[SoNE V] - Preparing for the Mission - Hangar 29

[goatman461]

Aboard the ISD Avenger, Hangar 29 is devoted to the testing and modification of new starfighters dreamed up by the front-line pilots and ground crew of the Imperial forces. Because of the nature of the Empire's current mission, much of the fabrication wing of Hangar 29 is being devoted to the creation of AT-ST variants.

Production of the AT-ST "Shameless" has been completed. This slender, single driver walker was designed to deal with the inconvenient nesting habits of the local fauna and their infestation around work areas. Ground forces had been reporting issues with creatures and loose debris from their nests falling from the trees onto the crew and equipment. The Shameless has a two-step approach to dealing with this inconvenience. First, the walker has been fitted with chainsaw appendages to cut down the nests of the creatures. Next, dual flame throwers will burn down whatever clings to the branches above and burn up the fallen debris below.

Brickdoctor has mounted a console system set for installation into one of the AT-ST variants and called the passing crew together for a pep talk and congratulations for the accomplishment. (I did the best I could including all the active Imperial builders with features similar enough to their avatars, if you were left out it was only because I lacked the minifigs necessary)

The crew also decided that a special shuttle would be needed to transport the Shameless through the dense canopy to the work site below. Thus, Shuttle HD was commissioned. This light shuttle was designed exclusively for transporting the AT-ST Shameless. Another smaller, sleeker frame for piloting through the tall trees, this shuttle requires a pilot with full life support systems but allows for a driver and two man crew to pressurize the cabin using the Shameless itself. This strange feature, which allows the driver to enter the walker mid-flight but requires the legs to be strapped awkwardly above the shuttle, is what gives the Shuttle HD its nickname, the Hello Dolly, after the exercise the men suffered as recruits. Attaching the walker seals the cabin of the shuttle, allowing a crew to travel without life supports. Once deployed, the pilot may require his life support system to return to the staging-craft orbiting the planet.

The crew is eagerly preparing two more AT-ST variants to assist the Shameless. The Brush Hog, named so for its short, think proportions, will be used to push ahead through thick under brush. Twin, upward-facing blasters will be used to clear the trees of unfriendly inhabitants. Another variant, the Lookout, will be fitted with a sniper platform and used as a support vehicle to pick off unseen combatants. A droid below the Lookout guides it to the nearest maintenance platforms for further fabrication.

*Hangar 29 without minifigs and special features.

*Hangar 29 separates into 3 distinct parts, (1) the assembly floor, (2) the shuttle's "working" elevator, and (3) staging platform and control room below. *Inside the control room

*Hangar 29 features.

Edited November 13, 2014 by goatman461

[Mutant Orc]

Fantastic! This is great, the build is really good and so is the story bit, but those ships are amazing. Great work!!

[Mr Man]

We win.

No point in anyone else trying to add an entry now .

[markus1984]

Amazing work

The hangar is stunning, so many details and great building technique!

Love it!

Of course a great story.

FOR THE EMPIRE!!!!!!!

markus

[Lobot]

Excellent work comrade, the design of the hanger and V38 are excellent, some lovely details

And, it's great to see someone working on a method to clear the pesky flora & fauna from the site........

[Nom Carver]

Those vehicles look great and the hangar details are amazing too, you have been improving on your building skills a lot.

[LucasLaughing]

This is a welcome move for the unconventional Goatm because of the ISC's reputation for independent thinkers and lax protocols. To celebrate, our hero has grown a glorious beard and posed for a few glamour shots to update his social media profile.

Lol, love it!

This build is awesome; well done sir! I really like the Inquisitor TIE - it has a very sinister feel, and the Phantom turned out beautifully.

You also do a great job on the little details, like the shirtless mechanic and the tires used for barrels, that make the hanger seem very authentic. Again, good work!

[BEAVeR]

This is just epic. You don't only have that beautiful hangar bay, but also that vast array of beautiful ships Your promotion really turned out to be well deserved!

