Death is the Road to Awe (dancing with myself)

Sorry for the lack of posts from me, I went on vacation. I didn't build much over the summer, threw out some stuff at the end, but now I'm in school and the building is grinding to a halt. But, I have been working on the website! You may have noticed the header change here to better fit in with the main page. So check out http://masokotanga.unicornbreak.com to see the intro page that took me much longer than it should have! Both sections are up, however the extent of both is limited. The galleries all look fine for me, but apparently the font didn't embed because whenever I view a gallery on another computer all the writing is 'off'. Sigh. The Art section of the new website is sauntering along, the galleries there will be similar but different in presentation. Making a website is quite the frustrating project, and unlike the guys at Next-Gen Design I don't have Kepplah to code monkey for me. Also, watch 'The Fountain', buy the soundtrack, and die happy.

This post has been mulled over for a while, so I'm not going to give much of the average variety. No, today's update will run more like The Histories than any sort of review show. Today I'm going to look at my preferred topic, Microspace, in retrospect. A search on Lugnet of 'Micro' and 'Space' comes up with a few topics reaching back 11 years, with MOC topics showing up around 9 years and the first with pictures still accessible at 7 years ago. There's a topic from Jon Palmer talking with Mark Sandlin about what would become Zemi's SHIP Gallery (also 7 years ago), 6 years ago Bryce McGlone talks about a Japanese page of micro-mecha originally link to by a fellow by the name of David Perry - the page has since moved and my amazing ability to not understand the Japanese language leaves me to think said content is long gone.
This seems to be the main problem with looking this far back into the LEGO community's past without any real strategy or tangible sources; links dry up and folders are lost to the ages. However, one sees the names of those who are quite famous in the community today, Mladen talking about some micro-mecha, a link to a page once containing some works from Ken Takeuchi. I guess that is one problem of not being in community back then.
I think microspace has always been at least the hidden passion of some LEGO builders, the more popular solution is to build space ships in scale to Mini-figures, this gives a better sense of realism and allows for a pretty detailed interior - featuring spacemen. But somewhere, someone never has enough pieces to build their dream boat in scale to a mini-figure. What do you do? One way to realise the vision, at least partly, is to build it at a reduced scale. While I wouldn't say microscale was a bastard child of the space community (it was liked) it never garnered any glory or popularity until it's first mention on the Lugnet .Space Timeline: "Paul Baulch takes microfig scale to a whole new level". These are among my favourite all time LEGO creations, and the most inspiring: The Lance of Athena, and The Empyrean Flame. I think any space builder who knows which end of a drill bit to use knows at least one of those names and the creation behind it. Those two ships really gave microscale a name, and started a slow rise in microspace building. They were built a while ago if you judge it against a time-line of the community - against a time-line of LEGO, the revolution of more shaped slopes had come, though not to the extent we enjoy today. As it was, the Lance did something that few had really seen with any larger build (whatever scale it may be): it had shape. This wasn't your everyday box with decorations of Greebs and guns, this was the real deal. Both are huge, representing an enormous investment in parts seen most effectively in the repetition of numerous types of slopes. Both the Lance and the Flame are great milestones in Microspace, and though techniques may have improved you could argue that we've never really seen anything of their stature since.
Things become a little harder to trace in a timeline from here, I turn to the search engine on Classic-Space to see what comes up. There's a few results that talk about micro-gravity and renders, a few small ships by Sastrei, some of my own earlier attempts. Over all there's some interest in mircoscale but nothing monumental.
So the next great piece I found was the micro dioramas of Mark J. Stafford. Great because they were an entire setting of micro, one could see how different pieces interacted with each other and in turn create a better sense of scale between them all. The Octan Refinery does a few things: it shows us the great extent greebles can have on micro, they're not the same as greebs at minifig scale but work to convey more robust industrial workings of a ship (or anything else); it also shows the effective use that simple slopes can be put to to achieve shape. Baulch's big work showed this to some extent, but the size of his two more well known ships defeated this aspect.
The refinery seems to have opened up a new can of Microscale, and the summer of 2006 is filled with wondrous creations from a plethora of builders: Peter Reid, and Justin Vaughn. It was about this time, spring '06, that I began to try and microscale in earnest. I'd been building for a few years now, but it wasn't until Mike Yoder came on the scene that I really wanted to try and be better. I think Mike said once that it was some of my microscale that helped inspire him to build microspace himself, so I felt obliged to try and offer some friendly competition when he floored me with his awesome building skills. The result of this was the Lancaster, the first in a series of three capital ships that were an on-going experiment for me. I feel like sometimes I build in stages, currently I'm trying to design civilian ships and see what space is like from a non-military view. When I built the Lancaster I was trying to build a capital ship - what does a ship need to be a flagship? It must be big, powerful, but must be a multi-role ship. But every ship needs to have some focus to it, otherwise it's slightly good at everything but very good at nothing. After the Lancaster was the Emperius, now with focus on a carrier and long range weaponry. It was still missing something, and I grasped for over half a year to find the right design. I was no longer sure what it was I was looking for however. Mike continued to kick ass, and the building genre was growing (and growing). When I finally pumped out the Eos, after I think seven separate attempted builds, I felt that I reached a milestone. The Eos itself was a pretty shapeless ship, and yet somehow I still admire its beauty - I achieved with it a great advancement in my skills concerning its individual parts, even if as a whole it was visually disengaging. But as I pushed my limits with larger ships, a new builder was experimenting with more manageable sizes: Spook. When I first saw Spook's microscale it was a little chunky and uninteresting, but his skills grew quickly and he soon surpassed me with both style and skill.
Microscale as a building genre was now quite established and diverse. Content that the style had picked up, I turned back to my own progression as a builder. I had achieved what I wanted in terms of technique, so I turned to experimenting with shape. I had quite a few stagnant ideas sitting around from my quest for the Eos, so I knew where to start. I wanted big guns, and classic style. This came together in the Argos, which of all my ships contains the most striking shape - especially for it's size. By now everyone was looking to try their hand at a microscale design, but it wasn't the typical fad bandwagon - it was a much slower build up and obviously is more open-ended than any fad. Lukas, J5N, not to mention Nnenn who had been building the scale for some time now. There was/is even talk about collaborating a microscale space base for conventions, along similar ideals of Moonbase; and rise of a special flickr group, one which breathes on a regular basis.

