just ordered a few spare gray bricks and the baseplate), the shuttle, tank, and boosters came to what I'm going to estimate as about $450, for a little over 2000 parts.  What's irritating though is that that's not including the tax and shipping, which easily added another $100 over the course of all of the orders. 

The orbiter was the cheapest portion, at about $85 before shipping, for about 600 pieces.  Even without the full stack, I'd recommend that as a casual purchase, because it honestly makes for a decent display on its own.

Bottom line really just comes down to buying sets this way being a lot more expensive than if you can get them naturally through LEGO.  I also probably could have saved even more if I had gone through the effort of hunting down the individual parts on the LEGO store website, but I paid a little extra for the convenience of managing the parts lists on Bricklink.  It's definitely not a cheap hobby.. but I also had planned to splurge on this for a while.  It also helps there haven't been any Macross releases for a long time, so my toy budget has been burning a hole in my pocket.  

Anyhow.. since I can never leave well enough alone, I decided to go all out and see if an even more accurate tail design was possible.  What I came up with isn't exactly sturdy, but it works, and is probably the most insane pile of multi-directional SNOT assembly I've ever attempted.  I think there are literally studs facing every possible direction within the layers of corner brackets I used to fill in the shape.  I'd still love to get a few more black elements to mark out the bottom of the rudder, but there are larger bricks in the way holding things together.

Anywho, I'm looking forward to those Lightyear sets, especially if they make one of the ship seen in the initial trailer.  

Edit:
Also did a quick test layout of what the pad display would look like if I extended it some.  I basically doubled up the baseplate of the current one, to make it 32x32 studs, but to be the same proportion as the real one, it needs about another 8 studs of extension on the back end.  Unfortunately, unless I'm making the whole crawler, that back area is just wasted space with very few details like camera mounts, and it gets a little unwieldly for a shelf.  I think building the front half with the walkways and fences around the main engines works pretty well though, and keeps the shuttle roughly centered on the display.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Chronocidal

[wm cheng]

Thanks @Chronocidal - what did you use for the tips for your SRBs - did you modify the entire cone part or just the very tip?  Looks great!  I might have to try this one day or try the China knock off bricks like Vonado.

 

[Chronocidal]

Booster tips are just the new cones that came with the SLS set recently, but I swapped out the domed tips they used for an angled half cone, and a single flat round tile on top.  I think it's the same dome used for many of the R5-style heads in some of the Star Wars sets.

Good luck with your own build, whenever you happen to get around to it.  Maybe by that point I'll have a full pad built.  

[Dobber]

Well, went ahead and ordered the Delorean. Will probably build it as the BttF2 version. I really like the built in wheel mechanism.

Chris

[Tking22]

Got two, needed two at least, needed first and second movie.

[Chronocidal]

4 hours ago, Tking22 said:

Got two, needed two at least, needed first and second movie.

My plan as well.. eventually.  I'm going to at least wait a little while to let my account recover from other more recent purchases.  

Probably aim for mid-summer, just to give the initial popularity wave time to pass.

[wm cheng]

Thanks @Chronocidal!  I'm waiting for the Delorean on a double VIP points day - hope its in stock whenever one of those rolls around again / or maybe May 4th?

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

On 3/29/2022 at 1:07 PM, F-ZeroOne said:

Thats really nice! So... when are you doing a Typhoon...? 😉

That'll be farther down the pipe, but I have run into some neat designs for the Eurofighter. She's a good looking bird too.

On 3/29/2022 at 5:22 PM, Chronocidal said:

Beautiful!  I do wish they'd get some more variety of cones and compound slopes for those complex curves, but that's a really good shape for it!  Also.. ugh, canopies..

Yes, I do wish more wedge pieces with concave curve lines were out there, and the ones that are out there are not in the colors I'd like.

On 3/30/2022 at 12:23 AM, M'Kyuun said:

Lovely job. Read your write-up. I was thinking the cockpit slope was achieved using the ratcheting plate hinges, but to know it's a Technic liftarm in there is interesting. Anyway, Daniel's original is a great looking model, and your mod to his design turned out beautiful. I'll echo Chronocidal's lament over the need for better cockpit pieces and more cones and complex curved slopes to better compliment shapes such as this. I still can't believe LEGO has never made a shorter complimentary analog to that canopy.  Seems a no-brainer piece for them to make, and yet it only exists in our dreams.

I was thinking the same thing when I was searching Bricklink for canopy pieces, but it just isn't there.

Many thanks for your kind words gents!

