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Dear LEGO and Star Wars enthusiasts,

I'm glad to present to you my first MOC attempt, Lord Vader's personal TIE advanced, made in February.

Last December, due to TFA hype, I've rediscovered my long-dozing passion for Star Wars and so/also, after more than 12 years, I restarted to build Legos. I was very disappointed, though, by TLG's 8017, and so I decided to design & build a TIE advanced, one of my favorite iconic starships, on my own. A great help came from the new cockpit parts (and sketch) from 75082 (Inquisitor's TIE advanced), which made everything simpler. Also, after discovering EB, I was able to admire many great MOCs, and certainly was influenced by many of them (moreover, discovering bricklink was quite like finding a goldmine).

I've tried my best to obtain a balance among movie accuracy, playability and extreme SWOOOOOSHability. The model is in minifig scale, and even if it's quite big (with respect to 8017 and 75150), it's very lightweight. Piece count is about 500.

I hope these photographs will give you a quite faithful portrait of my model, anyway I find their lack of tridimensionality disturbing.

(Imgur album: http://imgur.com/a/M62yW)

ZKpHRCll.jpg

stjqYaRl.jpg

As regards the wings/solar panels, I tried to make them look as streamlined as possible, in contrast with the popular thick-contoured solution as seen in 9492 TIE (I was happy to see that TLG used a very similar approach in set 75150, TIE advanced + A-wing from Rebels).

Sfx98PCl.jpg

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Rear views:

pwRFuZKl.jpg

3gWtlDvl.jpg

Having a closer look to the central "core": i decided to use those smooth quarter-of-half-sphere pieces for the rear part of the cockpit. To recreate the gradual emergence of the central rectangle on the back, i placed small sloped pieces by its side, as you can see.

8KpUbKDl.jpg

(You can see that the wing/solar panel attachments are really solid. In fact the model is extremely swooshable and it won't come apart even in performing the most extreme flying maneuvers :D :D)

As regards the front of the cockpit, I tried my best to give it a spherical outline:

XjAZ9XBl.jpg?1

Inside of the cockpit (partially disassembled to look better inside):

yc5NAwjl.jpg

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And finally the underside, showing the play features: laser shooters, activated by sliding with a finger on the round valve, and the engine-hyperdrive compartment with a special place to clip Vader's lightsaber.

bvlkQLpl.jpg

Pr81R15l.jpg

Unfortunately, i'm missing the minifigure of Lord Vader himself. When i'll get one, i'll update this post with a photo of him inside the cockpit.

I hope that you will appreciate my little model, and I can't wait to receive your feedback and suggestions. :)

Edited by Arthur Schopenhauer

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This looks so much better than 8017, great job!

Thank you very much! :sweet: In fact that was my very goal... Unfortunately just after completing my model I read about TLG's new TIE advanced in set 75150 :grin: but anyway i think that 75150 looks too compact and short (even being a beautiful set, and a HUGE improvement over 8017) so I'm still happy about my MOC.

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You should make an LDD file of this masterpiece for us simple minded folk.

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You should make an LDD file of this masterpiece for us simple minded folk.

That would be fantastic, this is an excellent MOC and far better than the Vader vs. A-Wing set.

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The underside looks a bit rough, and the black in the middle part of the panels looks a bit too narrow. The rest is fantastic though! It never occurred to me to use the macaroni pieces instead of the more angular corner piece, I will have to try and see how it looks on the official model.

How's the stability with it sitting on the panels? It's a bit hard to tell how you've stiffened them up so they don't fold inwards. I really don't like how 75150 tie stresses the plastic when you use the panels as the only support, I actually made a stand for it because I dislike it so much, I'm hoping your version is better.

Edited by khatmorg

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Thanks guys for your opinions! :classic:

You should make an LDD file of this masterpiece for us simple minded folk.

In fact, I have the "LDD" (made with Mecabricks) of the first version of this model, but after building it with real bricks, I worked on it reducing its width by two studs and the length by one, and by making some major-minor aesthetic changes (like making the cockpit "taller" by one plate and so on) [i just can't restrain myself from continuously finding something to improve, and working with real bricks comes far more natural to me].

