[MOC] Star Wars: The X-Wing Story

[Jerac]

There are not many fictional spaceships as recognizable as the x-wing. Because of that, most of us had built one at some point of time. After all, it is both iconic and pretty simple: long, thin nose, four wings on hinges, cockpit somewhere in the middle and long guns on wingtips. It was built so many times it is as boring as it is popular, which is why I never attempted doing it.

If not BrickVault, with whom I am cooperating on making models with instructions, I would probably never make my own. Eventually though popular demand made it an obvious choice and so I started. What was initially a build stuck somewhere between one TIE or another, took me about four months to complete, which is huge for such a relatively small ship.

Let me present you the finished product first.

Because we were not entirely sure which color variant is the best, I ended up making three - this way everybody will have one which fits him!

So: are X-Wings simple?

I just can't emphasize on how wrong was I. There are so many things that need to be done right. Thin wings. Front fuselage which has no parallel surface and has an annoying stripe which interferes with structural work inside. Rear fuselage which is neither rectangular or hexagonal, it is something else. And don't even get me started on the cockpit situation. LEGO part designers made one cockpit which has good front, but bad back, and then the new one has good back, but bad front. Had they merged the designs into one it would be perfect, and without it we can only pick whether we will have abnormally wide nose section, or abnormally square-looking cockpit.

Altough there are many great X-Wing designs in the AFOL world, most notably those from Atlas, Cehnot, Inthert, Mike Psiaki and Dmac, among many others, most have their noses either studded, or with jagged edges. So instead of starting with the wings, I started with the front fuselage, as it was the most difficult part. And after all what can be hard with simple wing-opening mechanism?

This was the fist sketch. I had no clue how to join this all, and tried all possible cockpit pieces, but I liked the idea of using hinges to make smooth upper sides of the ship. But since my designs modelled in LDD end up being... uh, not too perfect, I had to move to real bricks, and fast. So immediately after a batch of pieces including the cockpit arrived, I made the real version of the nose.

...yeah, so it does not look like the LDD one, because the LDD one was really bad. This one features a lip I was pretty sure was the standard feature of the x-wing, later I discovered that the lipped version is a hangar model, and miniature model has none of it. Also, I noticed the fuselage is already too high so it will have to be lowered later on.

Here it has some of the rear fuselage, and first of many variants of nose tip. So far so good. Except it totally did not hold together, so...

I also got a hunch that something odd is going on with the proportions at this stage, but "eeh this is a prototype, I will get back to it later". Having front part more or less done, I started doing the wing gearbox:

It worked well enough so far, so I could return to the nose area. It was too high, nose top was too long and some of other proportions were wrong. So I fixed it:

The X-wing's cockpit front panel does not line up with top surface of the nose, there is a slight angle change. I wanted to have that, but obviously overdid it badly... it looks sort of vulture'ish here too, due to the nose, doesn't it?

There. Much better, isn't it? I added cheese slopes on top of 2x2 slopes behind the canopy so I could make the cockpit lower in relation to rear fuselage. I also made a better nose tip.

 

Even the bottom was shaping up quite nicely. 
By that time, however, issues with wing mechanism became too apparent. It clogged often, was wobbly because each wing was held only on one technic beam, and tended to detach bottom fuselage panels every time when it was opened. Something had to be done, which meant another major rework.

 

Eventually after about two weeks of tinkering, I maged to find a solution which in short space (6 studs) contains an 2x2 gearbox and two attachment points per wings, with added benefit of entire assembly built sideways which greatly helps with wings stability. What the final model uses for wing mechanism is an evolved version of this mechanism. Notice how the control knob is on the bottom of the ship...

With wing core situation solved, I could move on to landing gear, which proven to be super simple but effective. Building, however, is not just about the design itself. Sometimes you have to tend for the workplace as well, because I eventually ended up with such a situation:

...so where is that part? In the apartment I was renting back then, I did not really have enough space for building. Or, anything really. 

 

...so I moved. How often do you move to finish a MOC? :D
This was just before the departure.


Having the workspace situation resolved, I could get back to work. By that time I also got most of the parts I required to finish the ship, so I made all the components or their placeholders, and pondered why it still felt wrong. It took me a while, but this happened to be caused by rear fuselage. You see... 

