hjmediastudios

The build is nice, but the title... Really? Really?

Yep, looks like Walmart took them down. They were available to order for a brief window; I managed to snag the Inquisitor's TIE and the Sabine set fast enough that they've already been shipped.

For those interested, Walmart.com has the full 2015 lineup available in the US, with MSRP pricing and shipping fast enough to get 'em by Christmas.

He did use the official sets- the canopies, for one, only come in the Ghost and Phantom sets.

Awesome! I'll be up on New Years' to go hog-wild, unless the rumors of a January 5th double-VIP points promotion are true. In which case I'll probably go hog-wild then, then turn around and use the VIP points to continue buying up ITTs.

Does anyone know what the projected release date for the 2015 winter wave is? I'm hoping it's not like last year, where U.S. customers had to wait until March...

TLG posted a new on Youtube that may give us some insight on the Inquisitor's armor and helmetless face:

I believe Barriss Offee and Luminara Unduli actually have a pale greenish skin, not tan. At least the most recent non-CW Barriss seems to be a pale yellow-green.

My wallet is screaming and crying about now. That battle droid carrier, though... I was not expecting that at all! Overall, as a dedicated member of the 501st Legion, it's good to see a lot of Imperial sets, and even the Rebels stormtroopers are starting to grow on me a bit. The chibi AT-AT and Spider Droid are adorable as well. One thing I'm not sure about is the Shadow Troopers. A definite buy, to be sure, but the troopers in it seem to be a darker shade than standard dark gray. Is this a new color?

I believe Filoni has stated in interviews that he enjoys creating new trooper types, partly due to his enthusiasm for the 501st and like organizations, so I'd place good money on seeing some stormtrooper variants in Rebels. It's not as ridiculous as it seems; there's a Military Occupational Specialty for pretty much everything in the U.S. military, and I wouldn't expect it to be different in the galaxy far, far away.

He is, alongside a stormtrooper and two AT-DP pilots. The prelim figure is pretty clearly intended to be him, and his name can be made out on the box as well.

I think it's too soon to tell if the ITT will be Rebels (although it almost certainly will be) or OT; some of the boxes have what appear to be finished minifigure designs up top, but the ITT has a placeholder stormtrooper using the old trooper helmet and the Episode III clone toros. In any event this wave'll be fantastic (and expensive!) to build my Imperial forces. The minifigs are as follows: ARC-170- EIII clone pilot with open helmet Vulture droid: Droid pilot Snowspeeder: Rebel pilot, seems to be named AT-AT: Seems to be the same AT-AT pilot we saw this year Gunship: Phase I clone pilot; looks the same as in 75021 but with leg printing Spider droid: Geonosis battle droid ITT: Four (probably Rebels) stormtroopers Shadow troopers: 2x shadow troopers, 2x shadow guards. This one is confusing because the troopers seemingly have helmets already designed but placeholder torsos. AAT: Binks, battle droid, droid pilot Skyhopper: Skyhopper pilot and new Tusken with brick-built gadderfi (spelling?) TIE Advanced: The Inquisitor, Imperial Officer, TIE fighter pilot AT-DP: specialized stormtrooper of some sort (has long name), Agent Kallus, 2x AT-DP drivers Hailfire Droid: 2x SBD's and a Clone Trooper Lieutenant Anakin's fighter: Asajj Ventress, astromech, Anakin. Senate Commando BP: Seems to be four Senate Commandos or 2 of one type and 2 of another. All placeholder parts. Geonosis Troopers BP: Apparently 2 Geonosis scouts and 2 troopers; they seem to be palette-swapped versions of the Kashyyyk troopers and are probably placeholders. Ezra's Speeder: Stormtrooper, Ezra, Sabine Wren (hopefully with helmet but no indication)

Perhaps the figure in red is Sabine? I assume the one on the speeder bike is Ezra, but Sabine is brightly-colored with a short but not buzz-cut hairstyle, which would make her a good fit for the preliminary representation.

I'm afraid to disappoint, but I do indeed do my renders in Blender- the minifig model is my own design and one that I re-use for pretty much every project. However, I do the actual design of Lego objects in either MLCad or LDD, depending on the situation. The background also isn't a smooth gradient; it's a simple studio-style backdrop, and most of my images use 2-5 light-emitting planes for lighting with a bit of environment lighting.

In my experience the minimum thickness is 0.25pt with 0.5pt lines being preferred for strong details.

I deliberately moved the harbormaster's face down a tad to give him a squashed, bulldog-like look. I patterned him off a mix between Otto von Bismarck and Winston Churchill.

Good ideas, all! I will upload a revised set of designs later today; hopefully they'll be less detailed and more cartoon-like. EDIT: And here they are! Haven Guards 3 by HJ Media Studios, on Flickr

If it is real, it's extremely sub-par- probably produced by an outsourced studio and not TLG themselves or their usual contractors. The rendering, lighting, etc. is fine; it's just that the proportions of the legs are off and certain edges are rounded off far more than they should be. The stormtrooper helmets look like they were modeled with no regard to how actual Lego trooper helmets look- honestly, they look crude, not even just a different interpretation. EDIT: I hope the imperial troop transport is Episode IV-VI. If it is, I will likely buy at least a dozen, at least if hulk_smash is correct that it has four plain troopers.

Here's the updated version with Harbormaster; I was considering giving him a cape but decided against it at the last minute.

Apparently there's some sort of ad floating around featuring a Lego Inquisitor design, according to Jedi News. My feeling is that this is certainly a fake; the quality of the minifig models, and especially the stormtrooper helmets, is far below what we've come to expect from Lego CGI animations, and the Inquisitor seems to be wearing shoulder pads that aren't attached in any way. Still, it does provide a look at what an official design might look like.

Almost everything I do is done in real bricks first; I find it's just easier to figure things out that way. That being said, sometimes it is easier to build digitally- I wish real life had a copy/paste function! (And an "undo" would be more helpful still!)

My guess would be the AT-DP pilots that also seem to act as speeder pilots in the trailer.

Here's my entry, the Ice Planet Exo-Suit. There are more views of this and its military offshoot, including desktop-size images, multiple views, and a cutaway showing the Exo-Suit set's frame inside the mech in this Flickr album.

And here's the actual entry for the Exo-suit contest- an Ice Planet 2002 version. Main Image Detail view