MOCpages Find Suboken Project's Moldy Crow

[Brickdoctor]

Dark Forces was the first first-person shooter that I owned, and it was pretty much the only one that interested me until Battlefront came along, so I’ve always been interested in creations related to the Moldy Crow and its owner, Kyle Katarn. (Who came along early enough that he’s not cliche even though he’s an example of the ‘badass rogue Force-sensitive mercenary’.) Now, in part because the ship was created as 3D model for a 1995 video game, it might appear to be somewhat simple. But look more closely at this MOC by Suboken Project, and notice the SNOT work in the engines, the skillful blending of Technic with System along the underside, and the little details like the printed flags in front of the engine pods and the door pieces that add texture to the top.

By the way, you might have noticed that I've posted several of these finds in the past few days. I've been trying to get more quality MOCs to appear both here in the forum and on the blog, so, if you see an MOC that you think is worthy of blogging that hasn't been blogged, please don't hesitate to PM me a link.

[swils]

Back in the day, I had a 3-level demo of DF. I just recently picked up the SW bundle on Steam and have been playing through the full game. This is an awesome find, BD. I love the shape and details, but I can't decide if orange was the right choice, maybe brown or grey? But then, there's so many ships in those colors, I have to appreciate the break from the norm.

[Brickdoctor]

I haven't played the game in a while (Have it on CD for Windows, own a Mac, not really impressed with the experience of games on Windows on my virtual machine, don't want to pay more to play the game when I could buy LEGO instead...), but I remember the ship was a kind of rusty brown sort of color, plus the environment was often sort of dim and made things appear a little darker. Reddish brown might be more accurate -- maybe a slightly desaturated version of a color somewhere between old brown and dark orange. But you're right, it is nice to see some variation in color considering how often you see nothing but greys and blacks and browns in Star Wars.

[miles teg]

Oh wow, i only posted recently regarding Dark Forces and the Jedi Knight series, and if Lego had or were planning to make anything based on that arc ! This is nice ! The Moldy Crow was a classy ship. I agree the orange is a little jarring but it definately fits. Please post any more finds....ive enjoyed the last few !

[Brickdoctor]

In regards to the color, Suboken Project commented on the blog post, and he said,

If the pieces were available, I would give it another shot using Dark Tan as the primary color. As it turns out, LEGO hasn’t produced some of the brick types I would prefer to use in Dark Tan (yet).

The pictures were taken in direct sunlight, so the Dark Orange bricks look more like standard Orange LEGO. I based the color on a schematic illustration found via starwars.com. A greyish Moldy Crow would disappear on my shelf next to my other LEGO:SW builds. So, I’m happy with the Dark Orange results. However, there’s a part of me that is curious to see how Dark Tan would look. LEGO Creator: Expert is about to release the Sydney Opera House which uses a healthy amount of Dark Tan. I’m hoping the pieces I need will be released inside that set.

So he would have preferred to use dark tan, but the model isn't actually the standard orange, it's dark orange.

[TigerWolfe]

Back in the day, I had a 3-level demo of DF. I just recently picked up the SW bundle on Steam and have been playing through the full game. This is an awesome find, BD. I love the shape and details, but I can't decide if orange was the right choice, maybe brown or grey? But then, there's so many ships in those colors, I have to appreciate the break from the norm.

Makes me think of Booster Terrick's Star Destroyer.

[Suboken]

In regards to the color, Suboken Project commented on the blog post, and he said,

So he would have preferred to use dark tan, but the model isn't actually the standard orange, it's dark orange.

A healthy BL order of dark tan LEGO arrived this afternoon. The opera house set doesn't have the specific inverted slopes I was hoping for. Regardless, my wife and I decided to start ordering what the new dark tan version of the Moldy Crow would need. Who knows, maybe by this fall, LEGO will release a set containing those slopes. Or even better, one of us will figure out an alternative building solution! In the meantime, my wife and I have plenty of MOCs to upload to the Suboken Project's Flickr account.

Huge thanks to Brickdoctor for blogging our MOC!

- Suboken

[Brickdoctor]

Welcome to EB!

I'm assuming it's the 2x2 inverted slopes in the nose that aren't available in dark tan? Doesn't look like the regular (non-inverted) ones are available in that color, either. But the 1x1 regular slopes are available in dark tan, so you could do something with SNOTed regular slopes to replace the inverted ones. Have you tried something like this?

Now, this isn't the most elegant of solutions and does leave a quarter-plate gap, but in this case, I think it's actually the least gappy and the most compact way to invert the studs. The Technic half-pins can slip up into the 2x2 brick and the lowest pair of 1x2 slopes to hold the four inverted 1x2 slopes in place.

[Suboken]

Oh WOW! That would easily solve the issue. Thank you for the huge building tip. My wife is on Bricklink right now; I'll make sure to add these pieces to her orders (if available).

[Suboken Brick Project]

Here's an update on this MOC.

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=116976