Issue 78 • March/April 2023
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Amado Pinlac James Zhan Instructions and more!
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Issue 78 • March/April 2023
Contents From the Editor....................................................2
People Alexander Harber’s Johnny 5..............................................................3 AC Pin: Still Blooming!...................................................7 Designing a Dome.......................................11 James Zhan’s Flower Gallery................................................13 Birgitte Jonsgard From Chapels to Flowers!.........................17
Building BrickNerd Instructions: Daffodil..............................................................23 Nathan Hake: Building BIG!...................................................28 Brian Costello:: Building Houston.........................................34 Pat Hough: Building a Story.............................................39 Dan Rubin’s P.A.C.H................................................................44 Jeff Schroeder’s Landing on Alpha Centauri.....................48 Minifigure Customization 101: Ugh, I smell like a human..........................52 You Can Build It: MINI Vakbeor Frigate..................................57
Community Bantha Bricks: Daniel Eisenhauer’s Starship Fleet........66 Last Word.............................................................79 Classic AFOLs.....................................................80
From the Editor: Hi! It’s spring here at BrickJournal, so we decided to pick some flowers! Flower builders AC Pin, Birgitte Jonsgard and James Zhan are here to show some neat botanical builds. We got some other stuff too, so if you want to read about a robot, for example, just look to the right.
March/April 2023 Issue 78 Publisher John Morrow
Editor in Chief Joe Meno Guest Editor Shelly Corbett
BrickNerd and Assistant Editor Dave Schefcik Photography Editor Geoff Gray Proofreader John Morrow
Japanese Bureau Editor Nathan Bryan West Coast Editors Ashley Glennon
Bantha Bricks Correspondent Steven Smyth
Contributors: Jared Burks, Brian Costello, Christopher Deck, David Eisenhauer, Nathan Hake, Alexander Haber, Pat Hough, Birgitte Jonsgard, AC Pin, Dan Rubin, Jeff Schroeder, Steven Smyth, Inez Vasquez, Geoff Vlcek, James Zhan, and Greg Hyland. Many thanks to the websites who have served as mirrors for BrickJournal: www.LUGNET.com, www.Brickshelf.com, www.peeron.com, www.brickmodder.net www.rustyclank.com
About the Cover: AC Pin gives us a spring bouquet of flowers. About the Contents: Another flower from AC Pin!
Brick Rodeo, a LEGO fan event in Texas, is represented here, by more than a few builders. There’s also more amazing creations from Bantha Bricks and a couple of instructions that are really nice! So relax, take a look and get inspired. Have fun! Joe Meno, editor P.S. Have ideas or comments? Drop me a line at brickjournal@gmail.com. I’m open to suggestions and comments and will do my best to reply. P.P.S... Yes, BrickJournal has a website — www.brickjournal.com! Twitter? Yep, there too — http://twitter.com/brickjournal. Facebook? Yup — http://www.facebook.com/group. php?gid=58728699914&ref=mf. Or you can scan the bottom codes with a QR reader!
Website
Glossary AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) AFFOL (Adult Female Fan of LEGO) TFFOL (Teen Female Fan of LEGO) NLSO (Non-LEGO Significant Other) MOC (My Own Creation) TLG (The LEGO Group) BURP (Big Ugly Rock Piece) LURP (Little Ugly Rock Piece) POOP (Pieces—that can be or should be made—Of Other Pieces)
Subscriptions
SNOT (Studs Not on Top) LUG (LEGO Users Group) LTC (LEGO Train Club) MECHA (a large armored robot on legs, typically controlled by a pilot seated inside) MECH (a large piloted combat robot) DARK AGES (usually teen years, when you drift away from building) STUDS OUT (building where the studs on bricks face the viewer)
BrickJournalTM issue 78, March/April 2022 (ISSN 1941-2347) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BrickJournal, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Joe Meno, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. BrickJournal Editorial Offices: 6701 Coachman Drive, Springfield, VA 22152, USA. E-mail: admin@brickjournal.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $73 US, $111 Elsewhere, $29 Digital Only, and can be purchased at www.twomorrows.com. LEGO ®, TECHNIC, MINDSTORMS, Belville, Scala, BIONICLE, ExoForce, Mars Mission, World City, and other LEGO theme lines are trademarks of the LEGO Group of companies. Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm. All articles, photos, and art © BrickJournal Media, LLC, TwoMorrows Publishing and the respective writers, photographers, and artists. All rights reserved. All trademarked items are the property of their respective owners and licensees. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
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BrickJournal and its staff would like to thank the LDraw community for the software it makes available to the community, which we use for making all of the instructions and renderings in this magazine. We would especially like to thank Kevin Clague for his continued upgrades of the LPub tool that is a part of the LDraw suite. For more information, please visit http://www.ldraw.org.