And there it is, a small history of Microspace. A little bias, and probably missing a lot, but there it is. The interesting thought I'd like to leave you with is this: What will the next generation write on this subject? Who will be remembered as doing what and what models in specific will earn respect as the time goes by. I'm sure there were more microspace builders back in Baulch's fame, but I wasn't there and now we see the things that get remembered.

Pushing the Sky

Many apologies for the delay, my Internet connection has always been similar to that old couple in the beaten up flintstones-era car dragging a caravan at a whopping speed of 30 in the fast lane. Well that was my Internet, but now imagine that same car but the caravan is full of bricks and that the wheels mysteriously vanished a couple hundred miles ago. In short, 20.0 kbs Dial-up is a curse so terrible and vile that I wouldn't even dare bestow it upon my worst enemy and I miss my 40.kbs. Anywho, just yesterday I got to do something I've always been longing to do, I got into a plane which then climbed to about ten thousand feet and then the door opened and I stepped out of the side of it onto the little platform and jumped. Skydiving's a completely amazing and disorientating experience, nothing like weightlessness but probably as close to it as you can get without spending a few hundred thousand dollars I reckon.

Anyway, onto the Lego, the lame-parts space-defence contest deadline has been extended to the 23rd of September which is good news for both the lazy and those who had a legitimate excuse. (who are also lazy) Be sure to check out the competition as there's some fantastic entries.

Luke's Wipeout inspired Orbit Racer is undeniably blocky but I think that's a main part of its charm. It's been quite a while since I've played Wipeout so I'm assuming the hinged panels on the wings are either Airbrakes or maitience hatches but whatever they are they're a fairly nifty and practical addition. I like the cockpit choice but I feel that the nose could be a little sharper. Peter Morris's Wraith has got a nice nose on it and some neat looking thrusters but the wings look a little uncoordinated. Kind of looks like a Star Wars version of a Wraith Dart from Stargate which makes it a good wing-man or adversary to the Buzzhawk which is also by Peter. The gears as thrusters arrangement looks really good as the gears do a way better job here than any cylinder, axel or wheel could. I love the mowhawk but I'm sure the blasters could do with some fattening up. In a similar vein we have the Jethawk from Adam Nies, it's got a nice colour scheme and I really love those compact winglets and their accompanying blue tipped thrusters. The Grey Gosling by Roy T Cook looks like some kind of bizarre amalgamation, it's a ship with a front like a semi-trailer and a rear end like and grey fluffy cloud, which is actually pretty cool so go check it out.

