Legostein

Hello! I am pretty excited about the new Harry Potter sets. Having missed the first wave, it's great to get another chance to get hands on this fantastic theme. It combines elements of fantasy, castle and town what makes it unique in my eyes. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! That's a great boosting-up of the older 6361 Mobile Crane from 1986. The control cabin for the turning platform is very nice with it's sloped windscreen. Being more a fan of 4-wide vehicles myself, too, I think that replacing the headlights on the roof with 1x1x2/3 slopes is a great idea to stabilize the crane boom. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Thanks again everone for the comments! I'll try my best to keep it up, but Indiana Jones is a theme where most object have a real-life background, thus not really belonging to the licensed theme here. However, the Flying Wing was designed only for the movie and does not exist in reality, only similar models do. Yes, TheBrickster is really amazing in creating the illusion of a real set. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! That's kind of an unusual concept but quite original when reading your description. Nice space pick-up truck! The top turret with the harpoons is also a nicde idea. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello and welcome! The little fighter looks very nice! The engine construction with small panels coated by large hinge panels is indeed a very inventive construction! Well done. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello Ralph! As usually both cars are spot-on! This time I like the rear side of both best! The backlight constrcutions are simply awesome. Simply using a transparent grill tile gives the perfect look for this model. Furthermore the snot techniques on the Ford's back light is remarkable. Very accurate! Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! Indeed very funny vignette! The sceptical face expression of the not slimed Ghostbusters is very recognizable. And the big slime spot on the wall let's us imagine exactly what happened there. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Thanks once more for your big interest in the models! Regarding the future of the mini moc sets I presented over the last months, there are not man left of the prequels, and so soon we'll go back to the original trilogy. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! Nice snapshot of the scene! I hope the forestmen can climb up fast enough to safe their fellow's life. The cliff and especially the water line are also built great. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Thank you, Big Cam. The image exists, and is posted below. The following image shows the reproduction of a movie scene. It is fully fictional and does not depict real events in the past, present or future. There is no correlation with bygone or planned acts of violence in reality. Best greetings, ~ Christopher

Hello! Thanks for the effort of writing down all these thoughts. It's a good review and also a great memory to the older set! And to be honest, now seeing that old prowler, I still am addicted to the old Space Police theme. The little fun conversation between the minifigures of both decades really made me smile. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! A really great 8-wide fire engine! I also know such trucks from the country I live in. Your version is excellently done with so many functional and working details. As already mentioned by the people before me, the concealing stabilising legs are great! And I also like the use of those trans-blue old-style bulb covers. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! That's absolutely lovely! So small but so full of details. All those coloured vessels and pots plus the excellent visible spectrum of light. Very nice! And those tiles with grain pattern work really perfectly to imitate the historical image. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello again, thanks for all the nice words! I am glad to have found this nice place, forum and people here. To reduce confusion on the Octuptarra, yes, it appears in both, the first 2D cartoon series and Episode 3. I meant that it appeared in the main story arc in Episode 3 for the first time and not already in Episode 2. However it's true that it was already drawn in the comic series, but I don't count this to the main story arc. Well, thank you for the lesson. A few more kommas, semicolons or fullstops in your lengthy sentence would also make it easier for non-native speakers like me to understand them more readily. Especially the last part of it I had to read twice to understand. By the way, here's what the Oxford dictionnary says: realize/realise When you enter "realiSe" in the search for you're also automatically redirected to "realiZe". But I don't think we should discuss this further in this thread and start a flamewar. I thank you for your comment, and I'll try to improve my english (if necessary). Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello again, and thank you both of you for the feedback. And yes, Siegfried, you're right. Many more modern SciFi movies have "adopted" elements from older movies. It's important that we keep this knowledge alive, otherwise no one will remember the "original" sources at some time. The situation is similar to the covering of old pop songs. Many people today don't know that the song is much older and had only been re-covered. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Thank you, Siegfried! I am glad you like it and to have found another fan of these movies. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello everybody! After having discussed the Capital Ships and the Starfighters of the Separatists, it's no time to complete the circle by talking a bit about the Separatist planetary forces. As usual I'd like to start with a small summary picture of what is awaiting you in this topic. -------------------- All following images and bold vehicle descriptions are links to their image galleries and instrcutions. -------------------- The origin of the Separatists Droid Army lies at the Trade Federation. Hence I'd like to start with The Phantom Menace and the Battle of Naboo. Suddenly there appeared large war machines on the peaceful green grassy plains of Naboo. Among them is the Trade Federation AAT (Armored Assault Tank). The mini model features all details of the bigger official playset including a moving turret which can also change its fire angle. Also part of this battle are the Trade Federation's MTTs (Multi-Troop Transports). Realizing I didn't have one yet, I made this during the last week. It's much smaller than the official TLC mini model but has at least as many details including an opening front hatch. -------------------- An important sentence by Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones regarding the strength of the Droid Army is: "When their Battle Droids are combined with yours, we shall have an army greater than anything in the galaxy." From this point on the Trade Federation's Droid Army was combined with combat droids from the other Separatist fractions. During the Battle of Geonosis we hence see a large variety of combat droids. Among my favourites is the cute-looking but deadly Dwarf Spider Droid. Another more ugly looking spider droid also present during this battle is the Homing Spider Droid. The design is as simple as the one of its smaller cousin above but also represents the shape well. A more tricky craft also seen on the battle scene is the Hailfire Droid. Its angled wheels were realized by using an angled TECHNIC axle connector. The wheels themselves are TECHNIC gear pieces. It's a great example that TECHNIC pieces are very important even for mini building. -------------------- One of the major battles in "Revenge of the Sith" is the Battle of Utapau. Again we see more separatis vehicles. Probably a more personalize vehicle is General Grievous' Wheelbike. It's a very tiny model using a 3x3 TECHNIC gear piece in the center. It even features a seat for the driver. A new introduced combat droid during this battle is the Octuptarra Combat Tri Droid. It was already seen in the first Clone Wars TV series but appeared in real here for the first time. It uses many clicky hinges and TECHNIC triple hubs. -------------------- Another important battle in "Revenge of the Sith" is the Battle of Kashyyyk. Here we see the Corporate Alliance Tank Droid. Similar to the later TIE Crawler and TIE Mauler, this droid features treads. To be honest, I think the official TLC mini model of this droid was really bad. Agreed, the construction is very difficult but not impossible. Please have a look at the instructions to learn about the sliding technique used to generate a plate with studs on both sides. This model cost me over one week of construction time. The reason why I titled the thread with "planetary" vehicles and not "ground vehicles" is the next model. It's a flying vessel, but bound to a planet, the so-called Droid Gunship. It features very compact weapon racks. When using hose and lever ends instead of the more thick 1x1 cones you can fit more rockets narrowly to each other. -------------------- That's all for today. Thank you for your time and interest. Have a great week! ~ Yours Christopher.