People
Alexander Harber’s
Johnny 5 Article and Photography by Alexander Harber
My name is Alexander Harber. I’m a Solutions Engineer that devises digital marketing strategies for industrial and manufacturing companies. I’ve been building with LEGO bricks on an uninterrupted basis since 1994, when I was five years old! For almost as long, I’ve also been a fan of science-fiction and fantasy stories, and they’ve been very influential on my writing and drawing hobbies, as well as on my LEGO creations. When I saw the science-fiction film Short Circuit during my bout with chicken pox in the second grade, I was amazed by the so-called “S.A.I.N.T.” (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport) robots and their soul-given member, Number 5. Even though Number (later Johnny) 5 was just an elaborate movie prop, I wished that such a machine could be real, and in order to make that wish come true, I tried recreating Johnny 5 with LEGO bricks. In the mid-1990s, I lacked the skill and the right types of bricks to make even a serviceable rendition of the robot, so I turned to other LEGO projects. But I never forgot, and always kept “a large, functional LEGO model of Johnny 5” at the top of my MOC wish list. Fast forward 25 years and I finally got to the place where I surmised I had enough bricks and enough practice building other designs in LEGO to give Johnny 5 another try. I started with building the head, as that is the most distinctive aspect of the character, and what you see the most of in the movie whenever Johnny is onscreen. Johnny 5 ready for action!
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Observant fans of the film will notice that Johnny 5 looks different from the other four S.A.I.N.T. robots. This is due to him losing all of the armor casing that surrounds his face and head-mounted sensor array early in the film. To reflect this and give another option for display, I built two heads, each around a ball socket joint brick so that they could be easily swapped. The “Number 5” head has more tiles and panels covering up his lip lights and sensor array, while the “Johnny 5” head removes all of these pieces to reveal a friendlier face underneath. To date, my Johnny 5 model has only been shown at Brick Rodeo 2022 in Austin, Texas. In this age of massive sci-fi and fantasy franchises dominating the hearts and minds of most kids and adults, I didn’t expect more than a modest appreciation for Johnny 5, so I was pleasantly surprised when many people literally lit up when they saw Johnny 5 waving out to them. People adored him, with the bulk of them all recounting their memories of seeing the film and its sequel in theaters, quoting some of Johnny’s best lines (e.g. “Hey laser lips!”), and telling me they were going home to get their kids to watch the movie for the first time. Even after winning one of Brick Rodeo’s “Creations of Note” awards for Johnny 5, I would say meeting so many people and bonding over this funny little ’80s movie and its robotic star were the most memorable parts of the entire convention! Currently, I’m working out some ways to make the motorized tread assembly more robust so that it will be easier to drive Johnny 5 around. There are also variant arms and an all-purpose toolbox that Johnny 5 has in Short Circuit 2 that would give him a new look for future events. At any rate, Johnny 5 will be alive and definitely return for Brick Rodeo 2023 in Sugarland, Texas! Johnny 5 as seen at Brick Rodeo 2022 in Austin, Texas.
Johnny 5’s creator, Alexander Harber, with his creation.
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Johnny 5’s torso and shoulders are seen here.
People
Hidden Garden Redux.
The greatest opportunity afforded to AFOLs to have their creations on exhibit at the LEGO House began in the year 2017 when the invites were sent out worldwide. The final count was thirty-four AFOLs, and I was one of them selected to bring my seven MOCs to The Home Of The Brick in September 2017, and had them displayed for a full year until September 2018. The selection process was different for year 2018 through the contest ‘Help Decorate The LEGO House’ hosted through LEGO Rebrick. I submitted several floral MOCs that were vastly different in design and concept from the previous seven MOCs on display. Five winning entries were installed in September 2018, and during the installation, the LEGO House design team requested that the Flower Box from the previous year be extended for another year, as they mentioned that the MOC had the most positive feedback from the staff and visitors alike.
AC Pin:
Still Blooming! Article and Photography by AC Pin
Mother’s Day blossoms.
Winter pinecones.
