Fallenangel

Not if it's in UCS scale. And in such a scale, SNOT wings would be bulky and are bound to fall apart unless you were to reinforce it with Technic beams - which gives rise to the issue of discoloration due to overlap. Besides, with the relatively limited choice of sloped bricks you get it would be difficult to capture the angle of the wings accurately (as the wrong angle will result in the model looking weird). On the other hand, these offer a much wider range of possible angles for platebuilt solutions. When you are constructing something with a lot of strange angles such as, say, an AT-TE, it would come in quite useful (I only wish I had more of them...)

The AT-TE was one of the better designs of the Prequels, and this model certainly appears to do it justice! The only really major flaws I see are in the hull. The cockpit and gunner's station are much too tall; it's apparent from this picture that the cockpit shouldn't be taller than the hull, and that the gunner's station is a lot closer to the rest of the vehicle. As others have mentioned you've done a pretty good job of getting rid of gaps on this model - to the point that the area around the driver motor looks more closed in than it should. The antipersonnel laser cannons actually sit on a kind of shelf on the hull, as seen here - on your model they seem tacked on.

Back to the MOC... I understand that in such a small scale there are limitations as to what can and can't be done with LEGO, and taking that into account I'm impressed at all the angles you've managed to pull off and the details you've managed to include. On the other hand, I think it would prove quite frustrating to make a model look dimensionally accurate at this scale... The first thing I noticed is that this feels a bit like 8129; the troop section just doesn't seem long enough. And as brickartist pointed out the rearmost segment of the troop section should be significantly longer than the 'shoulders'. The head could be longer as well. It looks a bit fat at this point. The chin-mounted laser cannons should be longer than the medium blasters, though I'm not sure how much longer. The little flap that hangs down from the middle segment of the troop section extends too far down, according to this picture. If what brickartist pointed out were tiny flaws I'd say these are somewhat bigger flaws...

Agreed. If the rear braking flaps were motorized it would be pretty awesome... I don't suppose he could motorize the harpoon as well? (So it could fire a cable at something?)

Okay, this was funny at first but now it's just annoying. Can we please stop with the ostracizing? I would approve of SNOT wings provided the MOC was in 1/24 scale, so build me a studio scale UCS X-wing with SNOT and see if I go nuts... I would disagree with you on the color transitions - if they're at an angle, it's next to impossible to capture them accurately with SNOT (e. g. squadron markings on an X-wing's wings); at least with stacked plates you can use the wing plates to include such details without having holes in the structure.

Like I said, the cockpit panels don't quite look right since the power couplings are misplaced... What's PF?

Look at the picture. The tan doesn't bother me - just fix it with CGI like everything else in the Prequels.

That looks really nice so far, drakmin! I think that the foremost window on the side of the canopy looks a bit squashed lengthwise, but this is probably because the smaller bits that attach to the laser cannons (I'll just call them power couplings like the Essential Guide does, though I'm not sure how accurate it would be) are too far from the cannon housings in the rear (which are apparently the drive units). The distance between their innermost edges should be roughly a fifth of the length, as seen in... the reference picture I deeplinked to in one of my previous posts (the side view of the grey model). On your model it looks to be closer to a third. But you did get the struts lined up correctly - very good! For the fins I would just attach some wing plates using SNOT, as they would be much thinner and thus look better.

I'm going to have to go with simonjedi on this one. Like this?

But why can't a minifigure tool be disproportionate like the rest of the minifigure? I'm not complaining about our man-sized megaphone and camera blasters.

Whoops, it was actually LoRd AmUnRa. I saw the Slave I avatar and for some reason I thought of Anio. Still, Brickdoctor is right in that despite the limitations Anio sets for himself his models are much better than anything LEGO has done. Eh, the nose on the 10129 is oversized, and the fact that it was based on the full-size mockups rather than one of the 21" miniatures means that fat bottom area, which in my opinion doesn't fit with the sleek profile of the rest of the T-47. But I will say that LEGO generally did a pretty good job with that particular set. Just because something has to look like it's LEGO doesn't mean it has to be blocky and ugly. For me all a LEGO model needs to look like LEGO is a bunch of studs. Besides, I doubt anyone's going to point at an X-wing with a Technic frame and hexagonal nose cross-section and get mad because it doesn't look like LEGO. I mean, Erik Varszegi's Venator... I'm not sure what you consider "super accurate" but I certainly wasn't expecting anything close to it, simply because LEGO is such a difficult medium to work with. I'm not complaining about the lack of panel lines or weathering on these models, because I know that's next to impossible with LEGO, even at 1:20 scale. At the very least, I would expect 1:20 models to look more like what they're supposed to be than their 1:42 System counterparts. And I think the Miniland T-47 may actually look less like the studio model than 7130. Now what's this about a Mississippi paddle boat?