The backdrop of all these scenes deserve its own spotlight. Because that hangar bay you built is quite beautiful. The walls are an excellent variety of greebles and smooth surfaces and have the right feel without being more of the same. Still, if you want to refine your greebling, you should go for less bulky pieces and less studs. Making use of more minifig tools would boost the appearance some more, looking even more realistic. Still, it's very nice how you encapsulated most of the greebling very nicely, and weren't afraid of adding in smooth surfaces as well. A well succeeded balancing act! It's also very pleasing that your notion of detail goes further than just greebling. You made good use of MstrOfPppts door technique, and those tubes peaking out from under the base adds a nice effect. Of course, the markings on the floor cannot be forgotten, as I am a big fan of those crisp white lines. The grills are very nice too, but maybe you overdid it. Details are good, as long as they retain some form of structure. So breaking up that long pattern of grill tiles with those big grills maybe isn't the best addition. And for more homogenity, use either grill tiles or grill bricks on both sides. But I suspect that your collection of bricks didn't allow for that . Also, those technic bricks with holes are a bit distrubing, as they don't seem to fulfill any purpose, but I suspect you added them for the same reason. Still you did a lot of good things to add life to the hangar, like removing one of the grill tiles. Try using more of these subtle details in stead of going for the big pieces of relief etc.

Going a bit further on the details, I appreciate how you filled the area with all kinds of little crates and barrels. You're really beginning to understand how to add life to scenes, and I am in awe! Also, congratulations on the nice addition of the walkways. Not only are they original. They make sense and they are beautifully executed. And it adds more depth to the scene. My only remark about them would be to integrate them more in the scene, because now I have no clue how those people can acces them, besides climbing over the greebles... But you can't depict everything of course. That banner is a nice touch, despite the blockyness towards the bottom... My last remarks concerning the hangar would be about the more structural aspects. I love how you added some slopes in it, like at the base of the pillars in the wall. But this base hardly looks stron because of the gaps. Try covering these up next time. Finally, I would've liked the top of the white section to be tiled, and maybe a thin stripe of black to the right of it to make it more snug in the scene. But that's about all I can say about the beautiful hangar with its nice details (good control panels btw) and good layout.

Luckily for me, there's still a whole bunch of ships for me to comment on! I'm beginning to like that Courrier with its bullet shape and nice back. The only thing that bothers me is the way too blocky front. The newer bubble cockpit would have been nice, and I would've liked to see it more integrated in the body with some kind of curved pieces like mudguards. With all those flat and square surfaces at the front, at the moment the cockpit seems a bit slammed on... You could also fix this with some kind of flex tubing, maybe even overlapping with the cockpit to give that area more uniqueness. The red ship has a very nice shape and the interior of the cockpit is really gorgeous with some nice parts usage. It looks pretty convincing as a ship, but lacks a bit of refinement in the back. There are a lot of exposed studs and flat surfaces. Some kind of emblem and some tiles and cheese slopes could help refine this area. Also making the red stripes more parallel to the curve of the ship would make it more menacing. The detail in the front is nice, but those plates peaking below the cockpit aren't very flattering. At least they form the base of that very nice shape that culminates at the back of the ship. So to make it short: those are two beautiful shippies.

And then there's the Phantom... I'm in love. The shape, the amount of details, the wonderful back, the beautiful cockpit with exactly the right parts and a good interior... the elaborate and textured, yet with menacingly simple sides... I have nothing to add to this ship, and can only drool at its elegance. That body is just gorgeous... I dare say this is your best work yet, and I hope there is many more to come. If only there was an official set like this, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Only remark: that hinge plate at the top seems to have come loose! Or is it a brilliant detail to show of its history, just like those perfect greebles?

It's pretty clear: this is a wonderful build and a great way to start of this new episode. Let the Rebels just try to top this! Anyway, I think there is a new promotion waiting for you. I'm proud to have you as a fellow Imperial pilot!

[goatman461]

Thank you for all of the great comments.

@BEAVeR

I didn't think much about the correlation between grill bricks and grill tiles, I will consider it more in the future. Removing the one grill tile was actually a mistake, as was the loose hinge plate on top of the Phantom. Just one of those things I didn't notice until after I took the shots (like that dang crooked elevator under the Phantom), and didn't feel like going back to reshoot. I do plan to use the technic holes if I can (the build is not over) but I probably won't change much else in the hangar unless it fits the story. VK also commented on the blockiness of the TC but I was never bothered by it, maybe I just didn't shoot it correctly.

Although I'd like to break this down to start on some freebuilds, any suggestions on other ways to use the hangar are welcome. I am already planning another ship and some ground forces and I will likely modify couple of the features of the hangar that might make it look out of place by giving them a specific purpose for looking the way they do (like making the grates pop up to reveal maintenance equipment or something).

