Exile Phoenix

So in Kaelthas' review of the porg set I thought a color swap with some of these colors to make it look like a cooked porg would be good, but seeing this it turns out it is actually terrifying. I think part of the creepy factor for me is that in the first picture because it still has the orange hair at the top it kinda looks more like it has a slit throat with dried blood down the front as opposed to being cooked.

What I mean for the first point is in the middle of the engine swap the 1x2 with studs on side for one of these with a plate on top of it (you would need to swap the 2x2 behind it too)

The colors for your model line up really well with Black One, and I really like the way the wings line up properly. Couple of things that stood out to me when looking at the new model The change to the engines and wings to increase stability also added a gap between the two halves when the wings are closed, you could swap the 1x2 with 2 studs for a 2x2x2/3 with 2 studs on both top and bottom to close the gap which also will bring the top of the curve in line with the body of the engine housing The front tips down which makes the side profile look odd, you might want to try looking at other pieces in place of the bottom boat part, you could probably use the clip connection you have to turn the nose up slightly and then a piece like the 4x4 bow instead of the 4x6 one (you might have to stretch the nose about a little to do that) Also from the side, your bottom is mostly flat, however the T-70 tapers on both the top and bottom, maybe see if you can work an extra plate in to taper towards the rear fuselage If you could drop the canopy a plate you could get rid of the lip at the front of the canopy and have a cleaner taper from the side profile The back of the lasers where you are using the wheels, on the t-70 it gets smaller after the main laser housing, on here it gets larger, maybe flip the peg it is on and use a 1x1 round tile I don't recall there being a light of any kind in the middle back of the fuselage where you have the blue one. If you're using any parts that don't exist in the color (I didn't actually check) you could swap the hinge connecting the big tapered piece on the side of the nose to orange (only really helps for rendering so the orange line continues a bit cleaner, when you're actually going to build I don't think that part exists) I'm not really a huge fan of the engine detailing from the front, but I also don't have a good solution for it. You could try using a 1x1 with shaft in the corners and then one of the stick/tubes with holder in black attached to it so it has a little bit of a fake radial pattern to it.

Other than a cooked porg-recoloring of it, the techniques used here would make for a pretty good base for a penguin since the shape of a porg isn't that different. Did any of the pieces strike as new to the color they were in, or are all the pieces (minus the sticker) from existing sets?

If I end up completing any of my half baked ideas for this (and the pieces are actually in the palette) I feel like I would share it, primarily as a means to draw feedback so I could improve it before the window closes, or before trying to actually build it with bricks. Sadly it seems like brick.io still has no support for the flexible elements (or I'm just missing it in the 2.0 beta), even with LDD->IO which hampers a couple of the things I had started for this.

Definitely a lot easier than swapping pieces to studded pieces to try and line up in the right spot. If you want more length you can also use an axle with a 2x2 circle (or really anything with a hole on it) however that clip template looks useful. Is there a reason you're using a different clip for the Z axis, or does the clip used not matter? My issue when doing this has always been that I will do something that gets the piece off the rail in LDD and then getting it back on, kinda like shown in the video when you went off the edge.

That connection kinda looks like you could remove some of the front bricks and add some back bricks and just pivot the head entirely (would need to shorten the bottom mouth probably). I'm not concerned with mini-figures so the lack of them for the price isn't a concern to me. Looking at the pieces again, I bet you could do a color swap with black/dark red/browns so it looks like a cooked porg.

Your pictures in the grass make it look good, however I think the other pictures confirm my fear from the box-art, the head looks like it is angled up, which unless I'm displaying it on a low shelf feels like it is going to look awkward. Does the head just attach with a technic pin and rest there (which it kind of looks like)? If so maybe it could be modified without too much work to be looking up a little less with a slightly open mouth. I'm not as familiar with how lego does pricing for the European market, but from what I recall that price seems in-line with the BB-8 and cheaper per piece than smaller licensed content so I don't know why this is considered pricey?

That makes more sense, I had completely forgot that those were in this topic so when I saw the here I assumed it was a link (which I tried clicking a few times before realizing it wasn't one) instead of saying this actual topic. I'm interested to see what ends up being the 20 selected submissions, and if we end up with any duplicate designers

It was what I expected, just a downside (to me) as there is a lot of creativity to come from re-imaging or scaling content (which I tend to enjoy), since things such as architecture or scale models should fall under other people's IP also. I expect we would have gotten something such as Ninjago eventually, as Lego does keep themes going (City for example) even while introducing new ones. They also have come back to a couple with them being re-imagined a little (blacktron and space police for example). Did you intend to link to a topic with planes in it?

My key piece for this relates to this part of the FAQ: Yes, it is currently for the 60th anniversary, however from a business standpoint with it being Lego providing the bricks, it replaces a small portion of the current secondary market for bricks which is people making sets from instructions they purchased with used parts, in addition to using their existing molds more, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was implemented as an annual-type thing. The only really big downside is that by removing existing and previous Lego themes, it rules out all of the remakes/stylized continuations of old themes like Blacktron, while also removing licensed IP like star wars, which means I expect to see a lot of buildings and scenes.