I've heard plentiful praise awarded to the Pc game Crimson Skies in the Space community so I finally gave in and picked it up. If you haven't heard of it, it's a Flight-Combat Pc game set in an alternate 1937 where nations and continents have been split into warring factions and where sky pirates and lawmen roam the friendly skies in a wide assortment of blimps, zeppelins and bizzaro fighters. I finally buckled and picked it up just yesterday but unfortunately it won't work properly for me as it doesn't get along with Nvidia graphics cards.
Problems regardless the combination home & hanger Zeppelins in Crimson Skies struck me as beautiful things both in design and concept and would be pretty amazing in Lego form if done well. I did some sleuthing and discovered that it doesn't take much research to learn that Lego Zepplins are fairly rare and illusive beasts. There are a handful of smaller ones but there's only one big one out there and that's Ash's rendered Daryabar. My research also confirmed my initial assumption that there are too many words for them, zeppelins, airships, dirigibles or a blimp or whatever you want to call them. Back to the first point, big blimps are in short supply but there's slightly more smaller ones out there thanks to that rare Adventurers balloon peice that's restricted to modest small Zepplins due to it's size. It's fairly obvious why there's a shortage of Airships, one being the obscurity of the aircraft and the second being all in the challenge of tackling the balloon and making it look good. You can't just sweep the problem under a convenient balloon shaped rug, because after all a Zepplin balloon would just look like a strange looking caravan wouldn't it? The midsection or waist of a big balloon could be easily done as with plates and click hinges to produce a big hexagonal cylinder preferably with tiles over its surface to make it nice, smooth and balloon like. That's the easy part done, the hard part lies in capping off the ends off smoothly. Take the Darybar's ends for example, they've been capped but the technique used to cap them doesn't look very balloon like.
Moving onto new ground there's two Mocs that I know of out there that aren't Zeplins but similar to the original Crimson Skies multipurpose Zepplin vein, those being Adrian Drake's Dewy and Nathan Proudlove's Mistral. The thing I like about the Mistral is that it has a ton of great details like the spikes surrounding the gunner the mass of pipes and of course not forgetting the bike sitting on the flight deck and those lovely big steam boilers. (Huzzah for Roborider wheels!)
The Mistral proves it's worth as a lovely steampunk craft but on the more whimsical side of the divide there's the Dewy which serves as the giant roasted chicken fighter-carrier of the skies. Like the Mistral, the Dewy has a great amount of detail both exterior and interior and looks great. The large scale application of the built up plate technique used to build the hull is simply fantastic. Perhaps this same technique would be perfect for the balloon on a big airship?

Now come on people, get your building caps on and let's see some great Lego Airships!

Wicked and Weird

I recently journeyed to see Transformers, I know it's been out for a while now but my laziness is beside the point. It was allright, some unessacary silly bits mixed in with some really great bits and visual candy and maybe a wee bit too long but very enjoyable none-the-less. Afterwoods I got back home at about two 'o clock and immediately started rummaging around my room for the G1 and G2 transformers I owned as a kid. Unfortunately, Lady time has not been kind to them as they're all missing more than their fair share fair of various guns, limbs and other choking hazards. Regardless, they're still great for swooshing around ones desk with the all important accompanying engine & shooty sound effects even if they look like they've all been mugged.

Speaking of Transformers, Florea Adrian showcases his amazing Decepticon Shellshock Moc. I've always admired Lego Transformers, I think it goes with out saying that a lot of skill and patience must be invested in the model to ensure a balance of quality between the two forms. There's not much I can say about this that hasn't already been said. The Halftruck is a lot better than any Halftruck moc I've ever seen and would look completely at home in a WW2 diorama. The detail is brilliant as the front grill and towbar looks simply outstanding and I love the rear turret gun.The robot mode is quite awesome but it doesn't really have much character to it. Maybe that's just because the aesthetics of the more realistic and sleeker style of movie transformer don't lend themselves to as much character as the old bulky transformers from days of old.

One Moc that is simply not getting near enough love is Kev Levell's Hornet smuggling ship. It's easy to guess where the inspiration for this ship came from but I think there's plenty of variance and original touches in the design to diferententriate it from everyone's favourite Firefly class transport. For example the wedge slope forks on the wing tips are a homage to the Reaver ships in the series which had the same kind of thing going on. Though I think the engines are a little weak as to me they look more like last minute additions rather than a central part of the design. It would have been much better if the booster was incorporated into that lovely round and bulbous bee-rear-end. Despite the lack of thrusters on it I do like the stinger on the end as it adds a tiny bit of character to the ship which is good. The landing pads look really great but unfortunately due to they're size and complexity it doesn't look like they're retractable or fold-up-able which unfortunately means minus minus points in my book. This ship doesn't disappoint with smuggling compartments as it has a fair few. That Golden C-3po that's hiding in one surprised me as I had no idea that TLC had started making them chrome gold plated as opposed to the dull pearl-cream C-3po's of the past.

