Tom_Brick

As I said, I really liked the Ice Planet theme, but the set designs weren't great. The Deep Freeze Defender might just be the ugliest ship of them all. I guess as a kid, I really would have wanted to have this one. Which is why I made it now as an adult.

Yup, as I said above, the SP1 ships were my alltime favourites. Both Mission Commander and the SP-Striker. The fact that I'm not a fan of the double cockpits is the main reason I never liked the Deep Freeze Defender. I mean it is the defining feature of the set. The great Ice Planet theme cannot nullify that. But even if one were to reduce it to one cockpit, the overall shape of the thing is also not very good either, with the two sets of small wings and the bulky, rectangular back. I still don't see anything exceedingly ugly with that ship. The strange tail-end is a bit weird, but that's it. The colour scheme is fine. I guess if you're not a fan of the forward facing wings, you won't like it, but I kinda like the idea. In fact, back then, I took apart my Galactic Mediator and built a ship with a similar wing design out of its parts, only it was a bit bigger. Though I see your point regarding the bulky sides of the thing. I never owned it, but I could imagine that the angle of the photo here is its best looking side. If I rotate it in my mind and look at it from the front, I suppose it won't look nice. Still not the worst in my book though.

Really? I don't mind the Star Hawk II that much. There were worse. Personally, I have never been a fan of the Deep Freeze Defender for example. I loved the Ice Planet theme, but that ship was always ugly to me. But I guess it would have been a great set to build my own creations from. In hindsight, I also quite like the UFO sets. They came out after my younger self had moved on from Legos, so I never even noticed these sets until many years later, but they were solid IMHO. As for Unitron, again this was after my "active years", but I guess I would have liked it. Looks like it was a bit of a failed attempt at reviving Futuron, but it had a monorail, so there's that.

Oh yeah, I remember that robot. Definitely a cool set. But the other sets aren't that special and the overall colour scheme isn't that great. It feels like a worse version of M-Tron. Still good of course, but given that M-Tron is such a beloved theme, it's just an extremely high bar to compare against.

Cheers. They certainly brought back memories when I reassembled them. Same here. As I said, I really loved the Ice Planet concept when it came out, but the sets themselves were average at best, except for the Ice Station Odyssey I guess.

It's in large parts down to nostalgia. What did you play with as a kid. Of course I selected multiple themes, but my favourite has to be Space Police I. It had the coolest ships. I had both the Mission Commander and the SP-Striker and both of them were some of the best ships they ever designed. I also had lots of Classic Space stuff. My parents bought them used and those were my very first Legos. So I also really appreciated those. Whereas Space Police had the coolest ships, M-Tron had the coolest land vehicle in the Mega Core Magnetizer. But the Particle Ioniser was also nice. I didn't like the Stellar Recon Voyager though. While it had some cool play features, it just looked ugly as sin. So that was one of the models I quickly took apart to build my own stuff. Unfortunately, I never had any Blacktron I. Looking at it in hindsight, those were some awesome sets. I also liked Blacktron II though. Ice Planet was a really cool concept, I liked the idea and the colour scheme, but none of the models were really inspiring. I didn't like Space Police II very much. While the sets were all right (not nearly as good as Space Police I though), the colour scheme was ugly. During Covid, I unpacked all of my old Legos, disassembled them, put the bricks into the washing machine and then reassembled them.

Really nice. Has a beautiful late 1960s retro Sci-Fi vibe.

Thanks @SpacePolice89 and @danth , If I find the time, I will certainly try to pick up the B-Wing project again.

I will start working on instructions soon. Thank you. But I don't think that I will be working on that one. For one, it would be a bit big and secondly, I don't really see the angle for transforming it into a classic space themed ship. One thing that I might continue to work on: In the past, I started working on a Space Police I themed B-Wing. I eventually stopped after it got a little out of hand. but maybe I'll return to it

Update I have now slightly updated the model and also created instructions, which can be found on my Rebrickable page here: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-195798/thomin/galaxy-starfighter-g-1

I'm glad you like it. It would be awesome if you brought this to life. I wouldn't have expected anyone to even contemplate building this.

