Benny's Gaming Lounge

[MechaFizz]

[Higher resolution]

Nothing gets Benny's Space Squad more excited than building spaceships---but the newly-installed Photon Debugger arcade machine in their recently renovated command center lounge may have become a close second! Lenny in particular has been having a blast so far, despite Jenny's persistent backseat gaming. Though, I wonder if Benny will be disappointed when he realizes there are no spaceships featured in this game?

This is my first serious attempt at building a vignette and at photographing my MOCs, and I'm actually decently satisfied with the results, even in spite of the obvious room for improvement. I originally grew up building mostly with BIONICLE, and even when handling bricks I'm more inclined to make characters, creatures, or the odd sci-fi contraption, so building something that could pass as an interior was a fun exercise!

Being a big fan of neo-classic space MOCs, I tried to follow that aesthetic, but took a few obvious creative liberties, introducing tan and brown to the color palette. Since there's a gag in The LEGO Movie that Benny, being a classic space astronaut, only knows how to operate technology from the 80s, I was amused by the idea that perhaps his taste in decor was stuck in that decade as well, so tried to recreate the look of the wood paneling that was popular around that time as an accent wall. I also decidedly used dark tan plates instead of tiles to (hopefully) suggest a different type of flooring (perhaps carpeted) from the surrounding gray tiled floor.

The arcade machine was the first part of the scene I built. I wanted to invoke the aesthetic of iconic classic spaceships, but also keep it recognizable as an arcade machine. I didn't initially plan on incorporating the "bumble bee" striping, but was thoroughly pleased when such a perfect place to incorporate it emerged! The printed tile is custom, based on my winning "Build your own game!" LEGO IDEAS contest entry, "Photon Debugger", and originally printed as part of my BrickFair VA 2021 brickbadge.

[For those interested, Photon Debugger is a playable here: https://play.unity.com/mg/lego/testbuild-45]

Edited September 8, 2021 by MechaFizz
Scaled image down to 1024x1024

[Darkdragon]

I really like the design of your vignette here. Love all the small details and greebles

Your image, however, is above our site guidelines (1024) so please post the smaller image and you can have a text link to the big fella.

Keep up the good work and welcome to EB!

[MechaFizz]

21 minutes ago, Darkdragon said:

I really like the design of your vignette here. Love all the small details and greebles

Your image, however, is above our site guidelines (1024) so please post the smaller image and you can have a text link to the big fella.

Keep up the good work and welcome to EB!

Oops! I somehow didn't realize my image was quite so large! I've scaled it down to 1024x1024.

I was worried I might have made the scene just a bit too dense, so I'm glad the small details are coming through. Especially since I think I may have accidently "flattened" the image color data a in my attempt to digitally correct for a sub-optimal lighting setup.

And thanks for the welcome! It's weird to feel new here after years of casually lurking :P

[Feuer Zug]

Cute scene. Well build and full of details. Thanks for sharing and welcome to Eurobricks.