From Jerac a strange looking mechanical beasty known simply as Mechos or the Biterer. I don't know weather it's supposed to be organic or man-made but to me it looks vaguely like somekind of Alien Hybrid from the Alien fims that happens to be packing a pretty wicked pair of dentures that could easily fit around an elephant. Not forgetting the simple but effective red eyes that perfectly add alot of menace. I really like the design of those flat feet too, they're neato.
Zach brings us his unusual and interesting Microscale siege ship, The Oktober. All around it's a nice simple working design but maybe a bit too plain. I really like the orange on this but it's more of random splodges rather than a focused coulorscheme. I think a large scale ship would be great with an orange paintjob like this. As it's a colour that's usually confined to small creations and not given large scale application due to to uncommon nature of bulk orange bits I think. The slopes look nice on this but the bridge sticks out like a sore thumb and really needs a bit of trimming down and sleeking up. The engine design is really boring, dead boring. Much could be done to improve it, even a few bits of pipe and tube running alongside the axles would do visual wonders.
Yet another Slam variant, this one by Sir Bugge is shrunken down to pocketsize.Excellent use of that Dino midsection, it fits in quite smoothly. I really like the big nose mounted minigun on this, the little dog in the corner with the nasty bark. I can just imagine these things flying in formation a big swarm, like big metallic piloted space locusts.

The widespread occurrence of a global Lego building phenomena hit me the other day, one of which to my knowledge, shockingly goes without community acronym or title. (Gasp..) There it is, somekind of mind bogglingly complex part that you've been working on to perfect for the last few hours. One more piece and it's finished, the tiniest bit of excess pressure results in profanity when the Moc flings itself into multiple corners of the room. Usually the Profanity and shattering are a few seconds apart, the common builder will sit in dead stillness with whats left of the shattered remains lieing in his or her hands. It takes a few seconds of realisation and eyebrow twitching before the profanity kicks in. There is also another variant of this that has the same end result but occurs when one tries to alter something on an allready perfectly good finished model. There is no name for this global occurance and there is no cure, we're in the dark here people..

There's a Starman in the sky

You could say this has been a turbulent week for the LEGO community, the ebb and flow of Brickshelf and the colourful opinions of the users who - used - it. The current outlook is that brickshelf will be available again at a price of $5/month. While I'm not one to object to the site wanting money - I don't want to imagine the bandwidth it sucks up! - I think the price is a little steep, especially if the site is to stay much the same way it is now, i.e.: without any real features. Suffice to say, though my opinion of that site and realization of its importance to the LEGO community, I don't think I continue to use it.


However, either way we must go on. So here's some LEGO courtesy of flickr galleries. First up here is some microspace by user J5N, some glorious dark grey and green ship and a robust looking space station. The space station was a response to Mike Yoder's own Space station, however is probably a little less suitable for any sort of standard than Mike's. I'll again emphasize the robustness of the station, it looks like some sort of piece you might find in an engine. Aside from the station, J5N has a small micro Strikeforce, an Advance Frigate, and the beginnings of a light carrier. It was actually the small ship that sits along side the space station that inspired my own current freighter project. It's funny how certain builders will build with specific colours, even if just for a few projects, and then those colours become something of a symbol for their building. If you see any microscale ships in yellow, most people would probably guess Yoder is behind them. Likewise, whenever I see dark grey and green I think of those industrial and somewhat gothic angles of J5N's microspace.


Next up is a ship from Moyblik blogger Lukas. Not particularly known for microscale, he proves that he has a wicked skill for the scaled building and a nigh topped colour blocking and coordination skill. The Asclepius is essentially an ambulance for space ships, named after the Greek and Latin demigod of healing and medicine. Definitely an interesting concept and something quite original. On to the construction, I think it's one of Lukas' best builds. The pointy shaping of the stripes is by far my favourite feature and really gives the ship a better sense of third-dimension. Carefully placed antennae and greebles add to the realism without becoming messy, and the lobster claw front bay is simply wicked.


Now we have Mike Yoder's microscale capital ship the Empire Son. Measuring in a 98 studs the Empire Son is nearly SHIP classification. The long and slender yellow body is decorated with white stripes and many docking arms and turrets, a few stickers, and an emblem from the good ol' 1999 Naboo Starfighter. It's pretty well armed too, it actually made me think if any of my ship's would stand up in a fight! I should mention that the thumbnail picture on the right here is actually of an earlier WIP version, but does however link to the finished MAJ gallery, I'm just a little sceptical of brickshelf and maj at the moment, probably without reason, so I'm just going to keep all the thumbnail's from elsewhere. Mike borrows from a number of sources with this ship, a small gunboat from Nnenn, and a turret from Simon Tzidik. Over all an interesting build, taught me a few things I have or will be sure to steal in the future.