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Walking Iris James’ comments: The Brazilian Iris is a beautiful and elegant flower with a faint fragrance. It blooms from spring to summer and has a growth cycle (flowering to growing small seedlings that extend forward under the flower to growing new plants) that make the flower appear like it is walking. As a result, the Brazilian Iris has the nickname of Walking Iris in its native land.
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People
Birgitte Jonsgard:
From Chapels to Flowers! Article by Joe Meno Photography by Birgitte Jonsgard
Birgitte Jonsgard, a high school biology teacher, has a LEGO story like so many other builders. In childhood, she loved building her own things. For her, LEGO has always been about building your own things. She remembers very few sets from her childhood, as she would rapidly ‘set free’ the bricks from their sets and be used over and over for her creations. She left the bricks behind when she became a teenager. However, in 2011, she came across some photos of MOCs online. These were models of well-known buildings in Oslo built by members of the Norwegian LUG Brikkelauget. She had no idea LEGO was used by adults in such advanced ways, and for her it was a revelation: “Liking LEGO and making models—this is the perfect hobby!” Her building interests include all kinds of things, but she keeps returning to architecture in different scales.
Birgitte’s Borgund stave church model.
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Birgitte’s coastal landscape layout.
When asked about where her ideas come from, Birgitte has no clear answer, even after time and consideration. It seems her ideas are recycled and recombined visual impressions. They can be anything, like random shapes, color combination, patterns, and objects. The time it takes for Birgitte to build a model can vary from ten minutes to two years. A small thing, well-planned and with all bricks within reach, can be done very quickly. Other models just keep growing. Some years ago, she started a coastal landscape in minifigure scale. New ideas kept coming, and she added more and more islands, buildings and scenes. After two years, it had become a monster, and even now there are still details to add. Birgitte’s time is usually spent more on planning a model than actually building it. Since the planning is focused on the visual design of the model, she draws out what she wants to build. When she is ready, building is started, solving practical building problems as she goes along. The design of the model may be adjusted to bricks available, but other times, Birgitte doesn’t want to compromise her original design. When that happens, she’ll do whatever it takes to get the exact right bricks in the right color. Birgitte’s hardest build was a model of Borgund stave church. It was a rather atypical build for her, as it was a rendition of a specific building, and it was crucial that the proportions and angles of the roofs were constructed correctly. It turns out that Borgund stave church has some very LEGO unfriendly angles, so joining the sloping roofs on the corners was a nightmare.
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A look at the entrance of Birgitte’s stave church.
Inspiration and...
The Jan van Hutsun painting that launched a MOC. The many flowers made for the bouquet.
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Building
Nathan Hake:
Building
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BIG!
Bio-Research Station 22 Commander’s Log:
For the past few years, this station could have been called a quiet or even dull backwater post. The projects we have worked on have had their share of successes and failures, but nothing unusual happened here until last night. Our sensors detected seismic activity that was too low for anyone to feel in the past month. We couldn’t pinpoint the source of the activity as it appeared to be moving. Readings were contradictory: there would be one source, or multiple sources. The Science Department had been analyzing the readings, until yesterday when we discovered the anomalies. A number of alien creatures had appeared that seem to be attacking the native flora and fauna. These creatures appear to correspond with the seismic activity and are breaking down the soil at a structural level. We are concerned with the rate of growth of the structures, and also if they will weaken the grounds supporting the station. Science and Engineering are studying the phenomena.
Building has been something Nathan Hake has been doing since childhood. He got his first LEGO set at the age of three, and 21 years later, hasn’t stopped. His creativity started at about the same time, with the LEGO sets he got growing up never staying together very long. It got to the point that his dad started gluing the sets together, but Nathan’s little fingers still managed to break them apart. He would spend hours looking through LEGO magazines just trying to figure out how sets were made and trying to replicate play features. He was always building something: cars, spaceships, buildings, Bionicles—anything, really. Whenever he got inspiration, he would just build. Bio-Research Station 22 is one of many creations by Nathan, a builder in New Zealand. Displayed at the 2022 Christchurch Brick show, the base of the layout was 2 meters by 1.2 meters. The tower stood at 1.3 meters high, making this the tallest build Nathan has done, as well as one of his largest. Nathan used one M (medium) motor for the black alien creatures to make them appear to be breathing. To completely light the layout, he used ten LEGO Power Functions LEDs, one classic LEGO LED unit for the flashing lights on the cargo ship, and seven LEGO Power Functions extension cables. All of this is powered by one Power Functions battery unit. One challenge Nathan enjoyed was hiding the components and keeping them easy to access, such as using a hidden button for the power and a hidden drawer for battery access. On display.
