simplethinker
-
Posts
26 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Everything posted by simplethinker
-
Sorry for the late reply. I already have instructions for the Ghost and the Millennium Falcon up on Rebrickable. Thank you very much!
-
Yep, I can see how that would drive you insane.
-
On the engines, fair enough. Funny, I didn't notice the inconsistency. But then again I depended on pictures of Erik Varszegi's venator for the most part. Most other pictures were for the profile and large proportions. I suppose the only way to get cannon consistency is to watch a couple of Clone Wars episodes :D No problem for the fin, my pleasure. I know folks like you care a great deal about getting things right if you can, so even a wrong suggestion is useful because it can make you take a second look at your own work and double check things. At least that's the way it is for me.
-
'preciate it!
-
Bee-Utiful. Couple of questions, doesn’t the shorter of the small engines kinda go underneath the longer small engines? And doesn’t the fin under the “tail” stretch a little more toward the end?
-
Oooooo!! I like the rollerskate idea. I’ll tinker around and try that as well as see if there are some other novel pieces that I could find to work in there. I’ll also see if perhaps instead of having a one wide plate inside the wedge pieces, perhaps I can get it outside. I’d use one of those pieces that is a 1x1 round plate with a bar on it and a 1x1 round plate with a hole in it.
-
@K_W, @krisandkris12 This is what I love about building small. It presents a unique problem solving scenario where you can’t have everything. You have to break down what you’re doing to its most basic form, kinda like pixelating it in your mind, where only the things that make it recognizable are left. @krisandkris12, I totally agree about some design elements being important enough to forgo size considerations. Trade offs, trade offs. For me, it’s good for the brain because it’s like a puzzle to make these decisions. But putting in the community is where it gets interesting. What one person deems important to include may be less important to someone else. Leads to very juicy discussions and a great variety of slightly different, but all respectable interpretations. This thread is a good case in point. As far as capital ships go, I’m almost on the edge of the size where brick-built greebling isn’t feesable at all. Sometimes I have to use elements of parts to approximate it, like the “teeth” at the bottom of wedge plates. In the case of the venator, I put some translucent 1x1s in that gap so the greebling or window effects are just slightly recessed. @krisandkris12, Yeah, it was you. I didn’t realize it because your handle is different on flickr, but on second look I recognize the symbol. I thought you meant the whole thing. I definitely can see how the mandibles can seem a bit thin. It came down to what I thought represented the greebles while also keeping the proportions as close as I could to the reference material I had. I figured the gap plus the “teeth” on the bottom of the wedge plates would break up the edge enough to do that. Abstracting something in lego is not a science. Anywho, as I think about it, perhaps I could get away with putting a few 1x1 plates with horizontal clips in that gap like I did behind the air locks. What do you think?
-
Again, absolutely fantastic. I’m glad we aren’t competing to crank out mocs, I’d be creamed!
-
The dang topic won’t accept the pictures of my junker U-wing for some reason so here they are:https://www.flickr.com/photos/simplethinker/28397242477/in/dateposted/
-
@K_W WHY IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION!!?? DO IT!!! ?
-
No, the canopy is from the official lego midi falcon. I put the item number from bricklink for that piece with the stickers already applied in the description. I also did so for some of the 2x2 round tiles that also have stickers. Please read the description and replace the pieces in the parts list according to instructions. Also, thanks for the flickr plug
-
@sed6, they are now
-
I must say, you've got doing fighters in micro down pat. I not only impressed by the level of quality for the size in proportions and in functionality, but also the consistency you show in your building style. I also notice very effective use of some of the more recent small pieces like those sloped corner bits. I've seen decent mini torrents before, but those new pieces change the game and you use them very well.
-
Good suggestion, gotcha covered with some renders from Stud.io
-
@ChiefPie, thanks! My thoughts exactly, which is why I took matters into my own hands. Funny, I’ve had some say the falcon is too thin, so thanks for the compliment. proportions are very important for this collection’s purpose.
-
Thanks, you bet, @WTFett Be sure to let me know how it turns out with the instructions, it was a pain in the behind to get them generated and uploaded
-
I have instructions for the falcon on rebrickable, others are forthcoming
-
These models made their first public debut at Brickslopes 2018 this last June where the Falcon won the administrator’s-pick prize the Cody’s Choice award.
-
Thanks!
