Satellite control.. reaching out into other worlds..

Yay Its all over! I've suddenly gone from a period of seemingly endless work and study to a period of seemingly endless freetime sitting around partying, playing Quake and being stupidly lazy. I unpacked all the Lego yesterday. And let me tell you, after four months of Lego separation its total euphoria to click those bricks together again after so long. Maybe I'm over exaggerating with that euphoria comment.. nahhhh trust me, its just that good..
This month on Moc Watch..
First off the bat Graznador gives us the White Stripes Bot, some nifty odd parts usage, gotta love the Bionicle lid on the bottom there and the x-pod middle. Nice stumpy bot fingers and you've gotta love the spirals to.
Sajuuk brings us the ME-363. I mean sure, yeah its a little on the blocky side and a bit clunky in some parts, but to me it looks loaded with potential. Theres that odd stripey triangley nose, those big gorgeous engine pods and the unusual swept forward scissor like wings.

Next we have Turkguy's Enforcer Fighter its pretty nice. I like the little snubby nose guns. Those pods look great, as are their thrusters, unfortunately none of the pics give a good view of the thrusters. The only beef I've got is with those grey fins at the back, Maybe it would look better without em. Or maybe if they were white instead, thats excused though cause the white one are harder to come by I guess. Also bonus points cause he read its reviews, went back and fixed some of the problems.
And I can't sign off without giving a mention to Carlos's Christmas Beetle Mecha. Cause its cool.
Now if you'll excuse me.. I've got some building to do..

Set Fire To The Third Bar

The Wii comes out this weekend. I really don't feel like lining up, so maybe I'll do a drive by Saturday night and early Sunday, see if it's crazy. If so, there's always next weekend. Set fire to a heat resistant oven mitt the other day, smelt something and thought it could be melting - didn't expect it to burst into flames, kinda scared me.

Any ways, here's today's feature. Peter L. Morris (I assume) made a new addition to his brickshelf. I love his photography, on some of the models you can barely tell if it's real or just a kick-arse render. His style is kinda odd: patchy colour schemes and a mix of smooth studless sections to studly areas - and yet still his models look great. Albeit, this could be from the excellent photography; good photography can almost make the worst model look good. This, is far from the worst though. He shows a variety of neat looking SNOT techniques, and a good use of 1x1 cylinders. Its always a good day when something of his surfaces on brickshelf - and given that today is also a Friday, its a very good day.


I better be playing Twilight Princess within the next three weeks, or pain... lots of pain.

A big orange swirly thing in space..

I’m actually still alive. Its been a while since my last post which sucks, but on the other hand only one more exam to go and an easy one at that! Yay!

Anywho I’ve been thinking, my old tired Black Sun subtheme? It needs some revising, a make over, a shiny new coat of paint. But hang on a sec.. scrap that. I’m throwing the old volvo and its new paint right out the window. Lets just scrap it and replace it with a fancy new rocket car with kicking bass and wicked flame decals. But maybe I got a little too carried away there. Not an entirely brand spanking new subtheme as such, basically just what I’ve wanted Black Sun to be ever since I did the Talius and Sariya. In other words more like this and less like this. But this time I think I’ve got the required skills to make the more organic and spikey design to work with some degree of success. I think. Oh yeah and the name needs changing to, names stolen from SW can only last so long anyway. Now I’ve got this idea for a really nice attack frigate, I’ve just got to work out how exactly I’m going to approach this new look Black Sun. hmmmm..
Oh yeah and the 8-ball, she’ll finally be finished soon with any luck. As she’s been gathering way to much dust in dry-dock recently.
In other recent news..
Dan’s Lightning Moc is pretty cool, I particularly like the long pill style canopy going on, the lightening bolts and intakes are also pretty nifty lookin. Though, I don’t know what it is but somethings seams missing from the overall design.
Once again, Jerac effectively shoves a crap load of playability into a neat little package. This time in the ever so nifty Steampunk Catamaran. When you roll it over the ground all the little bits and pieces and greebs move about, I mean how cool is that? I’m particularly drawn to the little papery tent dealy in the middle, though however its innards look plain, flat and boring and are in need of some detailing.
And if you haven’t checked out Brenden's awesome Eos Battlecruiser go do so immediately!

Better Be Heaven

Yoder's been separated from the vast majority of his Lego collection, this seems to have resulted in an explosion of building from him. 2+2=5. He's got the main wave of a recent microscale building bloom, which was instigated by Jerac (blogged below). They contain the same essential colour scheme, though this just seems to help in the comparison of the ships.

First up is the Ventura MkII, a light gunship. It's definitely got an interesting shape, and it looks more fightery in style. Looks like a wasp, or a hornet - the big engine cylinder in the back like the abdomen. I'm unawares if this look was on purpose, though it seems that if it isn't then Yoder had some indirect influence running through the veins. Colour scheme is tightly kept here, red stripes are perfectly placed. The various uses of blacks and greys is a little spotty, but only if one begins to get very picky. It would really be interesting to see this in a minifig scale, to see how certain parts would be built scaled-up. Now that I look at it, I think that 2x2 slope on top could be lost, but I'm just getting picky myself.

Next! The Gluckliche Reise long range freighter. A quick google search of that brings up... well, it's MOCpage and some viking boat clipart. Oh well. Very different in scale and shape from the Ventura, it's actually slightly reminiscent of the Rising Phoenix which he did. Slightly. The use of those inverted slopes on the nose is a great idea, I used it for the engines on a cruiser and the engines on a fighter, but here it's all the more front and center - a greater use. The stud-inserts fit well with the greebs on the front of the nose, though some part of me wishes the antenna were off centre. The bridge truly conveys the look of a spacified cargo ship, very similar to the big tankers and ships of the present. The use of yellow to act as the outer hull plating it great - that whole outer hull technique is a favourite of mine, as was mentioned in the previous post and probably several before that - and more to come. The 2x2 round tiles on the bottom give a neat shape and look, seemingly fit for containers of some kind. Engine pods are go!

Dogstar One! Destroyer-class frigate. This one is the basis of the next cruiser too, so it's even better for comparison. With this and the other small ship of Yoder's I saw on flickr [link] , the Apache Rose, I think he had a spurt of Battlestar influence. This much less than the Apache, but it still has this feeling of a battlestar, particularly when looking at from a rear angle. Something about those engines. I love the dark-bley turret, and tried using it on a recent ship, but didn't have enough claw/gun barrels to pass around. The offset secondary bridge behind the main one makes me happy, being offset and all. Not sure I like the square cannon on the side of the nose, just doesn't fit. This one also lacks that special hull plating effect sadly, which I think would have pushed it over the edge of awesome. Plenty of sensor antennas though, those always seem to help with microscale.

Two! As if the first weren't enough, he went and turned it on it's side. I like this one better, it's more vertical construction [compared to the last] seems all the more spacey. The bridge on this one seems to suggest a larger scale, and the little bits tacked on the side further this. This one uses the hull plating effect, however less than the freighter, it still does. The use of grills for the inner hull is cool, a quick way to make a small place look greebled when low on parts. This rendition of the dogstar seems more military than the first, I'm betting that I'm making that connection from the more vertical construction mentioned above. I'm curious how he made the neat flame effects on his photoshop'ed pictures, it looks rather neat.

Anyways, I guess that about wraps it up. I missed actually featuring the Apache Rose, though I think it's too small for me to try and come up with something long winded to say. Check out my newest microscale, feature on Snoikle.