I had it like on the left, while it should be more like the one on the right. 

Easy to fix? Except because the ship has no internal frame, it is held by the outer parts. So any rework in this area was causing issues everywhere else. 

I figured out a way. Yup, from that moment on, the tile-to-clip connection is main structural connection of the ship. Basically the idea is that front fuselage attaches to rear fuselage by these areas (and similar on the underside), and they all together "wrap around" the wing structure. It holds together surprisingly well, to the point it ended up being the final solution!

This was the version tested by BrickVault. In case of some harder models, and X-Wing totally qualifies, we do an additional verification step to ensure all works. The results of the tests were, if I remember correctly:
- landing gear collapses
- nose top part cannot be attached properly
- angled fuselage sides cannot be angled properly
- rear fuselage top part randomly pops off
not to mention several issues with the instruction itself.

...and what do you mean R2 doesn't fit?

Here during debug of the front cover issue. If you work in IT, you know these dreaded words: "hmm it works for me". Yet for brickvault guys, this connection was not possible because the jumper tile was too deep. The issue, as usual, was caused by a part being placed far away, in this case - under the cockpit. 

Making instructions introduces entire new class of problems. How often do you debug a MOC?

 

Now, remember what I said about the control gear being installed on the bottom? The idea was that an axle would go through the stand, with a nice knob to spin the gearbox to open/close the wings. Unfortunately though, the force required to open up wings is so high, the axle bent and twisted in a way which made operation through the stand impossible. It surprised me, because turning it with fingers is reasonably easy. This issue I did not solve. The only thing I could do was to move control point from the bottom to the top. This triggered YET ANOTHER F**** REWORK, this time of both the underbody top fuselage panels. I lost count here, but it seems the rear part was redone about 5 times totally, with smaller numerous adjustments during the way.



The story came to an end after four months of work, several rebuilds, several totally wrong ideas, and a lot of beer drunk. I hope this wall of text is interesting for someone.

Thanks for reading and tell me what you think!

------------

This build was done with collaboration with BrickVault. You can watch a video review here:

Instructions are available here: https://www.brickvault.toys/collections/all

Edited September 8, 2018 by Jerac

[AfolFree]

Wow, just wow. Having a shot at a ship that was modelled so many times both in official sets and MOCs, and still coming up with major improvements is really impressive.

Major question : is it in the same scale as your TIEs ?

[TWRAddict]

As Krennic would say, "Oh, it's beautiful!"

[icm]

Thanks for posting this brilliant build, and also this great write-up of the design process.  The thing I really like about this model compared to other recent X-wings (especially inthert and cehnot) is the nice, smooth, stud-free nose.  I also like how the underside of the fuselage is smooth, composed of flat panels, and nearly completely enclosed even with the retractable landing gear.  The landing gear itself also looks like it works a lot more smoothly than in other models.  The tiled wing interiors are great too.  I think the other models get the subtle angles in the central fuselage and the tail cone a bit better, but having never built anything this complex myself I really can't complain.  Thanks for making the instructions available, and for taking the time to make the model relatively stable for the sake of the instructions.  I tried to build inthert's X-wing once, but all the illegal connections made it so unstable during the build process that I never finished it.  Does this model have any illegal connections or places where the geometry doesn't <quite> work out, like the inthert nose?

[Jerac]

59 minutes ago, icm said:

Thanks for posting this brilliant build, and also this great write-up of the design process.  The thing I really like about this model compared to other recent X-wings (especially inthert and cehnot) is the nice, smooth, stud-free nose.  I also like how the underside of the fuselage is smooth, composed of flat panels, and nearly completely enclosed even with the retractable landing gear.  The landing gear itself also looks like it works a lot more smoothly than in other models.  The tiled wing interiors are great too.  I think the other models get the subtle angles in the central fuselage and the tail cone a bit better, but having never built anything this complex myself I really can't complain.  Thanks for making the instructions available, and for taking the time to make the model relatively stable for the sake of the instructions.  I tried to build inthert's X-wing once, but all the illegal connections made it so unstable during the build process that I never finished it.  Does this model have any illegal connections or places where the geometry doesn't <quite> work out, like the inthert nose?

Thanks!

Which central fuselage area are you referring to? I might have made something wrong, sources are sometimes pretty inconclusive and they are easy to interpret wrong.