Hello! It's a nice layout you presented here. Nice to see all those different fractions combined on this turnament place. I especially like the "classic" looking yellow/red castle building. The other yellow "wall" piece still looks a bit unfinished as the rest of the layout only features complete buildings. I hope the yellow spare parts behind it indicate you're still building on that. You mentioned your BrickShelf gallery once moderated. Could you please provide the link to it as well? Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! It's great to see the story goes on! If this was an official set, they would call it "Mexcian Army Battlepack" and the kids would race the stores to buy hundreds of them. But I think that your set name and figures are superior to those. Good addition to your theme! Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! I searched a bit through my instruction collection. Let me start in 1985 where there are 2 Basic Building sets featuring 6-wide cars. However, the first wave is set in the 1990s, beginning 1991 (as already mentioned) continued in 1995, and finally there are some vehicles new in 1999. In 2000 there appear several soccer promo sets with 6-wide busses. View the just mentioned vehicles all here: 6-wide vehicles from 1985-2002 In the beginning of the new century hits a fact I call the "Jack Stone Crisis". Starting in 2001 with one of the most unnecessary themes ever in my eyes. It had many 6-wide vehicles. See here for example: 4 Juniors Town vehicles from 2003 In the same year TLC released several new police sets which possibly mark the beginning of the modern 6-wide car designs. You can see them here: New 6-wide City Police sets from 2003 In summary I think the new 6-wide vehicles are a result of the "Jack Stone Crisis" in the early 2000s (just my opinion though). Cheers, ~ Christopher

Thank you! For this extra effort. Now I can see the diorama in its entire excellence. I hope you plan to update nice homepage with all your new creations. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! That looks very nice, and I guess it looks really great in real on the shelf. I hope you will give him a heavy blaster in his hands later. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello! My "vote" also goes for the X-Wing. I only have very few sets, but among them ist the X-Wing Dagobah crash landing set 4502. I guess it's the same X-Wing as set 6212. It's fantastic to lock the S-foils in attack position. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello again, and thank you for your interest and praises. You always encourage me to build more and better. No worries, I appreciate your imaging skills. You'll find your great image on the brand new sub site of deckdesigns.de for models from miscellaneous movies: http://misc.deckdesigns.de Thanks all for your comments and contributions. Cheers, ~ Christopher

Hello everyone, we now have the year 2010. And this remembers to a great movie from 1984 named "2010: The Year We Make Contact" (Odyssey Two). It can be considered the sequel to the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Odyssey One) from 1968. Both novels, on which the movies are based upon, are from the popular science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. The first movie was by Stanley Kubrick, and the second one by Peter Hyams. While Odyssey One features many nice starships, Odyssey Two only features one main starship. It's the Russian Starship Leonov, the main location of the movie which houses the Russian/American crew. Their mission is to recover the Discovery One which got lost during the first movie. Realizing that I didn't mention anything about models from these two movies on these great forums yet, I'd like to catch up on this, if you don't mind. Thank you to Siegfried at this point who made me remember this. Let's start with the Leonov as being appropriate regarding the year we have. It's comeplete with docking clamp, rotating middle section and detailed engine block behind it. It is approximately to scale with the Discovery One and thus allowing for setting up the docking scene with both ships from the movie. Click on the images to see more angles of the ship and the instructions. This leads over to the other ships from the earlier movie (Odyssey One). These are (in alphabetcial order) the Aries IB, the Discovery One, the EVA Pods, the Moonbus, the Orion III, and the Space Station V. They're all very detailed and the Moonbus and Aries IB feature a lot of SNOt techniques. The names above are direct links to their images and instructions. Below are provided thumbnails of them which are also links to the gallery. For those who don't like BrickShelf the entire content can be found directly under http://2001.deckdesigns.de I wish you all the best for this year! ~ Christopher