[Lobot]

And following on from my last post....!

[Disco86]

That is a great start for the Empire in this episode. You are presenting us an awesome hangar. Lots of technical details and the color scheme is as it should be. Definitly a top-notch entry !

[HJR-Holland]

Nice V38 !!

[emilstorm]

Super work! i love this sort of "behind the scenes" MOC's Loving the little details like the poor trooper dropping his papers!

[MstrOfPppts]

I think there's too much going on in this scenes ...

The hanger is very well built with a lot of details. The Technic parts greeble looks nice and the SNOTed floor with the white signs is excellent. My favorite part would be the nicely detailed balcony with the Shadowtrooper on it. Though there are some bitter parts like the very bottom of the base and where the balcony connects to the wall that really look unfinished and are quite disturbing in such a fine MOC! Also some bricks are not pushed all the way in the white frame ...

I said tehre's too much going on, since you showed us many ships and walkers (that are all nice) and only used the hanger as the showcase. But I think the hanger alone is nice enough to include only one vehicle and make it as a static MOC. You might've saved some of the ships for any later episodes or post them as freebuilds to gain some extra XP! This way it looks like a fresh MOCer on steroids. But as said, all the builds are nice so keep up the good work!

[goatman461]

@ mstrofpppts

So the law of diminishing returns is kicking in. I can always take a few pics out if you think it will improve the overall build. I've got one more scene of a tie pilot shooting some spies but I can always leave that on flickr. Let me know what y'all think on this. I would much rather get some points for the episode rather than rack up xp, so some insight on what the judges want to see would be helpful (more ships, etc. showcased v. only best stuff included).

I'm not sure which part of the balcony you're referring to, is it the exposed studs from removing the black walkway? or the lack of transition underneath the comm center? or something different? Not much I can do about the very bottom, except maybe frame some of the pictures differently. When I was finishing the floor I was very short on bricks and should have done some kind of greebled corner.

I also need to set up an indoor shooting space so that I'm not so rushed taking pictures and can catch some of these details, like the white hangar door getting loose, or the top of the Phantom coming apart. I'm guessing there's a forum for shooting mocs, anybody know where it is off the top of their heads?

[MstrOfPppts]

Ok, I'll try to explain myself though note that this is my personal opinion. I think that each episode build should be one MOC. If that MOC covers multiple disconnected areas, so be it, though I'm not a huge fan of that either. Changing a few fig positions to tell a story is one thing, but here you clearly have quite a few MOCs ... For example the first image doesn't fit anywhere in the hanger? The ship carying the walker is something completly different than the hanger containing any other ship ... though again, the creations are really nice.

Anyway it's just me, but I usualy find topics with more than 10 images a bit confusing. Maybe if a MOC is really huge, but I'd usually put multiple MOCs each in it's own thread. Then we come to the presentation, which is also a criterion by judging. The pictures are nice and sharp, but some of the creations are not shown from all the angles. For example in the 2nd picture there's an interesting robot only seen there and only from above. Which may sound you need to add more pictures, but there's already a ton :)

I would much rather get some points for the episode rather than rack up xp, so some insight on what the judges want to see would be helpful

I don't know what the judges are after, but I guess effort or quantitiy are things that don't play a big role. What I'm trying to say is that if you choose the vehicle you like best and post images of that in the hanger, you'll get the same amount of points if not more (That's how I'd judge it). I'd really hate to be a judge in this situation. What do you score under design? Each model on it's own? The average score? How creations work together, though you can't even see them all at once? ...

Here's an image of the "unfinished" areas I had in mind:

Again, it's my thoughts, wait for what others have to say ...

[Bob De Quatre]

When I first saw your post, I couldn't help but feel like you just throw all the vehicules you had in that hangar one after another....

Don't misunderstand me, the hangar is great, and all the vehicules are too, but there's too much different things...

There must be a rule written somewhere saying that your entry must beone MOC, not 5 or 6

[Nom Carver]

The "shameless" sounds like it is intended to go against me, the ashamed tree lover , it certainly looks menacing and makes a more Endor related element vital to this challenge, and that shuttle is an absolute plus, this time the empire is going to win for sure (I hope).

[goatman461]

The "shameless" sounds like it is intended to go against me, the ashamed tree lover , it certainly looks menacing and makes a more Endor related element vital to this challenge, and that shuttle is an absolute plus, this time the empire is going to win for sure (I hope).

