BrickCommander

Meanwhile, New York City: a BEST TOY OF THE YEAR 2016 award goes to The LEGO Group for Star Wars: The Force Awakens Millennium Falcon (best boy toy)! Neat!

Holy crow! This reminds me of ... umm. Sorry, I'm drawing a blank here. Anyone? ;)

No way! A LEGO Star Wars set that is out of scale ..?! This is an outrage!

There! Straight from the DK visual dictionary. Let's get rumors of a "UCS Rey's Snow Speeder" started already. You know it will be coming :p Now shut up and go and buy the damn things! ;)

Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler! You've got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled. (Lando Calrissian in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)

Isn't this a little short for a Star Destroyer ..?

Can't tell, won't tell :p But generally speaking, with all the new movies coming out, the Classic Trilogy still being strong and the Rebels tv-show going into its 3rd season, anything prequel-related will have to get in line behind them all. Not quite stellar odds, considering. But as Han Solo himself said: "never tell me the odds!" ;)

Haha, it doesn't work like that. Sure, we designers can have parts ordered in new colors, but they have to be for a new product, not just for fun. As it happens, one of the painted element will come out in exactly this color in a new set of mine later next year! ;) The summer I was referring to was 2013, with the model being finished sometime in autumn. Then the launch got delayed until Jan 2015.

I had to paint a few elements in dark blue, most notably the large quarter-round elements at the front of the ship. The 4x4 roof corner is also not available in yellow.

These 2 copies from the final model review were put together over 2 years ago and kept in the Star Wars area at LEGO in exactly this position on their display stands. Instead of throwing them away I turned one into Jango's and kept both. They are not glued or anything and exactly as they have been all the time, nobody has touched them. Today I took them on their first journey to the photo room: As you can see the "gap" isn't one bit wider than on the day they were built. So I'd say you shouldn't worry about your own Slave One, even if you keep it on display in flying mode all the time.

Modifying sets and posting pictures is perfectly fine of course, be it cosmetic improvements or more technical upgrades like a landing gear for the 75105 Falcon*. In fact I like checking out what fans come up with. Been there myself once :) It just becomes a problem when certain individuals, a lit torch in one hand and murder in their eyes, get on a crusade because the final set wasn't designed the way THEY think it should have been. On a LEGO set there is always a reason why things are how they are, and those reasons are not always obvious. *the modded landing gear on that 75105 has no stopper in down position, the liftarms are pushing against the plates on which the rest of the ship is built on - an absolute NO GO in a set. It would also be considered tedious and not fun for kids having to operate all 4 landing legs manually. Just in case you were wondering why the Falcon has fixed landing legs in the set

Anio, if you want to lock vertically down the whole inside of the cockpit, an 11 unit long technic beam would be off by only 1 plate. That's actually not that bad - raising the 1x6 technic brick the seat is attached to by one plate would make it fit. Unfortunately doing this would almost certainly get you a "NO GO" (as in "no fricking way!!!") from the building instruction collegues who know they simply cannot show the placement of locking beams going down as far as these INSIDE the model in the instructions the way they want, even if there weren't other beams in the way already at that point.

I am afraid it does a bit more than that. Even if that connection were "legal" (meaning 100% in LEGO-building system, which given the angles involved would be a HUGE coincidence) what it would do is greatly increase the risk of the final product breaking under stress! The brick you are attaching to is sitting unlocked in a brick-build section of the model. This means it is only surrounded by other bricks and not attached to anything secure in a vertical way (with plates or technic beams). Only the pilot seat is supposed to connect to that brick. But if you would connect that loooooooooong "handle" of the slave One to that element we are suddenly talking about a whole different amount of force applied than just the small turning function of the seat. Rough handling would quickly tear the bricks in the cockpit area apart and break the model. Our engineers would have spotted this immediately. It took me as a designer a little bit longer, and you as fan builders didn't see it at all. Which is ok since you most likely handle your sets with care and don't have to worry about product quality. But it also demonstrates why our development system make sense: professional designers designing, professional engineers checking the designers' work, and fans ... giving us all your money! :) To sum it up: this modification would NOT be OK for a LEGO product, but is ok to do on your own 75060 - on your own risk!

The wording may be a bit sloppy, I give you that, but like I explained earlier this is just ME talking, not an official speaker for LEGO or a marketeer. Sloppy maybe, but nevertheless a reality in product design. As you may know, one LEGO motto is "only the best is good enough" - which is quite often misunderstood. It does NOT mean sparing absolutely no expenses making product that, in the end, will even lose you money. That is the way into bancruptcy. It rather means making the best product possible under the circumstances, while always striving to do even better. 75060 was the best we could do at that time, I can say that without reservation.

This is a very good question, Schneeds! To avoid any such confusion I do not use any official LEGO logos or job titles and put a required disclaimer into my profile, identifying myself as just ... myself. That is pretty much what you have to do if you want to communicate with fans on a public forum. Which not many LEGO designers choose to do, it appears. I wonder why this is..? ;) Of course as a designer working on very a confidential product line there are many, many (oh, SO many!) things I will not tell you. But I am always happy to talk about released product (especially my own) and the design process. I do so in a sometimes casual way, trying to avoid talking like a marketing person - which can sometimes come across as a bit testy. I'll try to do better. But in the end, dealing with fans can be a demanding task. There is a reason the word fan comes from "fanatic", after all.