If you don't want to adjust the height at all (if you drop the gap by one plate you would have a tight fit on the top and bottom of the sponson and you could build the entire front side portion out as a solid piece as the gap is 4 studs wide then) you could connect it using part 99206 (2x2x2/3 with studs on side) underneath the 2x4 tile at the front.

It is still a really nice and good looking model (and with Lego restrictions on the parts you have make for some impressive building techniques). Apart from having a little more room (which is always a nice option) was there something specific that was made more difficult with the space in the rear? I know the mechanism for the wing you called out as troublesome. Structurally how difficult would it be to extend it by a stud, alternatively could the wings move forward a stud (not sure if that would mess too much with the front dimensions though)?

Are all of the laser shaft options partially flex tubing, or does one of the variants use a solid bar for the length of it? Looking at the reference shot you used, I think that it is more the end of the body, not the engines that feels off to me. In the reference image it look like you could roughly split the engine tube at the back (I think they are actually the engines with the large cylinders being power generators but I don't actually remember) in half that would be where the end of the body is, and if you cut the upper portion in half again you would get where the wings end. All of this could be based on the perspective in the photos though, since all of them are slightly different perspectives.

If you're talking about the gaps between the walls and the sponson being too large, you could use the 1x1 with stud on the side to build out into the gap, and use some 1x2 cheese slopes to close it similar to this:

That model does have some pretty lines to it that are not easy to try and match in Lego. It is hard to tell from the photos, but were you able to get it so the torpedo tubes don't intersect the front fuselage for their firing path (the DBG makes it look fine if they do, just curious)? Is it possible to use something like the 3m axle with stud on it in the engine assembly instead of whatever length the yellow axle is so that you can use a 1x1 trans red/pink for the engine glow instead of having a visible cross beam? Looking at how I assume it is assembled it seems like it would be just short, but using an umbrella stand rod/light saber rod or something similar and then a 1x1 round with hole to connect the 1x1 trans piece feels like it would work. The engine feels like it sticks out a bit too far relative to the end of the main body, however that could be a variance based on which of the shots were used as reference (I think there is a good side view in the middle of the death star run with Luke's x-wing) There also is a block box behind R2 in the close-up shots of the x-wing that doesn't seem to be there (and possibly wasn't on the smaller models they had for flying shots) but seems like there is space for it, unless the greebiling on the top is based on another reference (or the two clips are it, but they seem to shallow to me). What piece did you use for the main rod of the lasers? The last picture you have looks like flexible tube/hose, however the pictures on bricklink look more like a standard solid rod of some sort (although too long

I think part of what makes the nose feel bulbous is that you have the curved slope along the side under the cockpit coming up while you have the bottom section start high with the downward curve, instead of it being a continuous body. It kinda makes it feel like the nose should be one stud shorter (probably from the bottom) to have it tapering more. The fact that it also seems long (usually it seems like the wings are starting just a little behind the canopy) might also make the nose look further out of place to people comparing it to a classic X-wing. I really like the cockpit back though for that clean/slim look,

Do you have any other photos of the bottom other than the one that was part of it on Ideas? Based on the one on ideas it looks like a cradle should work, even with the compounding angles.

Looking at the underside of the ship in LDD, you should be able to use a 1x1 plate, 1x2 slope, and 2x4 plate all in clear right in front of the 1x3 double slopes on the bottom to shift the stand one stud to provide better support for the center of gravity shift, a second identical support could go behind the 1x3 double slope to additionally anchor there (which only really helps if the center of gravity is currently at those 1x3 double slopes). For the additional TIEs, you could also look at trying to position a single TIE about to knock Vader for right after the Falcon arrives. Adds a little more dynamic and also potentially gives you more freedom on width

This doesn't give you the best view of the bottom of the trench, however in the first image you get a nice view of some wall elements, in particular the repeated (with slightly different greebiling) column elements that I think would make for a good portion of the wall, although you might want to cut the depth on it to not limit your space too much. The 7th image here gives you more of the bottom from the original model they used. I think one thing that stands out on the model is that the ground appears to be a 3x grid, whereas the walls appear to instead be vertical sections If you choose to keep the 1 stud gap to show a grid pattern I would recommend placing a few 1x technic beams, or maybe just an off color 1x1 tile (so you don't need to add more height) to give the appearance of connections between the grid to break it up a little bit without disrupting the pattern. You also might want to skew the X-wing so that it is at an angle instead of flat to get some more space out of it and provide a more dynamic visual, something with the 1x2 plate w/hole (see attached) should be sturdy enough to mount to the underside without modifications to the model.

I was always more interested in the playability and features of the build than the mini-fig that came with sets, however I'm a huge fan of the small brick built characters like in this ad from this set. More than anything though these ads make me want to seek out and build (or re-design) Blacktron, as that mini-fig torso was always the torso I used for the mini-fig piloting my stuff as a kid.

Some additional ideas on increasing the stability while keeping your clean color splits use a hinge plate with one white, one dark red side with the exposed hinge on the interior instead of a 1x2 brick use a 2x2 corner brick and connect it to the interior tread wall as the connection will be hidden from observation Alternatively, in the reference image the stripes don't actually span the entire edge, so you could look at doing a tan border with pieces that span the gap.