I've put the Stud.io file on my Dropbox. Whoever is keen on playing around with it is welcome to download it. I will keep it up there for a while, but I won't guarantee that it will be available indefinitely. A couple of comments: There is no support structure to speak of underneath the sand dunes. So if anyone is interested in actually building this, that would be the first thing to tackle. Obviously the rear end of the worm needs a bit of refinement. The rings may be a bit "soft". You'd need to build one in real life to test how well it holds up. I think it should be fine, but I wouldn't vouch for it. Though adding some more supports inside should be possible. But then you also wouldn't want them to become too heavy, so that the mouth of the worm can still be lifted slightly up from the dune. If it turns out to be too heavy, I guess one could also take out a ring or two from the front section of the Worm, though the ball joints I've used typically are quite strong and the scales should also offer some resistance if push comes to shove. Anyway, here's the download-link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uopkr5le3vfnt2begl7a6/Worm.io?rlkey=md086gr3lydaupy8jnvqumbal&dl=0

That was a nice idea, thanks. I've continued with the design and closed it all around. I'm still not happy with the tail of the worm where he comes out of the sand, that section would need some refinement. But I think I'll end it here. I'm never going to build this and I doubt anyone else would want to do so either.

I wanted to continue with my current Dune obsession but there really isn't all that much inside the Dune universe which lends itself to be transformed into Lego. But I figured that a sandworm + rider would be a nice challenge. I have gone into Stud.io and tried to come up with something. While I do like the current look, I'm not sure if I continue down that path. The damn thing is just too big. It sits on three 32x32 base plates. We're already at more than 3600 pieces and the rear end is still missing, plus I only have a rudimentary support structure for the sand dunes. So I expect a final design to end up quite a bit north of 4000 pieces which is just unreasonable. Still, it was fun so far, so I might at least finish the design in Stud.io. But I doubt that I'll take it any further than that.

If you have followed my WIP Post, you will already have the gist of it. I have finally managed to iron out any issues with my Stud.io design and create the instructions. Basically, I have tried to do the following things: Design a completely new tail section. Replace any offensive colours. Design new panels with less studs. Make the overall shape more like the movie Thopter. You can judge for yourself if I succeeded. Instructions and Part List are available here: https://reb.li/m/179131 Here are some more renderings: And some pictures of my prototype (there are some minor differences compared to the final design):

And some more pictures of it with he landing gear out. Though even if I were to build this one, I will have to work some more on the model. When playing around with the folding mechanism, I found out that I built in some obstacles which I didn't realize before. I will definitely have to work some more on it, but in the end, the details will have to be figured out with a physical model. Moving Technic Parts are notoriously difficult to do in Studio (at least for me). There is one narrow path which in Studio looks like it is just a little bit too narrow to work, but in real life, there is always a little bit of wiggle room, so it may work without a lot of changes after all. Or it might not...either way, I think it's possible to do a redesign without changing too much on the outside...

Some more renderings. This time in the air. I still think it looks a bit stubby, but as of now, I have no idea how to make the tail a bit thinner while keeping a somewhat rounded profile. Maybe I'll just extend the tail for a few studs.

OK, next try. I only changed the tail a bit. It's still short and stubby.

All right, here's the next attempt: Both light and shadow, I think. First of all, I do prefere the general shape. It's now more aggressive and muscular looking. However, it now lacks some of the sleekness it previously had and looks more stubby. The difficulty is in getting the teardrop shape in Lego form. I think I will work on the tail some more. Make it a bit longer and try to make it thinner towards the end. Will be difficult to maintain the overall shape however. I have the beginning of an idea, but I don't know if it'll work out.

