The Sunset Tree

Boy do I feel old. Four years ago, January 29th 2003 I posted my first Moc to Brickshelf. Four grainy, unfocused 400x300 shots taken on the kitchen table with a standard analog camera of a Bionicle Moc I had made. As the cliche goes, time sure does fly..

Anywho, onto the random Spacey thing of the day. The custom job on this Colonial Viper MK2 model kit is absolutely beautiful, check her out for yourself. You're probably siting there right now and screaming "sacrilege!" and "burn the infadel!" at me at the top of your lungs. But just take one look at it and I dare you not to be impressed. Just look at the incredible attention to detail in the paint work and battle damage, copper wiring has even been used to greeble the thrusters. In somewhat related news, I was on the hunt for BSG wallpapers just yesterday and I came across this little cache of awesome. Have patience, the site seems to go up and down more than a yo-yo. I'll upload the pics to my Flickr if the site has suddenly stopped working. Anywho if it's working, right there at the bottom of the page, huge lovely profile shots of Vipers, a Raptor and the Colonial One. Keep flipping through the pages and you'll find some new-school Cylon Raiders and some beautiful old-school base star blueprints. Not forgetting the awesome wallpapers too, I'm using one right now and it's totally awesome. And you should too!

Anywho, onto the Legoes!*
To get us started a new creation from Felix at last! Gip's Metro Yacht. There's some lovely curves going on and a great interior to match. Next we have Spook's Angelfire tank, it looks really good. There's not much of a description to go along with it but I can easily picture it as an specialized tank for hostile arctic environments. I like the idea of the weathered effect with the grey and bley mixed together. But I don't think it really works in this example in my personal opinion. One idea I'll be stealing for myself is the 2x2 turntable bases used as tiling detail, they look really cool. I like the mud-flaps too. Zopalin brings us his nifty lookin' Space SUV. Its got a nice compact and angular design. Nice bright colours too. Not much of a fan of the detached steering wheel, perhaps some levers on the pilot's sides would work better? And the groceries stuffed into the back is a great bit of detail.
Jerac's Nebulae Gas Miner successfully pulls off that lovely industrial feeling. One look at it and you can tell that its designed for versatility and function over aesthetics. I love the way that the bridge sticks out of its own little notch on the hull like a big greeble. And the thrusters look really good, nice arrangement of wheels there. And bonus points awarded for the lovely crisp and clear photography.

I guess after writing all that I'm even older now, still pretty young compared to a lot of others in the community though. Still old enough to put a cane, driving gloves and suspenders on emergency stand-by in the 'break glass in case of crankiness' box though.

*complaints/ exploding gnomes can be forwarded to tomb136 at gmail dot com

Moscow girls make me sing and shout

Finally, more entries are trickling in for the BZP Castle contest. I don't think the hype has ever been as big as it was for the Third contest (this being the fifth), possibly because the theme: build a spacefighter, was open and appealed to a large building fanbase. The whole scene was much busier back then too (see I wish I was a spaceman).

Speaking of contests, right now seems to be popular, the MicroSpace contest on flickr (see new Current Event links) particularly sparks my interest. It is because of it that I was scouring brickshelf for inspiration on little bits here and there. Thus, today's feature came to my attention. Rokko-class Space Battleship, colourful in that way that you know it can only come from our Asian friends. Striking in it's angles, it achieves a powerful silhouette - though I do think the bridge section is ten times as large as it need be, it just seems like a rather large "please, aim right here" type of bridge. And while it probably gives it that said detectable Asian look, I think it really detracts from the shape and makes the whole thing resemble a gun prop from Power Rangers.

Several other features could use 'sprucing': Engines are a little plain, they work but they could be better; and the two forward guns the same.

Picked up two things on the way home today. First was an Aquaraiders set, the Deep Sea Treasure Hunter. I love it. It represents to me the kind of models that LEGO should be producing for every theme: Small, relatively cheap, packed with good parts! I usually end up buying mostly those less than $10 CAD sets, just because I'm short on money most of the time, and if they were all like this I could die happy - right now. My other purchase was the new Of Montreal CD Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Pure goodness, and definitely not your typical listen. I'm going to see them in March, so I recommend them to anybody.

In other news, I transferred Masoko Tanga over to the new Blogger - so I'll be playing with the features for a while.