Werlu Ulcur

I don't think we have a dedicated photography thread here in the Technic section, or at least I couldn't find one - my apologies if I missed it. I finished building the BBV (Big Bad Volvo) last night and this morning I thought the light was pretty nice at our solarium for a quick shot: Awesome set, by the way. So, what have you got to show?

First of all, is that the term for the part/mechanism that separates one wagon from the other ? Well, that's what I would like to make. Has anyone ever made something that could automatically separate one wagon from another (without you having to hold the wagons/engine)? Something connected to the track that when the wagon passed over or stopped there the mechanism would separate that wagon from the next? When I played with my HO trains as a kid there was a special track section where you pressed a lever and a little flap would come up under the wagon and release the hitch between two wagons. That was in the 70's when everything was mechanical, but if I'm not mistaken with HO nowadays you can even do that remotely, so I was wondering if something could be built for L gauge.

Hey guys! I don't know about you, but sometimes I think Lego designers could have done a little better when it comes to some parts of some sets. Case in point, a few of the vehicles in super-heroes' sets. Sometimes I look at a vehicle and find that there's just a little detail that's off, that could have been better to my eyes. I'm sure that many people wouldn't mind, but sometimes just a simple part swap will make a big difference. I'm not talking about accuracy to the real thing, since in most of the super-hero sets that Lego produces the vehicles aren't supposed to be a replica of a vehicle seen in the movies or comics. I'm fine with that, since if you want, you can replicate anything to your heart's content, and I like to see the ideas that Lego designers come up with - I usually really like their models. But sometimes things can be made better. What made me come up with these photos and post was the Batmobile from "Batmobile and the Two-Face Chase" set (#6864). I loved the car, but something was off. And then I saw the problem: the yellow wheels. I swapped the wheels and the yellow headlights and changed a bit the fenders and voilà! The car shined: The same happened with "Kryptonite Interception" (#76045). Though I'm aware that the car in the movie was not black but a dark grey (bley?), and that the front wheels should have some sort of armor, but a few part swaps and to my eyes the Lego version now looks better: The Batbike (I don't know what to call it) from set "Gotham City Cycle Chase" (#76053) is a typical case of Lego's creativity IMO. As far as I know, there never was nothing similar to that in the movies or comics, but I really liked the model. However, the way Batman had to "hang on for dear life" to ride it bothered me, so using just a few parts from my parts bin it now looks nicer. I really like the "Full Throttle" (anyone remember that?) look of it. I've seen quite a few renderings of Ghost Rider's flaming motorcycle in comics and cartoons, and being honest, none look very much like what Lego delivered us. And that's because traditionally, what is on fire are the wheels, something you'll never be able to reproduce in brick form unless you resort to pyrotechnics. So considering that, I say that Lego did a nice job with what they did in set "Spider-man: Ghost Rider Team-Up" (#76058). BUT, once again, I thought I could make it a little better: As you can see, all the examples above are very slight modifications, what I call "light mods". Nothing major, just a few part swaps, but to my eyes the models look a little nicer now. One thing that I've noticed is that you have to have the model in hands and then, with your spare parts, start changing things to see what can be done. Sometimes what seems to be a good idea won't look very hot in brick form, so you have to try it out. These are just some really simple mods, basically cosmetic details, that usually requires just a few different parts that most of us will have in the bin. Right now I'm waiting for parts for the Batmobile from "Batman: The Riddler Chase" (#76012) and as soon as "Jokerland" (#76035) set arrives I'll also do a light mod to both of those Batmobiles. Can't show the #76012 Batmobile yet because I ran out of black wheels . So, anyone else in the light mod business ? Sometimes you just need to see a photo of a moded model/set for things to click and you'll notice what your model needs to get better.

This one? It's too wide and the top part is too long.

Being in a "Batmobile phase" for the last month or so, I thought I could try my hand at creating the Batmobile seen in Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) TV show. I have the full series in a DVD collection and really enjoyed the style of drawing, that to my eyes had a noir look to it that reminded me of the classic Batman, before Warner Bros transformed (and ruined) the character into a children's cartoon. And I specially like that Batmobile, with it's 1930's locomotive look, with that huge bonnet and small cabin. So the idea was to make it look like the car seen on the show but in minifig scale, and swooshable - no, I don't go around playing with my models making "vroom vroom" noises but I have to make them swooshable (according to my wife, I have the mind of a 12 year old, and she's ALWAYS right) . It is too tall for a minifig, but it was just impossible to make it shorter in height and in minifig scale, since I wanted to make the bonnet with the taller middle section and with the exhaust manifold showing. I guess I could make it one plate shorter if I used the new Speed Champions tires and wheels, but then the wheels would have looked too small. In the end, as a real car it looks totally ridiculous and huge, but I think it's a half decent representation of what you saw on TV. What do you guys think? PS: Looking at the images now I think I'll swap those vertical 1×2 black slopes on the sides of the cabin for two regular 1×2 tiles...

