Tom_Brick

All right, the ordered parts have arrived and now I'm in the middle of upgrading my thopter. Unfortunately, Just when I was really close to completion, I realized that I kinda messed up the landing gear when removing the bright colours, so now I will have to completely open it up again, which will be a pain in the butt. I think I forgot to put in a single axle. On the plus side, that will give me the opportunity to remove some more of the coloured pieces which I thought wouldn't be visible in the end, but which still stick out. Regarding the general design, there were a few minor issues. I made some mistakes with the panels on the outside, but nothing which couldn't be fixed. Also, the connection to the flapping mechanism didn't work, but I realized, that it can be done even in a much simpler way. The big question mark was of course the tail: will it hold up? And yes, it does. However, I was also a bit dumb. You can see the large brick on the open tail section. If you grab the tail behind that large brick, the long lever creates a lot of stress on the construction and it flexes quite a bit. I will replace that Brick with overlapping plates. That should help. Still, you probably wouldn't want to hold the tail towards its end, because that would increase the forces working upon the front of the tail quite a bit, particularly upon the six studs which connect the two rows of technic bricks. I did do an initial test holding the whole thopter relatively far back and shake it a bit and the six studs became lose. Now, that was without replacing that large brick and also before adding the outside panels which should also add some stability. I'll also add a stepped bracket which should increase stability. But I guess that even with all that, if you want to swoosh around with the thopter, you'll still have to hold it towards the beginning of the tail section. I will probably do instructions. I'm not sure yet if I'll do just the tail plus the minor changes to the plating of the main section or if I should include a full colour conversion (at least with the pieces that are visible). I'm leaning towards the latter though.

Thank you. The thing is driving me crazy though. I want to make it as sleek as possible. I've managed to shrink the mechanism a bit more, but getting it all secured while maintaining a somewhat rounded appearance is really tough. I had a really nice cascading series of rings which mimicked the overall shape nicely, but there was just no way of making it stable. So I had to scrap it again. I'm slowly getting somewhere, though I don't know yet if it'll all work out. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to make it as sleek as I want it to be while simultaneously keeping all the functionality of the wings. Also, securing the tail will be another major challenge, let alone getting the shape right. There will definitely have to be compromises along the way.

While I'm waiting for the parts to do my mod of the official Dune Ornithopter Set, I decided to play around a bit more and try to do the smaller thopter which Paul and Jessica used in the Dune Part 1 to escape the Sardaukar. This is of course still a very early stage. I started with the cockpit and then tried to design a downsized version of the flapping and folding mechanisms which I've basically taken from the official set. I will not include the the cool landing gear though. For one, it would take up too much space and secondly, the landing gear on this thopter works differently than on the one which was the template for the official Lego set. Maybe I can think of something really smart, but in the end, I'll probably just use ball joints, so that the landing gear will have to be put into place manually. Which means that from here on out, the main challenge will be to shape the exterior. One thing I have to admit to is that I have cheated with the colours. Unfortunately, these trans-yellow pieces don't exist. In the end, I'll have the choice between trans-clear and trans-brown. I think trans-brown will look nicer. Here's an interior shot of the cockpit with trans-clear windows.

That's pretty awesome. Horizon is a great franchise to do Lego designs. The creatures really lend themselves to being interpreted in Lego form. But you've really nailed it. So many clever ideas.

I doubt that there will be more sets. The scale of Dune is simply too big. Other than the various Ornithopters, there isn't much that lends itself to being reproduced in Lego. I guess you could do a spice harvester using a smaller scale, but I doubt there would be a market for it. Stuff like the Sardaukar landing crafts could potentially work, but then they look too generic for a licensed Lego set. Battle packs would of course be really cool. Atreides vs Harkonnen soldiers, or Fremen vs. Sardaukar. But I also don't see it happening, simply because it's extremely difficult to reproduce a proper setting. The movie settings are just way too large.

I'll probably create instructions. Though I don't know yet for sure. Either way, it'll be a while. I've just ordered the parts. Hopefully everything works out without any major hitches. But particularly the technic stuff is always difficult to design in Studio. You have to do it in real life to be sure. Have fun with the movie. I've watched a double feature last weekend (the wife wasn't happy that she had to sit in the movie theatre for six hours...). I'm of course the perfect target demographic for this Ornithopter as I have loved the Dune novels since I was a kid. I actually built my own M-Tron Ornithopter back in the 1990s. It was significantly smaller than this beast of course and without any technic functions, but you could flap the wings manually. The new movies are also right up my alley. Villeneuve has done a great job in my opinion, even though, as a fan of the books, of course I do have many issues with it, but that comes with the territory.

Sure. The big challenge is of course to get the tail angled downwards. In the original set, they've done it by simply using long wedge plates. I tried a different approach.