Unfortunately at present i don't have the time to make an LDD of the final version, but if you don't mind, I can give you that first Mecabricks link so you can work on it and make your own improvements and changes :classic:

Edited by Arthur Schopenhauer

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The underside looks a bit rough, and the black in the middle part of the panels looks a bit too narrow. The rest is fantastic though! It never occurred to me to use the macaroni pieces instead of the more angular corner piece, I will have to try and see how it looks on the official model.

How's the stability with it sitting on the panels? It's a bit hard to tell how you've stiffened them up so they don't fold inwards. I really don't like how 75150 tie stresses the plastic when you use the panels as the only support, I actually made a stand for it because I dislike it so much, I'm hoping your version is better.

Straight to the point! In fact, the underside needed some more "coverage", and certainly when I'll be able to make some new bricklink orders I'll work on it. At present, I privileged solidity over smoothness, but I want to find a better balance between the two.

As regards the black in the middle panels, now that you make me notice that, it could be made larger by making the grey part represented only by the hinges between panels (and using this type of hinge in bley, which would be more showy: http://www.bricklink...Hinge]#T=P&C=86): what do you think?

As regards the stability of the panels, I used a total of 40+40 hinge pieces (10 couples per panel-to-panel joint), which grant sufficient solidity to hold the weight of the model itself plus some additional weight on it, with no stresses. To give you a more concrete idea, you need to push a bit to change the angle between panels and it's difficult to make minor adjustments. The only minor thing that bothers me is that while standing on panels, there appears a little gap that you can see in the fifth photograph, at the level of the connection between the central panel and the "body" of the TIE. But this is the (small, I think) price for not using a connection like that in 75150, which allows you to insert longer cross-sectioned rods, but looks too bulky and not movie-accurate to me. Anyway the kind of connection I used (seen in the eight photo) is really strong; I wanted the model to be really swooshable :classic:

Edited by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Playability, accuracy... Your ship is so nice it could be made from Lego designers. I love everything on it, but the hyperdrive/lightsaber compartiment is the best idea you had.

Good job ! :wink:

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You know, I looked at the pictures and I didn't seem to see stoppers for the wings to only go at a certain angle. Do you have stoppers, and just hid them, or do the wings have nothing to stop them?

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You know, I looked at the pictures and I didn't seem to see stoppers for the wings to only go at a certain angle. Do you have stoppers, and just hid them, or do the wings have nothing to stop them?

No, I didn't use any stopper, the panels can be folded at any angle. Anyway I want to substitute the "smooth" hinges I used with the "cogwheel" variant (http://www.bricklink...Hinge]#T=P&C=86) :)

Edited by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Definitely one of the better ones seen. I love cockpit details and a big fan of yours great stuff!

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I've never been much of a fan of Vader's tie, especially in lego form. But this is the best version I've seen - good work. You've captured the ball of the cockpit and kept the bulk and shape of the pylons. Nice.

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Playability, accuracy... Your ship is so nice it could be made from Lego designers. I love everything on it, but the hyperdrive/lightsaber compartiment is the best idea you had.

Good job ! :wink:

Definitely one of the better ones seen. I love cockpit details and a big fan of yours great stuff!

I've never been much of a fan of Vader's tie, especially in lego form. But this is the best version I've seen - good work. You've captured the ball of the cockpit and kept the bulk and shape of the pylons. Nice.

Thank you very much guys! In fact, the cockpit was probably the hardest part of the project, and the last to be completed, till it satisfied me. I have relied on this photo from Wookieepedia: http://vignette3.wik...20150827050808. The cockpit of the model used in the movies looks quite big when compared to the side panels; this is very difficult to recreate with legos.

Anyway, if you google "vader tie", you'll see a lot of photos and sketches: their proportions (in particular as regards the cockpit-to-panels ratio) vary widely. This is probably due to the fact that in the movie itself, the TIE advanced is always shown very briefly, from oblique angles, moving fast, and with a lot of light-dark contrast; this makes it difficult to understand its real proportions.

Edited by Arthur Schopenhauer

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