Street Spirit

I think I've gone through 7 WIP versions of a battle cruiser I've been working on since mid July. For some reason or another, I've hit this massive builders block and it's sticking around. I refuse to admit defeat and just scrap the whole project - it will get done. Today I'll blog the reason of my most recent scrap and rebuild, Jerac's Merchant Cruiser the Edouard Guillaume:

Firstly, the shape. This mix of a bulky sculpted look and a skinny grim look, with the main body and the nose being their respected points of assesment. Yet despite the contrasting styles throughout the design, it all flows and has a very coherent look. It's not a box. As some of my past WIPs had begun to look like, instead this features areas that look quite fragile and pull of a very spacey and futuristic look.
The countless bits of black greebs poking out from all unseeming locations also help with that spacey look. The look that the red [and white] is really just this outer shell of visually pleasing hull, and that underneath there's really a ship of chunky mechanical greebs. This 'shelled' look is a look I always like, it gives the ship a better sense of realism, that it was built from the inside out, and that it looks like it could actually be used as a ship.

I'll leave you now, for I've got a microscale ship to work on - and the inspiration is flowing through the veins. Carpe diem.

Okay here I go..

Firstly I’d like to thank my good friend Brenden for the invitation and cool intro dealy.
Secondly, well I’m 18, just finished school, sitting HSC exams in a month and currently juggling procrastination and study. Oh yeah and thinking what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. And I think I rank pretty high in the no-buildy club ranks at the moment. (I hope to change that soon though)
Anywho enough of my inane self-warbling, I’ve gone and picked out three of my favourite Space Mocs of the past week.

On B-shelf this morning I noticed these totally awesome Daleks and K-9 by Blakes7. If your reading this Blakes7, post some more pics!
Scale down the oversized Dalek-plunger-death-ray and I’d be willing to trade first born sons, vital organs and family members for one of those marvellous Daleks.
Then theres Jerac’s garbage truck/ smuggling ship which is totally cool, its got playabilty galore with all its greebs, hatches and doodads. I particually like the space-junk piled up in the back. Oh yeah and the steering vanes are an awesome touch.

I’m a sucker for Cowboy Bebop, and as a result Legoswami’s Hammerhead Moc has snagged my attention. It may only be a render but I think it would translate nicely into real bricks. There are a few areas that need a bit of work such as the claw, but beyond that minor nitpick the colours look crisp and the shape is sharp with some nice angles going on. Gotta love those propeller housing boosters and the hose-made harness in the cockpit to.

Thanks for reading this and its good to be posting here.

And then there was two.

Just a quick update today: I'd like to welcome Tom Buckland as my new blogging partner. I strive here to be different from the many other blogs out there, and one way I thought was to have different perspectives - besides having the schizophrenias, there was only one way to do this. I've known Tom online for a few years; he was one of the few great builders on Bzp when I built for .Space there, and he's the main reason why I'm at CS now.

What better way to get a different perspective then to have someone from the opposite end of the Earth! Albeit, we both recognize Her Majesty the Queen as head of state, but he's on beaches during winter while I huddle under the warmth of a scarf and a peacoat.

We've also got a good number of hours between us on the Greenwich Mean Time scale. You know what that means? 24 Hour Blogging! I jest.

Welcome Tom, and happy blogging. I'm sure he'll post a quickie introducing himself soon enough.

Sing to me, O great Muses

I've begun reading The Oydssey, having just finished The Iliad for english class. I've always loved greek mythology, but even more so now. The Iliad was just so powerful, each side beating back the other and winning glory. I suppose I was tainted by seeing the horrible movie of Troy, and I wish I hadn't seen it and it hadn't influenced me whilst reading. Diomedes was my favourite mortal, him and his crazy attacking Ares; Pallas Athena (Or Athene as my translation of the Oydssey names her) was my favourite of the gods, I had favoured Phoebus before, but I got angry at him for whisking away every Trojan hero who got on the downside of a fight within a cloud of mist - and for teaming up on Patroclus. O Patroclus, O Achilles; those Greek loved their men.

