Fallenangel

EDIT: Never mind.

How old are you?

Following our smashing success with KimT, we Rebel Bloggers are proud to present our second interview for the Eurobricks Star Wars Forum Blog! This time, we decided to look toward the creative side of the community for a glimpse into the method of the MOCing madness, finally settling on a member who had regularly contributed to our boards and earned the 'MOC expert!' tag in the relatively brief space of one year – Kevin Ryhal, aka M<0><0<DSWIM! INTERVIEW: M<0><0<DSWIM How did you start with the LEGO hobby and why Star Wars? Ever since I was a wee Padawan, I played with Legos, building chunky-looking Transformers and things, but, years later, I "grew up"; or so I thought. One day, in 1999, Lego started their Star Wars theme, combining 2 of my favorite things from my childhood! I watched all the original movies in the theaters as a kid (yes, I'm THAT old), and the theme really clicked for me. Later, I thought it would be fun to take some of the official mini sets and modify them. I went online looking for ideas and stumbled upon a whole community of builders who not only modded sets, but built their own from scratch. That's how my moccing "career" started. How much time do you spend on LEGO? What do people around you think of your being an AFOL? I spend a really unhealthy amount of time building with Lego. Since I have no family, no friends, and no life to speak of, I tend to have a TON of time for moccing! When I finally get to the point where I trust someone enough to tell them my hobby, they usually bust out laughing, pointing at me and throwing random objects at me. How did you discover Eurobricks and what made you decide to join? I believe I found out about the Eurobricks Forum through Brickdoctor (so you can blame him, if I end up wrecking the place). From there, I think I got an invite from KimT, and started posting some builds. I always thouroughly investigate a site before I share my madness with a bunch of strangers, but Eurobricks seemed like a really warm, active place with a very supportive community, so I knew I belonged here (oh, and most of the builders seem as crazily obsessed with Star Wars Lego as me)! Where do you get inspiration for your MOCs? I think about what's been built by other moccers in this theme (and others) and wonder about what HASN'T been done yet. I'll always look to the inspiration of the movies and TV show as well as official Star Wars toy and collectibles galleries, which I usually end up using as reference when I decide to build something. How did you come up with your patented "Moodland" scale? Moodland Scale figs came about from my need to build action-figure scaled Lego characters. When I started the theme, I actually had never heard of Miniland scale. i posted some figs and people kept saying "nice Miniland figs". And I wondered what that was, so I checked out some of the official figs. I thought they looked cool, but lacked any sort of poseability. Plus, they were a bit blocky and didn't depict alot of detail. I thought I could improve on those aspects. I posted some figs with the new design and got a comment from Brickdoctor saying "these are way different from Miniland scale. Why now call them Mood Scale." Then I replied: "why not call them Moodland Scale, since it's more of a play-on-words." How long does it usually take you to complete one of your MOCs? Do you plan ahead or do you figure it out as you build? It depends on the size of the build, but I try to post something new about every week-and-a-half. I usually have a general idea of how I will start my build and the finished product, but I pretty much make it up as I go, which makes for a TON of building, rebuilding, smashing against the wall, and building again. Do you keep all your MOCs for display or you re-use the parts for future builds? What do you think I am? Made of Lego bricks? Do you think I have a magical Lego tree in my backyard where I pick an endless suppy of parts? Ahem...sorry. Lost my head there. Since I don't have alot of room or money, I take pics of my builds, then tear them apart and recycle them. Amongst all of your creations, which one is your most favorite? And any favorite MOC from other MOCers? I think I'm still really proud of my Moodland Scale General Greivous. As far as other builders, I love Arthur Gugick's stuff as well as that Thomas (can't remember his last name) who builds old houses in Lego. His stuff is amazing! Who's your favorite SW character? Han Solo! Hands down! He's bad while still being good AND he gets the girl in the end. Aside from LEGO, what other hobbies do you have? Well, I have a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Kent State, so I enjoy, photography, filmmaking, drawing and painting, as well as sculpture (Lego, duh). I also sing and play multiple instruments and that I write and record my own music. D'oh! Moodswim is actually the name of my one-man band. I have a band page on Myspace, too. What's the reason behind your online monicker M<0><0<DSWIM (and why all those hard-to-type bracket signs in there )? Well, above all else, I really want to stand out! So, I thought of ways to write my name so it just wasn't Moodswim, and that's what I came up with. You guys can just type it Moodswim, really. I don't mind. What kind of MOCs can we expect from you in the future? Do you have anything special planned? Well, one of my New Year's Resolutions (besides gettin off the sauce) was to build in different themes. I've already built some super-hero and sci-fi figs and plan to do more. You can look forward to something for the Community Build as well as Batman's Batpod (Moodland Scale) and a few other things... "Well, now that the interview is over, it's time for... NO-PANTS PARTY!!" We hope that everyone enjoyed this interview and will join us again next time. Feel free to leave any comments or additional questions you might have!

Our second interview, this time with MOC Expert M<0><0<DSWIM, is now up on the blog.

Just throwing this into the mix: Gunner's tri-droid I did find one particular detail on Iceman792's interesting - look where the legs meet the core. Three cheese slopes, followed by a 1x1 tile with clip, on which a Bionicle tooth piece is attached via a pistol. Not something you see on most tri-droids. Actually, most tri-droids I've seen build the legs with click hinge bricks, as opposed to stacked plates, presumably for stability reasons. Then again, most tri-droids are smaller than this. Tri-droids do come in several canon sizes, after all...