Most of it is legal, but some places are tough to do (you have to attach a tile to four clips at once at one point of time, for example). It shouldn't be too hard though, and it requires no rubber bands to hold itself together ;)

There is one place where geometry doesn't work out, but this is intentional. Sides of the nose are pulled together and joined with a ball joint in a way which normally would require them spaced a bit more narrowly. This way it is done, they are slightly bent inwards - which increases tension a bit (which in turn makes it more rigid), reduces width to desirable level and closes some holes. 

1 hour ago, AfolFree said:

Wow, just wow. Having a shot at a ship that was modelled so many times both in official sets and MOCs, and still coming up with major improvements is really impressive.

Major question : is it in the same scale as your TIEs ?

About the same, yes. Only "about" because it is pretty difficult to scale the TIEs themselves... To me, though, it looks just right.

[m4st3rt3ch]

Best X-Wing ever, i wish UCS were that good. And what a beautiful nose it has. What's the size and piece count?

[Jerac]

6 hours ago, m4st3rt3ch said:

Best X-Wing ever, i wish UCS were that good. And what a beautiful nose it has. What's the size and piece count?

Body end-to-end is 42 studs long, with thrusters extending past that a bit. Piece count varies depending on color variant, but it is 1050 +/- 20.

[m4st3rt3ch]

1 hour ago, Jerac said:

Body end-to-end is 42 studs long, with thrusters extending past that a bit. Piece count varies depending on color variant, but it is 1050 +/- 20.

Wow, that's only 300 more than the regular X-Wings, makes it even more impressive. This could be a quite affordable model. We really need the "like-function" of this forum to be activated.

[dmaclego]

Great job, Jarek!

Obviously, you sacrificed certain details (landing gear and guns accuracy, for instance) to make the model buildable for any buyer but overall shape is spot on.  I would even say it's as good as possible until we get a proper X-wing windscreen, which is not going to happen antytime soon, I'm afraid. Slightly bent sidewalls make it even more similar to the original.

Congratulations!

 

 

[Commander_Rob]

The best X-Wing, hands down. My absolute favourite part is what icm already mentioned, it's so smooth! Sooo many other builds have all these little bits and bobs that technically form the correct shape, but look just a little too messy or distracting (I'd always be tempted to open the click-hinge panels on the Psiaki model for example). This has none of that, the shaping is even better than most, and it seems sturdy. A hard model to beat.

[Jerac]

1 hour ago, dmaclego said:

Great job, Jarek!

Obviously, you sacrificed certain details (landing gear and guns accuracy, for instance) to make the model buildable for any buyer but overall shape is spot on.  I would even say it's as good as possible until we get a proper X-wing windscreen, which is not going to happen antytime soon, I'm afraid. Slightly bent sidewalls make it even more similar to the original.

Congratulations!

 

 

Thanks! 

Indeed these were tradeoffs for making the model both easier to make and more sturdy. The guns are what irks me most. Your solution is quite good, but only "quite", because of the wheels being not smooth themselves. The one I got is at best "passable", it won because of simplicity and passing squint test well enoguh. As for cockpit piece, I have no idea why did LEGO insist of making it wrong. I am wondering if they simply care at all about accuracy. The latest 2018 X-wing for example has a very odd flaw: engines flush with wings' leading edge. Usually you can say a set is made in this or another way because it should be simple enough, but in this case, it was a conscious decision which complicated the design and made it less accurate. 

Similar story is unfolding with their TIEs. The design is evolving and is more smooth and uses more interesting pieces, yes... but every time slightly departs from original TIE fighter look. As if the only reference they got was the previous line of sets. 
Very odd. 

[onecase]

Congrats! By far the best looking X-wing ever! I would build this for sure.

[Ellisss_2]

Amazing build, I love the angled cockpit!

[icm]

On 9/8/2018 at 1:39 PM, Jerac said:

Which central fuselage area are you referring to? I might have made something wrong, sources are sometimes pretty inconclusive and they are easy to interpret wrong.