Last one: Finally received the windshield and stickers, so I could complete Batmobile from the Batman: The Riddler Chase set (#76012). Being honest, this is my least favorite of all my Batmobiles, because it's too big - almost not minifig-scale. Other then the size, what bothered me on the car was the use of translucent orange, specially the windshield. So the first order of business was swapping everything for a more "Batmanlike" color (yep, black): Now, after I got rid of the orange and the gold rims, I think it looks much better. With this I think I'm done with (minifig scale) Lego Batmobiles. I don't have sets "The Batman Dragster: Catwoman Pursuit" (#7779) or "The Batmobile: Two-Face's Escape" (#7781), but the first one I don't think is a Batmobile, and it looks ugly, and the second one, though it is a proper Batmobile, I think was a bad attempt in replicating the Kilmer version of the car. And yes, I sure do need a Tumbler, but that will have to be MOCed. Soon, I hope .

I was a bit bothered by the dimensions of the car. When compared to my other Batmobiles, this one was way too huge. And also, the tiles on the hood looked a bit off. If I substituted all the 1×4 by 2×4, I would still have to use one 1×4, and it looked wrong. So I decided to shorten the front one stud: Being one stud shorter I also had to reduce the pipes of the exhaust manifold from 5 to 4 (so now the engine is a V8 instead of a V10 - much better fuel mileage now ) and changed the wheels so that I could use those silver hubcaps. I know that the grill up front should be black for accuracy's sake, but in the brick I think the silver slopes made the model look better overall. Next week or so I should receive the flat silver Technic connectors that I ordered, and I think that the three details (grill + pipes + hubcaps) will give the whole car a better look. PS: It's hard to shoot black shiny models like this .

That looks absolutely fantastic! Congrats!

Thanks! But as I said, the merit is all Pellaeon's, he gave me the idea .

Thanx guys! Being truthful, your use of those arches on the back was what inspired me to make my version - of all the versions I found on the web, everybody made the rear wings with a vertical curvature (under the wings), while you made it horizontal. I really liked that approach, and when I checked my parts bin, I found exactly two of those arches, and for the first time ever, I built a car from the back forward . But I couldn't find a solution (with the parts that I had) to your so slick and thin rear bumpers, so I just went the traditional way and "brick built" them. Therefor, a BIG (and belated) thank you for the inspiration! And if I may be bold to make a suggestion, change the title of your thread to "Batman: The Animated Series" because here was the first place I looked for ideas but I couldn't find your thread. I never though of using the acronym on the search. And it looks like I wasn't totally done with it... I'm thinking that I should use the silver metallic versions of the front slopes, wheels and Technic connectors, so that there's a bit more contrast from the total blackness that is the car. Unfortunately I don't have those parts, so I ordered them and when they arrive I'll make an update here to show how the car looks.

Thanks! As I said, totally cartoonish, but I think it looks similar to the screen version. At least when I showed it to my wife and asked her where it was from, she immediately said "Isn't it from those DVD cartoons?", so that's got to count for something, right? Now I have to stop being lazy and start to think about MOCing my least favorite Batmobile: the Tumbler... Or at least, my least favorite version other then the ones from the Really Bad Batmobiles Era - anything between the Keatonmobile and Tumbler.

Thanks r5! But speculating on what you said, I think that Lego designers have a few constraints that we don't have. Cost sure is a very important one, but what I've done to the Barris Batmobile made it cheaper, since I basically deleted more parts then I added (and the ones I added are cheaper then the ones I removed). However, even if the model is now cheaper, it has less color and less features. We don't play with these sets, we basically build them and display them, but they're all intended to be played with by children. So I guess sometimes the designers are forced to choose who they want to please more.

Hey guys! Another one. This time the most famous Batmobile of all: the 1966 TV series version (set "Batman Classic TV Series - Batcave" - #76052). I honestly thought that this one I would leave alone, but what assaulted my eyes were those two stud shooters on the hood. i understand the value of play features on a Lego model, but this feature ruined the car. So the first thing i did was remove both cannons. But it still looked a bit off, and after a few days of swapping parts, this is how it came out: I also raised the edge of the hood and removed the red grills on the trunk, and added the yellow plate under the hood to mimic the cartoonish version of the car. You can see there's a little red bleeding from under the central part of the hood, but that's intentional. I though that a little "pin striping" would do nicely. After I 'fixed" the hood and front, I still thought there was something wrong with it . A few days later I finally saw it: the car was too fat with the bley plates underneath. I just pulled them off (the model is still absolutely solid and swooshable) and now it looks much better: Once again, nothing major, but now it looks a little better . Thanks Kenny! I have to admit that even after getting the 1966 version i still think the Keatonmobile is my favorite in Lego form.

REALLY cool, congrats! This one of my favorite Batmobiles as well.