After the adjustment the wing profile is looking better drakmin; the angle is definitely closer. I don't want to sound too nitpicky, but I don't like the placement of the hinge you've used to represent the aft edge of the wing. It doesn't fit with the clean angles you've pulled off on the rest of the craft. Surely there must be a better way? I think a couple handlebar plates would do the job nicely, though I'm not sure how he will manage to attach them. On a different note, would anyone like to tell me why my member title is "Wants cake with liver and onions on top"?

Bump for preservation. I'd like to say something about a minor point that came up in the 'Star Wars' thread. I admit 'Death Star' might sound uncreative and even cliche to some of us but that's only an example of how iconic and widespread the films have become. Besides, I think it's supposed to be simple. I mean, when you get right down to it even the name 'Star Wars' doesn't seem particularly innovative; 'star' and 'wars' are both fairly common words. 'Super Tank', on the other hand, sounds like some cheesy toy the Cartoon Network is trying to entice kids into buying - which is probably all it will be in a few years' time. In a typical American society you can say 'Death Star' and pretty much anyone over 40 will understand, but mention 'Super Tank' and I'll bet you about twenty people will scratch their heads and say, 'Huh? What's that?' (I mean, I hardly even remember what the thing looks like!)

Well one thing's for sure, 6212 won't be going anywhere! Actually, I'm not too confident about the impact on LEGO either. I don't know how far LEGO is going to be able to milk this cash cow - I mean, it's evident from their last line of sets that they're not willing to put too much effort into making substantially improved re-releases (at least, not on the level of the '04, '06, and '07 sets) and outside of the '08 series they don't seem to be able to find much new source material for their sets. I know there's at least one user here who feels that with an increasing number of re-released subjects we are witnessing the decline of the license. Unless Lucas decides to cram every single ship from the established Clone Wars into the 3D Prequels (which actually might not be a bad idea, though the retcons will number in thousands) it may very well get boring for some fans here.

With the amount of restrictions the LEGO Group imposes on how LEGO sets should be designed (they don't like studless models, for example) and the way they want to stick poorly thought-out play features into models (7658 7661 and 7663 anyone?) I would hate working for LEGO and would never think of applying. LEGO might encourage creativity for the consumer but on the production side it's a different story entirely. And I've never claimed that my MOCs were perfect. When there are major errors I try to acknowledge them. For example, I'm currently dissatisfied with the straight brickbuilt nose, skinny wings, squat rear fuselage, oversized astromech droid socket, and molded canopy on my last X-wing, among other things. Some of these are things that other builders have pointed out to me and the rest are things that bother me personally. Maybe not the most detailed models ever, but at 1/20 scale I think AFOLs would generally expect a significantly higher degree of accuracy than, say, System sets. And even in the UCS range, we're pretty lenient (only Anio appears to have said anything about the obscenely undersized cockpit ball, which would probably make a modeling kit fan cut his eyes out). And there is such a thing as being too lenient. In the case of the T-47, the nose is distorted to the point that you can barely recognize the model from the front. And when the sleek, angular nose of the X-wing has been perverted into a blocky, square, almost phallic structure, I don't think that a Star Wars enthusiast making a few complaints about it would constitute "unreasonably high" expectations, even when we are talking about a medium that's based on blocks. It's not like LEGO doesn't know how to angle plates. With Miniland models there's also the implication that these models will stick around for a while and be visible to the public eye of children and parents alike. It's only reasonable that as display models they should carry a sort of aesthetic appeal, and when I look at their T-47 and see the fat, exaggerated nose area and the squat cockpit I don't see that.

Lucas partially killed Empire with his CGI Falcon... and that's what concerns me. The laser blasts, explosions, etc. may have been considered really nice special effects in the 70s, but the Falcon and the X-wings (among other ships) were real, hand-built scale models, and that makes them all the more awesome. The CG renderings of the Falcon in Mos Eisley and Cloud City were one of the things that bugged me about the Special Editions (as if fans wouldn't be able to tell - it sticks out like a sore thumb), and rendering 3D models will just make the Original Trilogy look more like the Prequels. Endor is a massive battle as it is - it doesn't need to be massive on a Coruscant scale. If Lucas makes the Devastator and the Tantive IV into CG models, some fans will get mad. I think Draykov of FBTB shares some of my sentiments on this:

