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Before my life as an AFOL started, I’d never come into contact with the Expanded Universe. But thanks to exposure to all of those strange new MOCs I’m a bit more knowledgeable now of all of the amazing stories you can’t see in the movies.

There’s one storyline in particular I’m more knowledgeable – and appreciative – of now. It’s Shadows of the Empire. If you don’t know it, it’s kind of Episode 5 ½ in the Star Wars saga and tells a.o. the story of how the Rebel Alliance came to acquire the plans for the second Death Star. Along the way, it explores many familiar characters and introduces a couple of unforgettable ones. The story was told through various media when it came out in the lead-up to Episode I. There’s a book, a legendary game, comics, action figures, a soundtrack I’ve played tens of times… If you want to delve into the story, the Wookieepedia page is very comprehensive. However, I found it more fun to watch this very well put together series on Youtube.

I got introduced to it thanks to our little role playing game here in the forum, with the 100% original name Shadows of Nar Eurbrikka. I had been participating as a player until I joined the team of organizers when I joined the forum staff. Ever since, I’ve been looking into the existing stories to give the game a more authentic feeling.

The most recent result is the twelfth episode coming to a close. The episode revolved around figuring out who is after an attempt on Luke Skywalker’s life. This figuring out happened in two ways. Firstly, the players had to tell a story and build a scene about their character investigating. And secondly, they had to guess about a secret model that indicates who’s the one responsible. A partial part list was available for this model. The parts that were missing were only known to one of the two competing factions. They had to incorporate those parts into their builds, and the opponent had to guess what the secret seed part was. If you want to learn more about how the episode worked, how it ended and how well everyone incorporated the parts, be sure to check out the topic.

I had a lot of fun coming up with the concept and tweaking it together with the always awesome organizing team. However, apart from the concept, we also had to come up with an actual secret model. Quite a challenging task if you take all of the constraints into account: it had to be something logical to the story the factions could guess if they knew the EU a bit or were good at Wookieepedia-ing. It had to be rather small in order not to make the parts list too big and the challenge impossible. It could only include parts that were readily available and available in LDD in order to make replication easy. It couldn’t use illegal techniques that would make LDD useless. And it had to include a sufficient number of parts that were interesting enough to serve as seed part. Despite it being a small model, it was quite the design challenge!

The result?

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[MOC] Prince Xizor's Virago by Bert Van Raemdonck, on Flickr

It’s a rendition of Prince Xizor’s personal ship, the Virago. It could be found by going to the Luke Skywalker page, going to the legends tab, searching for “attempt”, concluding that Prince Xizor was after the story the episode described, and reading it with the mind of finding something suitable for a build to come across the Virago. Complicated, but not impossible.

I absolutely love the design of the ship. It looks very menacing and alien, but at the same time feels right at home in the Star Wars universe. The key element were the wings that I tried to replicate with a variety of more exotic parts. I like the way they have a curved look to them, exactly like on the actual model.

Well, speaking of “actual” model. It was not hard finding reference images online, but the problem was there were a number of different versions. I picked the elements that were most feasible and good looking from the models. The main inspiration were model kits, but they have a cockpit with an incredibly sharp angle which I couldn’t replicate, so I got the cockpit design from another image. The horizontal stripe is achieved by a rubber band, which for obvious reasons wasn’t included in the parts list for the episode. I did experiment with real life rubber bands though in order to make sure it could be implemented.

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[MOC] Prince Xizor's Virago - running away mode by Bert Van Raemdonck, on Flickr

Especially the body was hard to view on reference images, so I hope what I went for looks reasonable. I’m not too happy about the engines at the back of each wing. They look a bit simple, but they manage to conceal the “unwanted” features of the panels pretty well. I’m very pleased with the intakes of those engines though, with the chair pieces nicely fitting around the panels.

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[MOC] Prince Xizor's Virago - landing mode by Bert Van Raemdonck, on Flickr

The original model also has the ability to fold back the wings in a landing mode. Since I strived to make my model as complete as possible, not just fit as a secret model for the episode, but also something you can display and play with, something to be proud of, this feature is included. I imagine the friction of the pins might not be enough to keep the wings unfolded during swooshing, but I’m confident it will look good on display, and the landing mode is a nice bonus.

Finally, you can see the model from all angles by checking out this video. The underside is pretty similar to the top. This is the first time I rendered a LEGO animation, and I must say I was surprised it was finished in a reasonable amount of time. Overall, I’m very satisfied with how all of the renders turned out. I can definitely recommend using Blender for your LEGO renders and animations. ImportLDraw tool is the perfect way to get your models from LDraw to Blender (and everything’s free!). I hope the results have fooled you, even if just for a moment.

If you want to explore the model, you can find the LDD file here. It can also be found on Rebrickable to make replicating it easier.. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any questions or remark, feel free to leave them here. Thanks for bearing with me! I’m now off listening to the SotE soundtrack again…

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This is a beautiful model, and after trying to recreate it I can attest to how tricky and intricate a build it is.  You did a great job with both the look and the functionality, especially considering the build constraints.

One minor complaint - the rubber band should have been on the parts list :look:

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Ive built two or three star fighters based on this design, it is easily my fav starfighter in the SWU. This is the most acvurate rendition of it that Ive seen.

Edited by Blufiji

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Always nice to see ships from the old EU. 

Hopefully you'll be able to display it with the Outrider soon, if Lego has their way wih Rebels :)

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Saw this on Flickr the other day, it's a beatifull design with great parts usages! :wub:

Still can't figure out if this is a render or actual model... it looks too realistic for a render but too perfect for a photo xD

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Thanks for you heartwarming comments everyone!

On 26-9-2016 at 10:21 PM, LucasLaughing said:

This is a beautiful model, and after trying to recreate it I can attest to how tricky and intricate a build it is.  You did a great job with both the look and the functionality, especially considering the build constraints.

One minor complaint - the rubber band should have been on the parts list :look:

Thanks LucasLaughing. I'm sure you have a "special" relationship with this vehicle now :wink:. As for the rubber band, it wasn't included in the parts list because I always find it tricky to specify the size (if there even exists an offical LEGO rubber band with a suitable size in white), is impossible to work with in LDD (which would bring a disadvantage to the eventual team that would try to recreate it digitally) and because I only added it after the contest had started :wink:.

On 27-9-2016 at 3:30 PM, RetroInferno said:

Always nice to see ships from the old EU. 

Hopefully you'll be able to display it with the Outrider soon, if Lego has their way wih Rebels :)

Yes, the EU is really a treasure chest full of awesome designs I find very inspiring. Rebels is doing a good job bringing a lot of those in, giving us "new" ships that perfectly fit in the universe. And if the Outrider doesn't show up as a LEGO set, I guess we'll just have to MOC one :classic:

On 28-9-2016 at 0:05 AM, TWP said:

Saw this on Flickr the other day, it's a beatifull design with great parts usages! :wub:

Still can't figure out if this is a render or actual model... it looks too realistic for a render but too perfect for a photo xD

Thanks for the awesome compliment, TWP. If you'd have read all the way through my writeup above, you would know it is a render after all. I'm still just a guy behind a PC through lack of the bricks I need (although I did a few real life experiments to see everything worked nicely, like testing if the wings had enough friction and seeing if the rubber band was feasible to attach). I try to keep improving my renders. What I tried to do this time was to take gravity into account by creating a stand and adding imperfections in the background. Maybe one day the studs will have mold marks and all... But I'm not going for hyper realism with dust and scratches and stuff... I try to aim for the "LEGO box picture look", and believe that I'm close to achieving it. Glad you appreciate the amount of work that went into setting up the render!

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