Lars

Going back to building Star Wars again with my absolute favorite from the galaxy far far away. The T-47 airspeeder, commonly known as the snowspeeder. Even though some of the official snowspeeder iterations were decent, I don't think they ever truly captured the essence of this beautiful vessel. Making it in white was a big misstake IMO. It made it look way to shiny and new. This Moc on the other hand has a mix of every grey/bley color available. That's a conscious descision on my part and I think it's a sadly underused method to achieve the right weathered look when MOC:ing SW stuff. The stickers are custom made, but the front pattern is of course largely based on the official printed pieces. The Moc is the second version I make with the same basic premise. A lot is different this time and you can take a look at the previous one at my old Brickshelf gallery for comparison if you like. More pics of the snowspeder at my Flickr Let me know what you think.

After building the Colonial Marine APC from Aliens I knew I had to build the iconic Power Loader as the second MOC in my series of cool stuff from Aliens. The anatomy of minifigs adds a bit of challange to this project of course. The Power Loader is supposed to be build around and share the movement of the human body. So with some changes to the concept, due to wierd proportions of the fig, I tried to stay somewhat movie accurate. It has a lot of articulation though and the robot legs is connected to the fig legs so that they move together as in the movie. Let me know what you think. More Aliens pics at my Flickr.

Thanks for the comments and compliments guys. Much appreciated. I too like the sliding door a lot. The method I came up with works well. There's friction enough so that the door stays in any position you leave it in. And yes, the gun rail mechanism is functional. The gun has a jumper brick as its connection so it doesn't swing around unintentionally. As for the size, I found this sketch on Flickr and printed the side and top view on a transparent sheet in a size that matched what I was aiming for. (Based on the size of the wheels and other details.) Using that sheet as a guide I ended up with one stud added to both the width and the lenght. Remember that in the movie the interior was huge in comparison to the exterior. (The moving movie vehicle had not much more than a motor in it I guess, since they used an old plane towing vehicle.) I've uploaded pics with some new stuff now. Sentry guns and flame thrower among other things.

I always knew that the day would come when I would build my version of the awsome APC from the movie "Aliens". The inspiration came to me when I was playing around with the Aliens Pulse Rifles from my first ever BrickArms order. It was time to start building. Check out the final result and tell me what you think. More pics at my Flickr

I mainly collect Star Wars Lego for the figs and useful bricks to make my own versions of the iconic vehicles from scratch. Some times I not even bother to build the original set. If I keep an original set on the shelf it's often because I've come up with a good way to modify it to improve upon the original design. I've bought several sets of the 7657 AT-ST. First modifying it into a two seater with a round hatch and a better gun without changing much of the exterior look of the vehicle. It was a fun project and I've been working on these modifications a lot since then. Now I have a greebled up version of it with added functionality for walking. It's not motorized or anything like that, but you can grab the middle section with one hand and move the walker forward. The legs will move and fall right back in position for the next step. When stoping you find the balance and leave it standing sturdy waiting for the next little walk. I only have photos of the earliest stages of these mods so I guess I could take photos of my latest version and make a new thread about the project. The reason that I've spent so much time modifying that model was that I thought it was unfairly critiziced by fans. When depicting the walker LEGO took a totally different approach than most MOC's and actually captures the unique look and feel of the AT-ST in a good sized set with not a lot of peices. I like to think of my mods as they would've been what the designers would've done if they were able to have more pieces to work with for that set. Here is an old comparison shot of the original with my first modded two seater.

I've made a Vader fig as well. Any thoughts? More pics at my Flickr.

Thanks. making these figs and coming up with new minifig stuff to dress them with is really fun. It makes you look at familliar pieces a whole new way. And working in a scale just slightly above minifig scale adds a lot to when you're trying to come up with good looking weapons. Visit my Flickr page for more of the non SW figs. I'm working on some post apocalyptic gerilla figs right now and a Vader is waiting to have his picture taken. Recently I posted this little Grim Reaper. I'm not going to lie to you. Things keeps falling off when dealing with little guys, but the brickbuilt leg method is not as weak as it looks. It's at the othor end of the spectrum actually. The two bottom clips leaving little bite marks on the top clip. So that's something to concider. The figs are great for display purposes and it's easy to get interesting poses for photos. Right now I only have three or our of these frames for figs and keep changing headgear around to find good figs to photograph. So it's not as time consuming as other projects I've been working on. I've even developed a brickbuilt turntable that goes under the backgruond paper with a technic axis turning the platform with the fig. The camera on a tripod and a few turns on a wheel and you have a pic of every angle in the same pose whithout anything falling off. Keep the comments coming. I'm going to make more Star Wars themed figs as well.

I really like to make brickbuilt figures. This concept wasn't Star Wars in the beginning and the inspiration comes from a specific style of board game/comic book art. You know the kind with ridiculously big shoulder pads, thin legs and big feet. The erlier ones I made had exo-force robot legs, but to make this shadowtrooper I had to come up with a brickbuilt solution in black. I'm going to make more of these. Star Wars characters in this style are more some kind of "Mighty Muggs" I guess. Check out the other figs at my Flickr Any comments?

Thanks. I'm glad to see that you liked my speederbike design. My plan is to build different versions of this model as well as trying to build other SW speederbikes in the same style. The first one is easy. Hoth trooper speederbike. A different design for the plates in the front on this one. Although the road sign plates is released in white, I think this design works fine. This technique offers a way to make speederbikes in a lot of different colors. And those perfect little triangles doesn't exactly look like those plates from the movie anyway. Any comments and suggestions are welcome. More at my Flickr.