I just meant that one of the things I look for in a top-of-the-line X-wing build is that the fuselage sides at and just behind the cockpit canopy are tilted ever so slightly away from the vertical, and that the facets in the tailcone are flat rather than curved, since fuselage curves are characteristic of the T-70 rather than the T-65.  That's the way I think of the X-wing, anyway - I'm certainly no authority!  I think the cehnot and inthert builds are better in that regard, but it's a small thing and I like your nose solution much better in general.  I spent all day yesterday talking myself down from buying the instructions and ordering the parts...better to build my little retro T-65 first before tackling this beauty!

15 hours ago, Jerac said:

As for cockpit piece, I have no idea why did LEGO insist of making it wrong. I am wondering if they simply care at all about accuracy. 

I think it's perfectly clear why TLG made the new X-wing canopy the way they did.  It's a "compromise canopy" that needs to work well across a range of lines for a variety of different vehicles, and that's easier if it has a rectangular base.  (Same reason why the old X-wing canopy was inaccurate.)  Also, they would need to adopt the cehnot/inthert/jerac/dmac/atlas/gray mouser nose standard before it would help to introduce a canopy mold that's an exact replica of the real canopy: a canopy properly tapered front-to-back wouldn't help the look of 75102/75149/75218 much if they retained the 4502/6212/9493 nose technique, which they do.  Compared to the old canopy, the new one has a better taper in the side profile and also in the front profile, just not in the top profile.  Two out of three's not bad.

Edited September 10, 2018 by icm
Small word substitutions, added a sentence.

[danielwerner]

Awesome MOC, already bought the instructions through Brickvault. Can't really decide to go for the white or grey red one though. I'm still not sure which I like best, and what's closest to the movies. I wish there was a color right between white and LBG.

Thoughts, people? :)

[Jerac]

34 minutes ago, danielwerner said:

Awesome MOC, already bought the instructions through Brickvault. Can't really decide to go for the white or grey red one though. I'm still not sure which I like best, and what's closest to the movies. I wish there was a color right between white and LBG.

Thoughts, people? :)

This exactly is why we have outsourced this question to you. Please tell us afterwards - or show, even! - which one you made!
 

[Kristof]

I wish that I had logged all my builds (I talk like there are dozens while there are just a few lol) like that! It was really entertaining to read through the story and I sincerely thank you for sharing it in such thorough manner. The model, obviously, is fantastic! But the concept of WIP being shown in one comprehensive post is the star of your work for me :D May all of us be inspired by this!

[DomMk]

Whoa, so the solution to your riddle was an X-Wing!

I'll probably build this one in the near future! :) It's a beautiful build, well done! And I truly appreciate the look at your frustration behind the scenes since I'm feeling a lot of that myself as a beginner to Lego design.

Just a quick Q: why did you reject a brick-built cockpit so early on?

[Jerac]

52 minutes ago, DomMk said:

Whoa, so the solution to your riddle was an X-Wing!

I'll probably build this one in the near future! :) It's a beautiful build, well done! And I truly appreciate the look at your frustration behind the scenes since I'm feeling a lot of that myself as a beginner to Lego design.

Just a quick Q: why did you reject a brick-built cockpit so early on?

Yes! Popular, made by everyone, but actually very hard ;)

As for canopy: this was actually a request from BrickVault guys, to have it consistent with other ships. I originally intended to go for brick-built cockpit, however... now seeing the result, I am not sure brick-built one would be any better!

Edited September 9, 2018 by Jerac

[Makin Bacon]

This build is absolutely beautiful

[Exile Phoenix]

That model does have some pretty lines to it that are not easy to try and match in Lego.  It is hard to tell from the photos, but were you able to get it so the torpedo tubes don't intersect the front fuselage for their firing path (the DBG makes it look fine if they do, just curious)?

Is it possible to use something like the 3m axle with stud on it in the engine assembly instead of whatever length the yellow axle is so that you can use a 1x1 trans red/pink for the engine glow instead of having a visible cross beam?  Looking at how I assume it is assembled it seems like it would be just short, but using an umbrella stand rod/light saber rod or something similar and then a 1x1 round with hole to connect the 1x1 trans piece feels like it would work.  The engine feels like it sticks out a bit too far relative to the end of the main body, however that could be a variance based on which of the shots were used as reference (I think there is a good side view in the middle of the death star run with Luke's x-wing)

There also is a block box behind R2 in the close-up shots of the x-wing that doesn't seem to be there (and possibly wasn't on the smaller models they had for flying shots) but seems like there is space for it, unless the greebiling on the top is based on another reference (or the two clips are it, but they seem to shallow to me).