[Chronocidal]

Finally got my last order of parts in on this mess, and think I'm calling it "complete" and documenting the changes so I can upload them somewhere.   

I redesigned the pad base to use four 16x16 plates instead of flat baseplates, so this new base could technically be expanded to mount on the full crawler.  Wound up raising the shuttle mounting by one plate to give the tail clearance over the railing, and it just barely clears, which actually looks accurate to the photos I've seen. 

If I could get it to align, I'd probably build a secondary support for the orbiter into the fueling connections below the OMS pods, but there's not much room to work with.  I just have some generic piping elements in there, and they do the job visually.

Last "major" mod was shifting the layers of the wing on top and bottom to get a bit more black leading edge on the front half, and redesigning the gray leading edge layer to use the old notched wing design so I could let it overhang on both top and bottom.  I like the newer angled tiles, but they're too small to make an overhang with, since they would just float between studs.

Maybe while I've got a ton of gray pieces around, I'll see if I can't make a matching base for my Saturn V.  Hmmmm...  

[Scyla]

Since we were talking about display cases in the Metal Build thread here is an image of my Lego Star Wars collection:

[Chronocidal]

Really nice display!  Like the mostly to-scale layout there as well, those all look pretty close, and I'm glad to see that the UCS Falcon isn't far off the dimensions of some of those supercar sets they have.

[Dobber]

LEGO Botanical has 2 new sets coming on May 1st. Orchid and Succulent. Both are available for pre-order

Chris

[anime52k8]

I read that as Bionicle and was hit with much nostalgia.

[no3Ljm]

#75341 Star Wars Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder
May 4, 2022
US$199.99

[wm cheng]

Meh... when are they ever going to do a gold chrome C-3PO (gold paint doesn't cut it anymore)?  Is that windshield a new specific part?

[Dobber]

^Same…Couldn’t care less about the land speeder. 
 

Chris

[Chronocidal]

Definitely a unique windshield.  Some interesting parts, but least interesting subject they've made in a while.  

Also.. I'm glad to see my memory wasn't wrong, but those proportions look really bad.

 

[no3Ljm]

15 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Definitely a unique windshield.  Some interesting parts, but least interesting subject they've made in a while.  

Also.. I'm glad to see my memory wasn't wrong, but those proportions look really bad.

Assuming that this is as close as an orthograhic view of the Landspeeder's side view, I wonder how 'short' Luke torso is considering he's in a sitting position with legs extended to the front. 

 

[Chronocidal]

He was laid back pretty far, judging by the photos.  It's definitely something like a sportscar cockpit.

I really don't know what's going on with those proportions though, it looks like the whole thing is either too long ahead of the windshield, or maybe just way too thin?  The locations of the side recesses are definitely way off.

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by Chronocidal

[M'Kyuun]

Someone needs to put a Black Series 6" Luke in the driver's seat, as I think that'd be pretty close to scale. It doesn't look that off to me, but as SW vehicles go, the Landspeeder is pretty meh. I want that C3PO, though.  Honestly, now that I've got my UCS grail (the heavenly AT-AT), my interest in SW has waned quite a bit. Def not buying as much as I used to. I'm looking far more forward to picking up Buzz Lightyear's XL-15 than any SW stuff.  And the Tallneck.

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, I don't know, maybe it's the weird thickness throwing me off?  It just looks really awkward, like the nose is way too long and skinny.

 

[sh9000]

I don’t collect many Legos but I might just stick mainly to vehicles that scale well with the minifigures.

[Firefox21]

Not sure if these has been posted before. Finally, the Horizon Zero Dawn, or more specifically Forbidden West. The Tallneck is nicely done and Aloy mini figure is superb! Not to mention the Watcher, which the lens can be changed to yellow or red!

 

Edited April 26, 2022 by Firefox21

[M'Kyuun]

I mentioned it before, but I didn't post those particular pics. This incredible beauty releases on May first. Pretty excited. 

[Firefox21]

Yes, couldn't wait for it to release! One of the most anticipated set.

[Tking22]

Yeah I'm definitely in for the Forbidden West set, that Tallneck looks great. 

[M'Kyuun]

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

Yeah I'm definitely in for the Forbidden West set, that Tallneck looks great. 

It does indeed, and for us mecha builders, these new 1x2 light bley ratcheting joint bricks will likely prove phenomenally useful, especially in smaller or compact models that require motion. Can't wait to get a slew of them for my own builds.

As to the set itself, it's well done at that scale, and makes for a splendid display piece. I hope it sells like ice cream in July, and we get a plethora of similar sets from both Forbidden West and its predecessor, Zero Dawn.