Thanks. The part you mentioned wouldn't work for me. It has too much depth and is too angular for my taste. From the beginning, I did however think about 98102. It was also too bulky for me, which is why I went with a round dish. But since I basically started from scratch again, I did play around with it a little bit and it kinda works if you use it at an angle and build the cockpit around it. The good thing is that these parts are now also available in trans-yellow. It's not perfect, because it leads to a lot of large gaps, but that's something that potentially could work out better in real life than in Studio. Working with these ball-joint-rings which I used to shape the cockpit is a nightmare in Studio. In real life, that would be much easier and I could see how the segments could potentially be realigned in order to minimize the gaps. Also, it means that you can't open the cockpit to the sides anymore. But I think I will, continue along those lines for now, with a few tweaks of course.

Hmmm...actually, I have looked at the movie thopter from a few different angles again, and I think I still need to rework the design. The original thopter looks a lot more muscular. I've gone a bit overboard with the slimming down, particulalry the concave shaping of the underside isn't right. Also, it needs to be shorter (roughly 9 studs). I will keep the innards as they are. They're nice and small, allowing me to try all kinds of shapes (except, I'll try to move the lever for the folding mechanism further downwards). But I might completely rethink everything else. It would also be nice to have a more aggressive looking cockpit, but that will be difficult. Let's see which ideas come to mind...

More pictures incoming. I have now added the landing gear. As I previously stated, there is no fancy mechanism. The landing gears are attached via ball joints and need to be put into place manually. The angle of the legs are probably not ideal in terms of the forces working upon them, but ball joints typically do have a lot of friction and there are four of them holding the ship, so I assume that it wouldn't be a problem and that the legs wouldn't give way under the weight of the thopter. Next step would be to try and build the damned thing and see how well it holds up. Only problem is that I have absolutely no space left and my wife would kill me. So I will first have to get rid of some of my other Lego MOCs.

Thank you. In the meantime, I have removed the flapping mechanism which did indeed save me a lot of interior space. This is how it looks like now: If you compare it to the movie thopter, the cockpit is still too bulgy, but there is no other way if you want to fit two minifigs side by side into it. But in general, the torso does get slimmer a lot more and a lot earlier than before. Shaping the whole body was not particularly easy, I had to do this "stepped" approach. Next, I will try to improve the stability by optimizing the inside construction. As of now, it probably wouldn't be very solid. But even with improved stability, it will likely never be a particularly sturdy model. Especially the tail will alway be precarious.

I have been doing some more work on this one, and here is where 'm currently at. I have left one side open: Unfortunately, I have to say that I'm not happy at all with the overall shape. It's way too bulky. Also, the tail is probably not particularly sturdy and would come off when holding it there. I think I'll give it one more try. I will remove the flapping mechanism. That should make it possible to make the innards much narrower. I could probably save two studs in width and I could start the upwards slope much earlier. I probably won't be able to shrink the folding mechanism length-wise, but maybe I can make it narrower by one stud, allowing me to integrate it into the tail construction. Let's see. But I might just abandon the whole thing if it turns out to be unsatisfactory.

I'm finally done with my upgrade. Unfortunately, there are still some blue and red bits that are sticking out. I messed up the part where the tail starts. I would have had the black pieces, but for some unknown reason didn't use them. Now I would have to completely take the whole thing apart again which I just don't feel like doing. Similarly, on the insede, there are still a few tan-coloured bits shining through from certain angles, but that's not as bad. You can barely see it and again, it would require me to basically take it completely apart and start from scratch. Anyway, in general, it looks so much better without all those red and blue and yellow bits sticking out. The ornithopter is now a couple of studs longer, which is closer to the proportions of the movie thopter, but now the wings look a bit short. You win some, you lose some, I guess. When you hold by the front section of the tail, it's perfectly swooshable. The further back you go with your hand, the more precarious it gets though. But in order to push the flapping-button, you'll have to have your hand up there anyway, because there isn't the long bar to press anymore.