What piece did you use for the main rod of the lasers?  The last picture you have looks like flexible tube/hose, however the pictures on bricklink look more like a standard solid rod of some sort (although too long 

[JoeyB]

"Impressive... Most impressive."

This is insane. It's such a shame LEGO still hasn't made a truly accurate windscreen, it's only really bothered me since they released the newest model and it's sooo close... but not there yet. Yours looks nigh perfect, how sturdy is it? Can you hold it by the nose or body, or the wings? Great work!

[Jerac]

6 hours ago, Exile Phoenix said:

That model does have some pretty lines to it that are not easy to try and match in Lego.  It is hard to tell from the photos, but were you able to get it so the torpedo tubes don't intersect the front fuselage for their firing path (the DBG makes it look fine if they do, just curious)?

Is it possible to use something like the 3m axle with stud on it in the engine assembly instead of whatever length the yellow axle is so that you can use a 1x1 trans red/pink for the engine glow instead of having a visible cross beam?  Looking at how I assume it is assembled it seems like it would be just short, but using an umbrella stand rod/light saber rod or something similar and then a 1x1 round with hole to connect the 1x1 trans piece feels like it would work.  The engine feels like it sticks out a bit too far relative to the end of the main body, however that could be a variance based on which of the shots were used as reference (I think there is a good side view in the middle of the death star run with Luke's x-wing)

There also is a block box behind R2 in the close-up shots of the x-wing that doesn't seem to be there (and possibly wasn't on the smaller models they had for flying shots) but seems like there is space for it, unless the greebiling on the top is based on another reference (or the two clips are it, but they seem to shallow to me).

What piece did you use for the main rod of the lasers?  The last picture you have looks like flexible tube/hose, however the pictures on bricklink look more like a standard solid rod of some sort (although too long 

The torpedo tubes sadly *slightly* intersect the fuselage. However if you imagine the torpedoes being launched a tiny bit angled away from it, it is pretty okay. In the one I have on my desk I switched some of the cheese slopes to black and it works even better, but this feature was made after rendering all instructions and didn't make it. It is worth it though if you will attempt to make one for yourself.

You can do what you suggest in the engines. I am not a fan of transparent pieces for engines which is why I picked this solution, but the engine being a stack of various 2-wide round pieces means you can use whatever you wish.

I used this shot as a reference for various dimensions of the ship. Unless I made some stupid mistake during calculations, it should match it to about half of stud precision.

That box behind R2 unit puzzled me too. It is as you noticed visible only on the close-up model, and not on the miniature one. This is not the only difference though, in hangar the ship's stripe gets repainted whole before Luke even gets out of the cockpit :D
Since I was basing the model off the miniature one - because reasons - this box is also missing.

As for laser cannon pieces situation, yes, it is flex tube sometimes and "lightsaber blade 4L" element. There are four physical x-wings built now, one by me, three by BrickVault, and they differ a bit. I believe they have one in spec 6, one spec 8, one spec 8b and mine is spec 7. In instructions you will get one with flex tubing used for both the shaft and the barrel tip.
 

 

2 hours ago, JoeyB said:

"Impressive... Most impressive."

This is insane. It's such a shame LEGO still hasn't made a truly accurate windscreen, it's only really bothered me since they released the newest model and it's sooo close... but not there yet. Yours looks nigh perfect, how sturdy is it? Can you hold it by the nose or body, or the wings? Great work!

Thanks! This model being an X-Wing means it has all the protruding elements - cannons and thrusters - which do like to bend or pop off. Nose tip, the darker piece is attached on a ball joint and by itself it also is not attached too sturdily to the body. Everything else though should hold well. You can pick the ship by the nose, even though it doesn't like it and squeaks a bit), by the wings without any issue, and any other part of fuselage also no problem.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Jerac

[Wolfhammer]

Looks amazing will be adding this to my fleet :).

[cehnot]

I have to admit this one makes mine look a bit dated. I see a lot of great solutions and I think I may fuse the two designs together for my next ship. Great job. I may need to build tour ship just to figure out how you solved that fuselage. The next thing I love is your solution to the bottom. I love the fact that you don't have to add or subtract parts to make the landing gear work. I simply gave up on my design.