Thanks for the comments and compliments guys. Much appreciated. Since that first pic I've uploaded some pics where you can see more of the details up close. ..and more at my Flickr

My entry in the FBTB podracer Challange is this sci-fi crossover. Any comments? More pics at my Flickr

What you need is someone on the inside who can tell you that he want some money in exchange for a box with the Chrome Vader. Somewhere between the factory and the store there has to be people that knows how to find the Vader boxes. Two main reasons for this theory is.. An easy method for finding rare figures in your local store IS to good to be true! Getting the unopened sure-to-find-a-Vader-box in this dirty way would be the only reason to do the box opening video stunt really. ..so there you have it. Nothing is easy and the world is ugly.

The text "Midi-Scale" on the box has to mean something I guess. And since the big ships usually has no scale at all, but is allways assumed to be "suitable for minifigs", "Midi-Scale" can only mean "Not minifig-scale!!". Including minifigs would only make it a really BAD set. This is probable released to be a collector MF for those that NEVER would buy the giant one and that wouldn't think a minifig playset where accurate enough.

It's built for minifigs, but more to scale with the original vehicle than minifig scale I guess. I've uploaded a new pic with Luke behind the wheel. I've done some minor updates to the design as well. See if you can spot them. ( and do tell me if you think it was better before.)

Thanks for all the comments and compliments. Much appreciated. I don't have instructions, but there is a breakdown pic that shows some of the little secrets of this MOC. Click on the image and you can find the pic on Flickr with some notes to help you understand the pic better. This landspeeder did turn out a lot better than I would've thought myself. And I learned a good lesson in the process. A lot of lego landspeeder MOC:s, and even the official ones, seems to have been built around the best solution for the characteristic grill pattern. When concentrating more on the sleekness and detail in shape the grill wasn't that important for the overall recognition of the original vehicle. And the main reason that I, in this case felt free to build it any way I wanted, was that the speeder was going to be a sled pulled by reindeer. By not focusing entirely on how to build the most accurate landspeeder I think I came a lot closer than I would've done otherwise. For me making LEGO depictions of things from Star Wars is all about my own interpretation. Lego with it's limitations in what shape and color is achievable with the bricks at hand, presents the challenge that is the joy of doing it at all. Therefor it is important not to limit yourself more than necesary when you start building. In this MOC the color scheme isn't exactly from the movie, but still a sort of creative way of capturing the essence of the original. When it comes to Star Wars I really don't belive in the philosofy of very strict rules about color and symentry common among the online Lego community. If the original vehicle looks a certain color it is actually made of every nuans available. And with heave battle damage on top of that. I thik the best way to go about it is to pay less attention to color accuracy when building and than take a step back and look at the result. Knowing that the color you've used have the same name as the prominent color of the original doesn't help you if it doesn't look right. IMHO some useful thoughts on building style and color scheme.

I built this landspeeder as a part of one of my entries in last years FBTB Christmasification Contest. And since Christmas is long gone I'll show you the landsppeder without all the Gungan reindeers and presents and stuff. (You can find those pics at my Flickr) Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think.

Thanks for the comments and compliments guys. Much appreciated. I'm really glad to read that you want to see more of my stuff. I allready have a new topic out with a classic original trilogy favourite.

Over the years I've made several versions of this bike based on the idea that the sense of speed, and the illusion of the minifig actually riding it, could be achieved by bending his legs backwards. Let me know what you think about this 74-Z speederbike.

I usually post my SW MOC:s over at From Bricks to Bothans, but thought it was time to start doing it here as well. I like building smaller stuff like one man vehicles that provides a lot of challenge in minifig scale. Here is my little AT-RT walker. What do you think? More pics at my Flickr page

More pics of this dropship MOC I built this way back when the Imperial dropship as a battlepack only was a rumor of an upcoming set. I wanted to know if I could make it look like an official set. It was an experiment and only in parts successful. When I was done I got the idea to present it with a fake "prelimenary pic" The low price of the upcoming dropship was already out so I didn't think that I was going to fool anyone. Check out the pics and try to forget that it is that fake ship everybody is fed up with by now.

Brown hood at 'shop at home' This is a good way of getting the brown hood.

I'm sorry about that. I'll be quiet now. Don't worry!

The new Jedi Starfighter has the brand "Clone Wars" on the box, The Rouge Shadow is a "The Force Unleashed" set and the Rebel battlepack is a plain Star Wars one. The anime looking face seems to be for the "Clone Wars" sets only and we don't know how many figs will be released under that brand really. a guess would be that it is not that many because there will be clones, droids and molded heads as well. I think it is safe to say that this is not the new style of faces for every new Star Wars set. One interesting thing is the actual look of the characters in the series. If you watch the trailer up on starwars.com You'll see that almost every character looks like it comes from a different show. Yoda is from the drawn animation of the older series, Obi one looks like he is from some old Checkoslovakien stop motion film. The clones look like they belong in the feature films. A couple of ugly heads that you can easily swap for regular heads. The good thing with the anime heads is that it will be easier to do some of the more detailed Jedi characters justice in this style.

The fig isn't real. I doubt LEGO would make a new piece that close to a regular minifig head. There would be a much more movie accurate head like with Kit Fisto. You can buy this custom at e-bay. Check out the promo for the custom fig at the bottom of the auction page. e-bay link