Last is a bit of microscale from Tony Barth. Built in that Ken Tucky, Soren style. There's only one picture of this so far, so there isn't a whole lot to comment on, but this has wonderful shaping and colour blocking, and that greebley section near the aft end is love at first sight. It's a wonderful example of the angled brick hull technique, which I never have been able to use quite right. Excellent model, I hope for more.

Peace out, and remember to wait out the storm before jumping ship!

Something Blue

Today on Brickshelf just one thing, one single and solitary message declaring the site discontinued. This isn't really a surprise to me, it's an event that I'm sure many of us have been expecting to occur at some unknown dark date for a long time now. Considering that B-shelf has been operating for at many years now as a free service with up only, advertisement, donations and upgraded member accounts to supplement massive running costs. Considering all that lot, I think it had a fairly good run. However, it was quite an rude and unfair move nuking the site without prior warning. A lot of history has been lost, the work of the many builders who have come and gone over the years turned into mere digital dust. This whole dilemma is going to have huge ramifications on the community, Brickshelf was at the dead centre of the vast Lego community web. What happens next is totally uncertain and unpredictable. Who knows, it might be down for good or might only be temporary the details are unknown. Best not to brood over unfortunate news or the probervial spilt milk, time for this weeks Moc sightings.

Peter Reid has built quite an interesting bot, powerful and intimidating yet also thin and frail and vunerable to the slighest breeze but oh-so gracefull. There's some awesome parts useage going on, the joint-tech is wonderful and I love the droid bodies on the forearms and you've just gotta love those deadly dexterous razor-tipped hands. Great hips too. Shame about the scrawny exposed ankles though, or the Achilles ankles in this bot's case. Not forgetting the the show off Red Vader helmets which are extremely cool and as one would guess as factory mistakes, also extremely rare.

This cargo carrying hover-skiff by Lego Kid strongly reminds me of the classic Rockraiders, albeit Rockraiders matured slightly with a greater focus on a streamlined and industrialised form. I really like the inclusion of the tail lights and the plentiful cargo storage on this but I feel that the front windscreen could be better implemented, either by removing it, refining it or removing at all together. Now that's something cool I'd like to see, Rockraiders reborn and as built by the fan community.
Be sure to check out Spook's newest Microscale creation, the Spinal Fury. It's a fantastic Alien-like microscale model that boasts a ton of character combined with a wonderful asymmetrical shape with great colouration. Not forgetting the name which is in its self is quite awesome. I particularly like the quad-pronged antenna setup. Quite unusual and attractive. Thought has even gone into the stand, it looks very sleek and elegant.

Next up two Moc cover versions or tribute versions, where the individual builder builds their versions of Moc's that have been previously built by another builder. A fantastic but rarely executed idea, it's always interesting to see the variations in individual style and technique manifested in the end result. Peter Morris has manifested this fairly nippy looking white ship which was based on Jamie Neufeld's Gunraven. It's a nice ship overall, but I'm not familiar with the original and I'm not overly sold on this remake. In both the original and the cover version I feel that in some small areas the slope work has been slightly overdone. Slopes are your friend most of the time, they can smooth things out a hundred percent or they'll just provide a poor mask for the blockyness. However on the remake, I'm quite partial to the simple but very effective rows of 1x1 slopes as heatsinks on the sides which look really good. Speaking of engines, I also like the the cones posing as maneuvering thrusters just behind the thuster. A quad thruster arrangement instead of the twin would look great, shame the Travis-brick doesn't have an inverted-stud brother so four thruster-cones could be accommodated instead.

Also from Peter Morris we have the Bat-Slam, of course based on Chris Giddens original classic model but as pimped out by Batman in his spare time. Very cool. I really like the way the wings fold down, makes me think of a dark and lofty barn in the middle of a dark and stormy night, inside; rows upon rows of these Bat-Slams hanging from the ceiling racks like bizarre Vampire-tie fighters ready for the taste of blood. (perhaps oil instead?)

Last but not least Mirandir, aka Johan Karlsson has built this fun and fast little Classic-Space style one-seater hovercraft or buzzcraft as I prefer. I like the ladder as an engine grill on this one and the landing rig on it is strangely quite cute. Nice work!