Well, I must admit I'm not very familiar with the look of the Infantry Support Platform (it's a CGI rendering that got incredibly little screen time) but it looks like you've created a very interesting rendition of it. The overall shape is there, and the size is pretty good (as far as minifigure dimensions go). Brickdoctor and KielDaMan (linking to an unusual amount of reference pictures - could I be influencing them? ) have already pointed out the most important issue to be addressed - the semicircular ring surrounding the seats, which really does need to be much more massive. Might I suggest using these? (I think some of these might work as well, though it would look too skinny.) Something no one's addressed yet - I think the forward gun mounts look too simplified. You can see in KielDaMan's reference picture that there are three distinct components to each gun mount - two square structures from which cannons protrude around a skinny knob. I think that using minifigure screwdrivers attached to these (which would be in turn attached to one of these) might achieve the look of the guns better. There's got to be some way you can incorporate the little wings on either side of the large booster - maybe a slope brick of some sort? If I were making one of those I wouldn't even have considered minifigure scale (as the design looks rather complicated and frustrating to recreate) but you've managed to do pretty well in such a small size.

Really, what is up with that? Why did they discontinue sand red, anyway? Gallery is very interesting... What the - that Falcon is bottomless! And the rear landing skids on the X-wing are connected to the fuselage instead of the engines! Actually, the X-wing doesn't look too bad except for the blocky nose, which is truly an eyesore. They've actually made the top half wider than the bottom half and for some strange reason the taper stops well short of the sensor cone, which is itself kind of stubby ( all of which are glaring inaccuracies to me :sick: ). The chin cannon on the AT-ST looks really weird, like it's got its mouth open. The head is a bit too blocky for my liking, but I guess it's the best they can do without using SNOT there. I really wish these models were displayed better so they wouldn't have to be so blocky... I mean, if they were to put these behind a glass wall, imagine how far out they'd be. 1/20 scale...

I'd like to see a decent LEGO rendition of the Battle of Muunilnst as seen in Clone Wars Volume I. Muunilinst featured pretty much all the major Separatist vehicles as well as LAAT/is, AT-TEs, SPHA-Ts and an incredible amount of troops, not to mention Anakin's Azure Angel and Ventress's fanblade starfighter. Of course, there are also lots of smoldering buildings, so you get a bit of everything.

Bah, retcons! In any case, this is really quite funny...

I admit there were some pretty nice vehicle designs in Clones, but I think LEGO's pretty much covered all the major ones (LAAT/i, AT-TE , Punworcca, Hailfire, Homing Spider). The only ones I see LEGO doing are the SPHA-T and Padme's yacht, the latter of which would make quite a few AFOLs happy. I doubt LEGO would make any civilian vehicles like the large bus thing that transports Anakin and Padme to Naboo. It would be interesting, though, if they decided to make the Diamond cruiser into a set. A Hardcell transport playset would be all right, I guess...

Without the outside, Cloud City is basically a large dish with a pole, so it shouldn't be too hard for LEGO to make a stable design. As for 6212, this thread may interest you. Exar Kun was able to influence others as a spirit, so I don't see why Maul couldn't. On the other hand, we don't see him explode into blue flames when he's cut apart in Episode I, so it could mean Lucas didn't intend for him to die completely... but I digress.

Something very important I just noticed. On your model, the laser cannon housing touches the edge of the wing. That means you're missing a very large portion of the wing. Sorry I didn't point this out earlier; I noticed how shallow the angle of the wings looked in your earlier pictures and attributed them to the misshapen wings. On the other hand, the nose section looks very good. The Technic allows for some clean edges in that area, which is nice. However, I do think the triangular bits could be a little more splayed out. Glad to see you've fixed the drooping angle too. The smaller angled bits around the cockpit also look good, though I'm not sure if the angles are right there ( the angles on the smaller bits should be the same as those of the larger portion in the rear - see picture.) I see you're a fan of large Technic trucks. Overall some very nice work. Always looking forward to further development.

8099 Midi-scale Imperial Star Destroyer is a gold mine for grey plates. It doesn't appear to be on S@H but it was only released last year so I think it's still available (by the way, it's a Wal-Mart exclusive). It looks pretty good too, even if it is too fat. That's some impressive work you've done with only three sets... must be really big sets.

This thread is ridiculously off topic now. If it gets you quiet I intend to tile over the wings and build a SNOT nose for version 9. And I swear, I can't do SNOT wings unless I build it in UCS scale. (Do you see now drakmin what I have to put up with? Please do me a favor and make a better X-wing! ) In any case drakmin I'm looking forward to seeing what progress you've made on your T-47!