There are certain instances where major similarities exist in such a way as to be uncanny. Like this one. For the record, I don't feel there's enough information available to determine whether or not Iceman792 has 'copied' pedro's creation, but I can certainly see why pedro might think so. I can also see that certain unrelated parties are brashly putting in their two cents without knowing all the facts thinking they're entitled to this sort of thing. Several of the posts here come across to me as nesciently dismissive. To all those making inadvertent judgments - how many of you have tried to build a tri-droid? How many different LEGO renditions of tri-droids have you seen, and how well are you able to judge the worth of each of the decisions made in representation? How well do either of you know pedro or Iceman792?

Excuse me, but does this really happen as often as you claim? I haven't heard or seen of someone else's work copied here without credit to the original MOCer since someone posted one of Masked Builder's vignettes on another forum (and even that, if I recall correctly, turned out to be a misunderstanding). Anio has said in the past that his Executor was influenced by Lasse's, cavegod's Lambda-class shuttle by dmac's, etc. Could you perhaps give more examples of "this type of thing"? And 'condoned and allowed in the blog'? Surely you can't mean our blog? (Not to mention that 'condone' and 'allow' basically mean the same thing...)

Well, this certainly explains the topic bumping.

But the official droids are already too big. Don't tell me we'll have more giant killer astro droids? "Master Skywalker, there are too many of them. What are we going to do?"

Unlike the Viking and Castle chess sets, this would be based on a licensed theme if produced, so it's likely to be far more expensive. One should also keep in mind that both of the former only contained 24 minifigures.

Of course. And I'm sure Star Wars Underground will do the same thing.

On a related note, lately there seem to be members joining primarily to promote their CUUSOO projects. Is there a policy on this?

Even then, having all of the pieces as minifigures is rather unrealistic. Rooks and Knights in past LEGO chess sets have been brickbuilt, so I would suggest doing the same.

...Except that Anakin was originally knighted in the last year of the war, also according to Wookieepedia. A definitive chronology hasn't been worked out at this point. Maybe after the show ends.

What do you mean? I suppose the general idea is the same (a body for the head from 10215), but the resemblance pretty much ends there. The legs are completlely different builds, as are the bottoms. And one would expect that SPARKART! would give credit where it is due - from his post, it sounds like he built this independently as part of his 10215 conversion.

Even though the white hips are more accurate? I don't look much into minifigure customizing, but these are nicely done and look like official parts. Have you considered printing stormtrooper legs as well?

Is that so? I've heard that the original miniatures are actually much darker than they appear on film, as the predominantly grey coloring looked brighter due to lighting. X-wings painted in a truly 'white' hue will cause too much glare. But let's hear from an expert: I believe this model was built for Jedi, but it was never seen on screen. And there definitely exist inconsistencies between this and most of the original miniatures - the point at which the halves of the fuselage split was farther back on the latter, for example, and the bottom edges of the intakes were flush with the wings.

I found this and , though neither seem very well built.

I see you've extended the rear so that the entire back half protrudes as much as the engine area. I rather liked how they remembered to include that detail. I'd say it actually appears too narrow – it should fill up the whole of the aforementioned protruding engine area. Of course, the fact that lego envy has extended that protrusion makes it a bit more difficult to discern that detail, but given that the blue tube barely clears the three flaps in the centre, it should definitely be enlargened. 7965 is about the same size as 4504, which is in the middle of this picture:

I've always wanted to see this scene in LEGO, and your creation turned out well. I like the minifigure posing and tiled floor detailing, though I think the shaft itself could benefit from some reimagining. To more accurately achieve the curvature of the shaft while retaining the one-stud beams of light, I would suggest building rounded sections using a variation on this technique. I also think the slits of light around the rim could be more convincing if they were thinner - when I look at the source material I'm reminded of the gaps for studs in pieces like this one. Something like this roof or a curved adaptation of this are also possibilities (if the latter is possible). EDIT: Actually, I think that last technique with the partially assembled bricks would work wonderfully for the entire shaft.

This is a bit late, but I haven't been commenting much on MOCs lately, so I hope that you don't take this personally. I can't quite make out all the details from the small picture you've embedded, but I do like the fine greebling on the engines of the pod. That being said, no one's really offered much in the way of criticism, so I would like to address the large green-and-orange structures in front – the curvature there is crucial, so rather than stacking plates, I would suggest SNOTing a few of these, with these on the sides to achieve the conical shape of that area. The cockpit could be similarly smoothed out, using these and some cheese slopes at the tip. Best of luck in continuing this series. As for which should be remade next, the official version of Clegg Holdfast's pod was pretty terrible. It might be fun to give that a shot.

It's to scale with 10221. To get back on topic, those are some awfully scrawny laser cannons on 9497.

Probably because kids wouldn't have bought it. 7778 and 8099 make this clear.

Apparently it's an old British film. I would generally steer clear of the comments section of any article - too much stupidity.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Wait a minute: “Eventually, Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben, allied themselves with a group of Sith...” What? Has something like this happened before (outside of that one episode of THE Clone Wars)? Ah, Force FX – I recall having looked a few of those over some time back. Beautifully crafted, and with fantastic sound effects (which in turn inspired many embarrassing YouTube videos of shameless fanboys in the heat of 'battle' ) Luke's lightsaber requires so relatively little modification of the original Graflex unit, though, that I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be cheaper to hunt one down and make it at home.