My thoughts exactly ...

Meh, I think I don't want to talk about "gaps" in LEGO sets you're so obsessing about anymore, Anio. It's quite a ridiculous topic, when you get down to it. As it happens I am looking at the box of 75105 Millennium Falcon right now. Also my set. Wowser, there are quite some gaps there, big and fat right in the middle of the box front picture. And they are there all the time. And know what? No one cares. No. One. This set is just flying off the shelved like you wouldn't believe. Might even end up being the most popular set of the year. Sure, it's not a UCS, but if you believe "USC" means "seamless" than you misunderstood something. Gaps ... Bah!

Well, Anio wants a perfect model, I can understand that. But almost every LEGO set ever released is not perfect. Developing a set is an exercise in making many ends meet, and there are always some compromises. What seems like an easy enough fix to him might make our engineers shake their heads vigorously, or cause problems in the building sequence, make the build unneccessarily complicated, or create a breaking point somewhere else in the model that might not be so easy to fix. 75060 passed all the tests our professional model breakers could come up with with flying colors (and some of those tests are really, really mean ...). In case of sets based on reference material LEGO models just have to live with the effects of gravity, especially when the effects are so small that even after almost a year there really was only one complaint ... For what it's worth I can promise you that the next UCS won't have this problem ;)

You are quite correct "Samibotss", you will have said this for the last time. Your pants are on fire because you are a liar and a thief. And here's proof of your deeds. I happened to find "your" MOC in my LEGO email account, dating back to January 2013 - that was when Bob Kos sent me this particular modified version of my design: Amazing, huh? Except for some light gray plates on top of the front the models are absolutely identical, down to the last brick. Even the little transparent-light blue plates Bob put into the ship for some reason (they are very dark on your picture) are all there, in exact the same locations. I rest my case. You are a (not very good) liar and a thief. In real life now would be handcuff-time for you. Get out of here.

Why, in the LEGO Star Wars universe, of course! ;) Where, i might add, the Slave One is in good company with the UCS Millennium Falcon having more and even larger gaps. And now be honest, how hard were you pulling on the poor model in the photo? :(

See, the main problem here is that your story ... doesn't make sense, to put it friendly. If that model above is an indication of your skill level, it is highly unlikely (to say the least) that you went right on to designing a model as complex as the Venator. And purely in LDD, at that! Those odds even become astronomical when considering the fact that your model is a 1:1 copy of my older design and the modifications done by Bob Kos from Colorado three years ago (yes, the engines for example), down to details that could have been done in dozen different ways. What are the chances that you would, purely by coincidence and based on the same reference, build a Venator yourself that is identical to a model you can find on the internet? It couldn't be more obvious that your inspiration came from a downloaded file, which you present here as your own creation. And that's really the only problem. See, I gave several people permission to do with my model what they want, including selling kits on ebay. I really don't care, as long as they don't claim ownership of the design. That would not be acceptable. For now I assume you are a younger builder who doesn't know better, but you absolutely must not pass off other people's creation as your own. If you use someone else's work you need to ask for permission first or at least give the person credit for his work (which means you should mention who originally created the model your work is based on). And this is the latest version of my 2005 model (the other built copy is from 2008), inkluding Bob's mods and some other detail changes by myself.

Well, I think this looks eerily familiar. Again. What did you say your model was inspired from? :/ You also added some modifications an american fan did to this older version from 2005, like more detailed engines and a different turbolaser entrenchment. Oh, and you probably don't know this, but this model is in scale with the UCS Imperial Star Destroyer. More ship in the same scale on Brickcommander.com ...

Small gaps in LEGO models spotted by adult consumers are generally not considered a quality problem. If you believe your set has a defect, call consumer service. If enough people call about the same problem, action will be taken. Or at least considered. And I have seen the call sheet for this product for the past 10 months. People didn't even call about the sticker sheet. Scratches in the windscreen are a problem, and of course lots of missing Boba Fetts ... ;) I am not worried about drooping. I have a copy sitting on the display stand untouched for two full years now, and the gap hasn't widened noticeably. Oh, and the obvious question, of course: why didn't I put those extra beams in myself in the first place? Well, I would have to check this out in detail, but my guess would be that the new beams are not attached 100% in-system. They only fit because the whole structure is flexible so the technic holes in question can be made to align. You can do that with your own sets you bought, but as a designer most of the time I cannot do that. It may also complicate the building process, but again I would have to check that. Designing a set isn't nearly as simple as some adult fans believe. Sometimes I wish we would invite some of you to bring your creations you believe are good enough to be sets and have a simulated quality meeting with our engineers. But then again maybe it's better we don't do that. We would have to get mops and buckets for all the fan tears.

Please call consumer service EVERY TIME you encounter a quality issue. They will definitely not blacklist you for reporting damaged elements often. Let them know that you just happen to buy a lot of product for yourself. In fact we just had our yearly feedback session on consumer calls for Star Wars, and there was no mention of bad minifigures at all. A few postings on a fan forum mean nothing, but if 5 people call every day complaining about the same issue - now that would be a different story, something for consumer service to keep track of and, eventually, alert our quality control team. So call please. But don't ask for a chrome Darth Vader every time! ;)