I have to say, the Dune Ornithopter is probably my favourite new set in many years. But of course it is a bit rough and the bright colours are as always annoying. So I sat down in Studio and tried to make the Thopter look a bit smoother. Regarding the following picture, my modded version does not have the spring installed, that's why you can see the large gap next to the top right wing. In the finished product, it'll be there, of course. Side by side, you can also see that my mod is about 6 studs longer. Might look a bit funky with the wings folded in, but the overall proportions do look more like the movie thopter. If anything, it probably should be even longer, but then the wingspan would be more out of whack, so I figured that this was a good compromise. I'll have to see how it works in real life though. All in all still not perfect of course. It's just very hard to get a smooth surface. Plus, I wanted to keep all the functions and there was only so much one can do regarding the large gaps in the central section due to the folding mechanism. The tail construction is a bit wild, but it should be almost as sturdy as the original tail. Next step is to get the parts and try to build the thing. There might be some fine tuning needed which will only become obvious when dealing with real life bricks.

Love it. Weird and different and cool.

It's this one: https://rebrickable.com/parts/55889/wheel-18-x-14-with-pin-hole/297/

Thank you guys. Yeah, I've started working on reducing the part-count. 4000 pieces was maybe a bit optimistic. I think 6000 are possible. Beyond that, I'll need to start becoming very creative.

Yeah, I might do a smaller version. That should be relatively straight forward. I think I could trim it down to 4000 pieces without it losing too much flavour. Taking away the cliff will already save 4000 pieces. It’s the height which is the problem.

I've recently gotten into designing some castles, but so far, none of them have been in minifig scale. Still, they turned out quite big. So I wanted to do a minifig scale castle at a reasonable size. I guess I achieved the former goal. Anyway, I picked Castle Lichtenstein, a beautiful little castle in the south of Germany. And I scaled it down a little bit more to make it more feasible. Unfortunately, things escalated again and the result is again too big to build it at a reasonable price. I am happy with the result though. I'm thinking about entering into Lego Ideas, even though it's way too big to ever make it into a set. But one could drastically reduce the part count by removing large parts of the cliff, get rid of the plants and a lot of the tiles, don't have double walls, etc. Anyway, what do you guys think? And BTW, here's a picture of the real Castle Lichtenstein

I needed a bit of a break working on my Crusader fortress. So I figured I could do a little something from the other side and decided to do work on a Mamluk fortress as well. I planned to do a smaller fortress than the crusader one, but things escalated quickly and it ended up bigger than the crusader fortress. It is in essence a fantasy building, I wasn't trying to copy any existing structure. But it is heavily inspired by the Qaytbay Citadel in Alexandria as well as the ruins of the Akabah fortress. I'm not sure what to do with it though. I'm not sure it would be worth it to create instructions. At more than 6200 pieces, it would be a pain to do so. Plus, stud.io says that the cost of the parts amounts to more than 900$, so not many people will be interested in building it, particularly since this is a fringe topic to boot. Be that as it may, I enjoyed designing it. Here are some pictures:

And here I was, reading your title, thinking you created a MOC of an archaeological dig in the style of 80s Lego. But yeah, really nice builds. my 8 year old self is very envious. If only I had sets like these as a kid.

That is awesome. I'd love to see it in person one day.

I've always been impressed by crusader castles. They are massive and they have a unique look due to the merging of European and Oriental architecture. The most famous example is of course Krak des Chevaliers, but I didn't find an angle to turn it into Lego without blowing it up to 10,000+ pieces. Instead, I took inspiration from the Fortress of the Knights Templar in Acre. I still had to shrink it a bit in order to not have it grow out of control, but I feel like I found a good compromise. I wanted it to fit onto two 32x32 baseplates which I just about managed to do. I'm close to finishing the model and I'm currently sitting at 4644 parts. I'm still looking to improve some details, the cobblestone in front of the castle is for example still very primitive and I might add more of a slope to the ground outside. Then there are still some gaps that I might be able to close better. Obviously, it's not minifig scale, that would have required a model that's at least three times as large. Also, it's not modular. While it would be easy to have removable elements, it would be difficult to build any interior at the scale I'm working at. So I saved pieces by having the caste be completely hollow on the inside. Anyway, here are some pictures of where I'm currently at.

I haven't been here for a while either, but thank you both, I really appreciate it.

Nice, Job. I've been sitting on a design for a year now, never got around to test-building it. Some day I will though...

The best X-Wing MOC just got better. I love it.

Damn, all of a sudden, I don't like my UCS set anymore...

Indeed, it’s a Clawcraft which combines imperial with Chris’s technology.

Do a kick-megablocks dumpster truck 😎

I love the concept. The TIE Bomber is my favourite I think. Though the Advanced is also really nice. The studded look is underrated IMHO. Would you say the models are suitable for children? They look all solid enough.

This ISD definitely goes onto my bucket list...