Yesterday my "Jokerland" (#76035) set arrived, so I spent last night and a good part of this afternoon working on that Batmobile. This is a very interesting version of the Batmobile, since it's basically based on the so called "Keaton Batmobile", the car that appeared on the films "Batman" (1989) and "Batman Returns" (1992). Of course you can find some VERY good MOCs of this car, much more accurate to the real thing, but this being a light mod, I think it came out ok: Well, maybe it's a medium light mod, since I did make some structural changes, but it's basically the stock model without the bat wings and some part swaps. I have to admit this is now my favorite Batmobile so far, since I think I managed to make it look better and even a little bit more faithful to the real one.

r5, I tried to attach some sort of "floating" armor, like what we have in the back, using the front part (under the guns) as the anchoring point, but the wheels are too wide to accept anything like that, and the armor ended up looking like mere fenders. The other idea i had was to use the place where you have the clear 1×1 headlight as the anchoring point, but then things looked really bulky, so I also scratched that idea. I came to the conclusion that I would have to basically redesign the whole front end around the front armor, and that would be far from a light mod - almost getting into MOC territory. Still, even without the front armor I really like the car the way it is. PS: Nice touch with the exhausts at the back. I have to try that.

Thanks guys! I'm glad you enjoyed them. Hopefully these mods will serve as an idea for someone's future projects. And about the BvS Batmobile, I did try to adapt some form of armor to the front wheels. Though it is possible, the solutions that I came up with made the car too bulky up front, ruining it's sleek look. So I opted to keep it less accurate but cleaner.

That looks VERY good! And you're right, specially from above, the car looks better with the driver's arms covered. But in my eyes the tires are the detail that really sets the newer models apart from the older ones. And for me that was an issue, since I had to get the new chassis plates to make them work, and depleted ALL my spare wheels/tires that came with the 2015 sets.

IMHO the Speed Champions line is one of the best lines Lego has created in a long time. I've always been a gearhead, and seeing nice race cars in minifig scale was maybe the best thing that came came from TLG in 2015. I got the whole line, and despite I would have a really hard time to say which is the best (though the F14 T & Scuderia Ferrari Truck set is a top contender), one "theme" that caught my eye were the F1 cars. Both the Ferrari F14 T and the McLaren MP4-29 are gorgeous, so I started thinking about expanding my fleet. First I looked at previous Lego offerings, and was fortunate to find a pristine 2009 Ferrari Truck (#8185). The truck is great but those huge knobby tires on the F1 were an eye sore. Without much trouble I was able to mod it to "proper" slick tires, and IMO it looks much better now: With that done, I got tempted to make more cars. Not actual representations of current F1 cars but models that could pass as a decent Lego F1 cars in minifig scale. After a few orders from BL for the parts needed, this is what I came up with: I tried to make them in scale to the official Lego models and after an evening of building I think they came out half decent. Here's the whole fleet: Of course some stickers would make a world of difference, and I do fancy the idea of making a custom set. However, I bet that those who assembled the Speed Racers sets will agree with me that making a whole sticker sheet would NOT be something easy to do. Maybe the alternative would be to make stickers for "test cars", which would have a lot less logos to apply, but I would like to see proper race cars, in all their racing colors glory. So I'll have to think about this some more. Still, I can say that we have a lot to build in terms of F1 cars. I was a bit disappointed that there won't be more official F1 cars in 2016, but since we'll have a 917K (already en route ) Lego is forgiven.

For Christmas I got a Republic Dropship with AT-OT (yeah, I love my wife ), and after assembling it, I made a family picture: I really liked the newer 75021 Gunship, I think it's better built and more swooshable then the old 7676, but it has one (major) flaw in my eyes: no nose art . Come on, look at the LAAT/c: Now compare to this: I know the space for nose art is much smaller then what we had withe the older Gunship and Dropship, but there has to be something I can do. You cane easily turn the two plates around and make a bigger smooth area, like I did here: I just have to find a sticker that could be used there. I was almost inclined to use those yellow attention stickers - they're 1×4 and come in many construction sets - just to put some color there, but I would rather have a more "SW-esque" art solution. Any ideas?

Thanx Stas!

A real shame indeed . Lego should adopt a big smooth tile up front so that whoever wants to apply a sticker can do so (like we had with the 7676).

Been a while since I done it, and today shooting some F1 cars I remembered that I hadn't showed what came of this. Here's how my LAAT/i looks now: Definitively not as good as the older 7676, but definitively better then it was .

Like every normal AFOL, I also don't like (hate?) stickers, but if you're trying to make a race car that looks real, you can't do without them - the model will look more believable if can have some logos. I don't think you need to go crazy, like with the Ferrari 458, but a few here and there will make things look more real.

I'm not really into Lego airplanes, but after reading CapnRex101's review, I got very curious about the set. As luck would have it I found one for a great price and on a whim bought it. And yes, it's a VERY nice set: The build is quite interesting, specially the wings, and as a huge bonus (to me at least), it's minifig scale . I think it does a very good job of representing the Raptor, though I would say this is a "test" version. As soon as I finished putting it together I was on BL looking for the extra parts to have it "weaponized" . It's going to take a while to receive all the orders but when they arrive I'll show what became of my F-22. Nothing outstanding, but it will look more serious. Or I hope.