It was intended as a friendly response, just to show that Goatm revels in being the bad guy. I hope you didn't take offense.

@ Bob

The rules say "One entry per member" so I guess it depends on whether or not a separate element in the structure = a MOC = an entry, Who would make a ruling on this?

[VK-318]

@ Bob

The rules say "One entry per member" so I guess it depends on whether or not a separate element in the structure = a MOC = an entry, Who would make a ruling on this?

I think what Bob de Quatre and MstrOfPppts are saying is that you have wasted some great freebuilds by jamming all these vehicles into the same factory. Since the entry is still technically a WIP, maybe you could change this by putting the TIE collection as a separate freebuild or freebuilds. Whether the hanger could, for instance, be judged with the episode or the freebuilds (but probably not both), and whether this reshuffling is even legal, is of course a question for the contest organizers, but I think I have translated what they want.

No offense to anyone, but when many respected Eurobricks contributors have different first languages, it is sometimes hard for any given user to clearly state a suggestion to someone else without being blunt and equally hard for the recipient of such a comment to correctly interpret it. I hope no one minds if I continue to take up space clarifying like this.

[Nom Carver]

It was intended as a friendly response, just to show that Goatm revels in being the bad guy. I hope you didn't take offense.

No way!

[Bob De Quatre]

@ Bob

The rules say "One entry per member" so I guess it depends on whether or not a separate element in the structure = a MOC = an entry, Who would make a ruling on this?

I'm saying that an entry for a SoNE episode is one and only one MOC.

What you did in your entry is:

- Here is a shiny imperial hangar

- Here is the same hangar with a Tie Courier

- Here is the same hangar with a smaller fighter

- Here is the same hangar with a Tie Phantom

- Here is the same hangar with an AT-ST

- Here is the same hangar and the same AT-ST on a shuttle

All the builds are nice, that's not the point, but it feels like it could go on and on with other vehicules...

For example, I work with LDD since I don't have many bricks (I should stop saying that...), how would you feel if my entry consisted in 20 or 30 differents vehicules?

Here I don't really know what to judge... I'll probably judge all the builds as a whole, but each ship has it's good and bad points (especially the second)...

And all of that makes the story strange... You signed up as a stormtrooper, so why are you wearing a TIE pilot suit and why are you piloting the little red fighter?

I think you should have focused on the hangar and maybe the AT-ST with the shuttle, and post freebuilds with the others.

I don't say these are bad MOCs! But it's the accumulation of MOCs that bothers me....

I think what Bob de Quatre and MstrOfPppts are saying is that you have wasted some great freebuilds by jamming all these vehicles into the same factory. Since the entry is still technically a WIP, maybe you could change this by putting the TIE collection as a separate freebuild or freebuilds. Whether the hanger could, for instance, be judged with the episode or the freebuilds (but probably not both), and whether this reshuffling is even legal, is of course a question for the contest organizers, but I think I have translated what they want.

No offense to anyone, but when many respected Eurobricks contributors have different first languages, it is sometimes hard for any given user to clearly state a suggestion to someone else without being blunt and equally hard for the recipient of such a comment to correctly interpret it. I hope no one minds if I continue to take up space clarifying like this.

It's sometimes hard for me to write how I feel about a MOC.... You'd be amazed by how many times I've started to write a comment and ended up not posting it as I couldn't express what I wanted

[Pointblank]

And all of that makes the story strange... You signed up as a stormtrooper, so why are you wearing a TIE pilot suit and why are you piloting the little red fighter?

Hey bob, I think goatm signed as a tie pilot if I'm not mistaken. I'm the one with the identity issue. I created a back story around it, but you won't see my character in the cockpit of a ship for sure :P

[goatman461]

I think Bob and Mstrofpppts are right, although I don't necessarily agree with the comparison to LDD. My original plan was to showcase all three fighters in the hangar at the same time, but I ran out of bricks, and the contest wasn't what I expected. I've since gotten a couple bricklink orders in and should be able to rebuild the hangar around the AT-ST and shuttle, making it a single, set scene. At the same time I will shift the starfighters over to a freebuild. Any suggestions of features to include are appreciated.

[Nom Carver]

I like really much your base/hangar settings, but I think it looks a little messy with all the stuff going on, but it still looks great.