That was a fun tangent. In my mind I thought of the subject of today's post, which is Classic Space or the Classic Space Revial as it where; Classic Space to Classical, which reminded me of the Iliad. Anyways, without further delay.

A recent post on CS by a Chad Smith featured a Classic Space 2.0 MOC; essentially a Classic Space themed creation 'revamped' with modern pieces and building styles.

I was never really a fan of Classic Space. I suppose it was a 'had to be there' thing, and being a child of the 90's I'm a far shoot-off. I lived with Explorians and Pirates. That said, the look of this creation takes the classic retro look of CS and puts it into a context that Teen Fans, like myself, can get along with. The SNOTed grey wing base smooths out the studdly look of the CS ships and is probably the main factor in modernizing the design. Before I go into fine details, I should note that the other intriguing thing about this model was that although it was based upon the same idea it's still very much different from Paul Hanson's Neo-Classic Space, seen in the second picture of this post below.

I found the Neo-Classic Space a few months back, and it was the first time I felt the feelings I'd described in the above paragraph. It took an outdated CS design and brought it forward in time. But still, it's very different from Chad Smith's. Chad's featured a less classic looking canopy and cockpit design, though his engines were a toss back to CS. Paul's features still a more retro shape to it, while Chad's feels more like a streamlined bullet train with wings.

As I look at both of them in comparison now, I guess that Paul's is much more of an updated technique only and the shape and feeling still looks retro; Chad's on the other hand comes through on both sides, modernizing technique and style.

Pick and choose to your liking, either way this Classic Space revival look is really catching on with me, and who knows - maybe with some shopping I might pitch in.

Sing to me again, O great Muses, another time.

LGD#4 Under the Sea!

The latest Lego General Disscussion (LGD) contest as come to an end! I seem to have won again, though it was much closer this time around and I think there were others who desevered to win more than I - but don't question the mob. The theme was simply to build an undersea craft or base that could survive the deep depths of the ocean. Unfortunatly most things ended up looking more like spacecraft then submarines, but there was a few select entries that really orchestrated the theme.

The Coralier Deep Sea Exploration vessel was built by Justin Long, and is a great representation of the theme. To overcome the overall spacey look he simply made it look like a fish. Simple, yet oh so effective. It looks like something that would be the villian's vehicle of choice in a humorous spy movie.
The side greebles are on of my favourite parts, the use of smooth tiles gave it a more robust look; greebs usually look cool but you are left wondering why such equipment would be left to the elements (space, as it was) ? Here it seems that the greebs are build for being outside the craft.
Great build. Looks like a fish, acts like a fish (Chomp-Jaw Action!), so it must be a fish. Came a close second place, my pick for winner.

In the Sea Bases section we have Sea Station NAMOR. Built by Ean Henninger, Arpy as we know him, NAMOR is "one of several undersea bases designed to gather information about marine life and topography." It's a box on the outside, and judging that that was all to be seen on the entry pic during voting it was probably a cause of Arp's low vote count. Frankly, if they'd seen the inside he'd have kicked ass. Aside from the wicked NAMOR type on the exterior, it's a box. On the interior though he's got everything but the friggin' kitchen sink. Wait, he's got that too. The best part of course is the big red button, no base is complete without a button you should never touch.




Lastly there's mine own entry. The KSS Alexandria was a testing platform for technology that was to be eventually used in space. Built under the new and mysterious banner of the Astra Foederati. Really, it's the biggest thing I've built and 76 studs and it suffers; part supplies ran low, and that created some rough areas. On top of that, I've never really build a minifig scale ship to house more than one person, so it was building in an entirely new field. I do like how it turned out, it looks like a sub and that's all I was really going for. She won me my second LGD, though less deserved than the first it won by people's choice. Perhaps it marks a new page in my building, maybe we'll see more and more larger craft from me. Look for more of the Astra Foederati, that's for sure.