Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Thanks guys for your opinions! 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

I own Poe's black-orange X-wing, and I think that the color scheme, even being endearing and lively, after some time tends to bore a bit. I don't think that I'll buy 75149, but probably if I had the chance to choose between the two sets, I would've pick up the latter (grey-blue) :) Moreover, maybe it's an insignificant detail, but red lasers look far better on 75149 than on 75102.

Thank you very much! In fact that was my very goal... Unfortunately just after completing my model I read about TLG's new TIE advanced in set 75150 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.

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

Fantastic! Aside from the great level of detail, it globally looks so smooth and solid! I also agree with joebiwankenobi, the gait as seen in the video looks quite natural to me, I think you did a great job!

The glimpses so far look very promising :) obviously we're waiting to look at the finished model. In particular I think you're capturing very well the feeling of the rebel spacecrafts, both bold and (a little) distressed :) Moreover i agree with you on the choice of light bley instead of white, for the reason I've just explained :)

Good work! I also really appreciate bleacher's improvement of his model, the connection to the wings is nearly perfect. Myself, i've adopted a similar solution in a recent MOC (Vader's TIE advanced x1) :) The only detail on which I would work is the shape of the pilot cabin, I think that it needs to be a little taller (in terms of "vertical width": just a plate thickness more), as compared to the original TLG basic scheme, providing a more roundish shape. But this is just my opinion, and maybe when i'm able to do a post about my TIE, I'll be able to show what i mean.

At first i thought the same, but after looking more objectively to the panel version i changed my mind. In particular, the second solution looks certainly more accurate and better to me, the main (little, anyway) problem being the proportions of the squared hollow in the middle of the heatsink, which are difficult to reproduce in this scale. Probably, a look to the "real life" solid-brick appearance (as opposed to an LDD rendering) will reveal if it's better to omit that small detail (hollow), or to build it even in slightly altered proportion :) Anyway i'm probably discussing about insignificant details :)

Gorgeous MOC. I love the way you were able to recreate the feeling of compactness and, at the same time, the streamlined outline of the original movie model! Many solutions, like that for the radiator in the back, are so "simple" and yet so ingenious