-
Back when the original Lego midi-scale sets came out, I fell in love with the idea of having models the size where they were small enough to display, but large enough to have detail and be cool. So, I set out first with my all time favorite capital ship in Star Wars, the Venator Cruiser. I roughed out the main idea, and kept tinkering with it ever since. That was 6 or 7 years ago. I was a beginner, so needless to say that it took four years of tinkering, remodeling, overhauling, and learning that got it to where I was satisfied. My thoughts about midi-scale, or desk-scale as I call it, were to focus on capital ships, since it seemed cool to have the largest ships in star wars on my desk. I also had the benefit of there not being very many people that had done capital ships at this scale. As a result, I built my next favorite capital ship, the executor. If you see the other photos, it was a good attempt, but it wasn't the greatest. Luckily, I found @skayenhere on Eurobricks who showed how to make the dimensions correct, though his is much, much larger. One good overhaul and viola!, the current model. (compliments of @skayen) It was around this time that I discovered Bricklink, which expedited the process. A lot. I decided to give it a go with smaller craft, starting first with a ship I came to love, the Ghost from Star Wars: Rebels. This time, design to completion only took a month (working on it off and on). It was also on this one that I tried my hand at custom sticker work as you can see on the cockpit and front turret. Then, I saw Rogue One and had to have a U-Wing. That was a pain in the butt as I designed and bought the parts only to realize that the wings were way too heavy to be supported by only a clip. I redesigned them to be lighter, but I still had to give up the functionality of the wings folding outward. I’ve seen others be able to do it, but I didn’t have the techniques to figure it out without an entire overhaul (which I don’t have the motivation or patience to do). It looked good, and that was enough for me. I left the clip in to make it look like it could though :D. Then, I had to hit the Resurgent battle-cruiser that was introduced in The Force Awakens. There wasn’t much source material at the time (pre Last Jedi) and I'm glad it turned out as well as it did. All the while, I'm getting better and better at designing and building, so it went from four years to completion, to two, to finishing two in a year, to now three in a year. They aren’t the most complex builds you’ll ever see, but that’s part of the style of this collection. Now for the Falcon. I hadn't dared do something so iconic since it'd been moc-ized at every conceivable scale innumerable times. But, I studied and saw one niche scale where it hadn't been given justice in my eyes, and I went for it. Another driving factor is the Ultimate Collector's Series Millennium Falcon that had been released that same fall to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Episode 4. I wasn't going to pay $800 dollars for a set, as cool as it is, and I didn't have anywhere to put it even if I did. Time to crank out the desk-scale experience. Two months later and there it was, my greatest thus far. It weighs two pounds. I managed to finish it before 2017 ended, making it my 40th anniversary celebration piece. Be sure to hit my flickr to see a couple of timelapses of me building this sucker! The latest I’ve done was inspired by @Inthert when he modified his excellent U-Wing into the junker version that appears in Star Wars: Rebels. I thought, “why not? I can so the same thing!” and voila! I’ve since shortened the wings a bit from these pictures so they are more accurate. Here's some pictures of most of the fleet on a wall: Their public debut and my first Lego Con, Brickslopes June 2018: I hope you enjoy. - Jordan Fridal aka simplethinker Every model has one element, idea or technique that I borrowed from someone else. So thanks to Erik Varszegi, V1lain, Tim Goddard, @Inthert, @sparkart, Palleon, @DarthTwoShedsJackson, @skayen, @Brickdoctor, and the LEGO Group! I’ll leave it as a challenge to all of you to look through the photos and figure out which elements came from where.
-
@krisandkris12, thanks for the heads up. I’m not very familiar with this format.
-
I’m just kidding around. I respect yours as well so I’ve gotta tease ya little bit. No worries, this conversation has made me look twice at it too ?. What I love about recreating things at this scale is the unique problem solving you have to employ. You have to make trade off decisions about what detail, feature or proportion is most important at the expense of others. Different people make those decisions differently, which gives us the entertaining variety in models that are still this relative size.
-
What do you mean “respectable”? ?...?
-
Yeah, I had the same thoughts. Before it was just blank like it was from a different t fleet or something, but the logo breaks things up a bit. Thank you! The ghost and falcon are my best. The custom sticker work on the ghost was a pain though. cut the little pieces myself with a razor blade. The venator holds a special place in my heart because it was the first.
-
Yeah, i tried the hinges and I couldn’t get it to work. But then again I haven’t worked on the body of the thing for a couple of years. Yeah, the open circle fleet is stickers. I knew the 2 x 2 tile existed with that sticker in some set or other, so I brick linked it. I think I may try using those corner tiles along the side of my towers and see how it looks.