The size of the layout is seen here.
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What other projects are you working on? When I first built my Downtown Houston buildings, I didn’t have any lights in them—or any plans for lights. But when I brought it to its first con (Brick Rodeo 2021), I saw other people with lights, and it just made everything better. So I’m going back through my existing Houston buildings and adding lights. I got about halfway through by Brick Rodeo 2022. Then I ended up moving to central Texas this summer for my wife’s new job. So, I’ve just started unboxing it to get more lighting done. I am also working on another Houston building that I’m going to try to get done by Brick Rodeo 2023 in Houston. But I’m not sure if I’m ready to fully announce that one yet. I’ve been building Houston stuff for about three years now, so I’m looking forward to taking a break from that and working on something different. I have a couple other projects in mind/Studio, but I’m not sure when I’ll really start putting bricks into those. I grew up with model trains, so a couple of the ideas could hopefully find their way into the TBRR (Texas Brick RailRoad) layout someday. What advice would you give to beginning builders? Build what you enjoy building. It is a toy, after all. It’s supposed to be fun. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Micro Houston at Night
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Building
Pat Hough, an AFOL from Texas, displayed an untitled layout at Brick Rodeo 2022. While the creation was nameless, it was still pretty impressive, so I took a few moments to talk to Pat about the layout. Joe Meno: What are the inspirations behind your build? Pat Hough: The lava in my BR2022 MOC came from an observation that you don’t see too much red in a ‘typical’ (if that word can be applied) Classic Space MOC, with of course the exception of the red CS minifigs. Since I have a lot of red elements in my collection, I decided that lava would be the way to go. I began scouring the internet for pictures of MOCs with lava in them, in order to see what passed for molten rock in the eyes of other builders. After that, the MOC kind of built itself, inasmuch as I’m a bit of a logical-minded builder. I asked myself questions like “What color is the surrounding ground—the land without lava on it?” Here I decided upon tan (another unorthodox color for a Classic Space MOC), since I wanted to save mass use of light gray or LBG (light blue gray) for human-made objects like roads, buildings, and vehicles. The second question I asked myself was, “If there’s lots of lava around, what would the vegetation—if any—be like?” I gave myself some leeway here, since it was an alien planet. I decided on a rough ‘no-man’s land’ of about two to three inches from the edge of the lava crevasses, in indication of the intense heat which would prevent most vegetative growth. Further away than that, I started with olive green ‘clumps’, followed by lime and regular green bushes (6064) which were furthest away. I had planned to add both dark tan bushes and light-bluish gray three-leaf plants (30176) closer to the lava, but I couldn’t locate them
Pat Hough:
Building a Story Interview by Joe Meno Photography by Pat Hough
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Building
Dan Rubin’s Article and Photography by Dan Rubin
Dan Rubin is an AFOL based in the Washington, DC area who has been displaying at LEGO fan events such as Brickfair Virginia. His specialty is Space-oriented builds and layouts. For his latest set of models, he had an unlikely source of inspiration. Dan tells the story: As soon as I saw the new elephant head piece, I knew I wanted to build these MOCs. I just instantly wanted to see them as warrior elephant people. I ordered the heads from LEGO customer support. After a few months of waiting on orders (turns out, while they’re pre-bagged, the bag does not include the trunk!), I had these heads and started building. I initially envisioned one with an elephant gun (turning the tables on big game hunters). While I didn’t end up building that weapon, the concept of turning the tables on hunters/poachers remained. Of course, I had to make a pun with the name, so I decided to call them the P.A.C.H. as a acronym—they became the Poacher Assault Containment Herd. Their backstory is that they’re genetically engineered to be the ultimate protectors of endangered species from the poachers of the future—suited to the environment, gentle with the animals, ferocious defenders, and perfect memories.
Sarge is the first member of the herd that I built. Originally, it was going to be the only one, but I couldn’t resist “squading up.” Sarge is a veteran NCO who has seen her share of combat and injuries (hence the gold tusk). She’s always accompanied by the “L.T. Bird.”
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Harry is another long-time combat veteran. He was not engineered from modern elephant stock, but from recovered Wooly Mammoth DNA. He is unmatched in hand to tusk combat.
Goldie and Dumbo are both shock and awe specialists. Both are equipped with jet packs for short flights to get behind or above hunter emplacements and stop them in their tracks. Goldie’s armor is in traditional savannah summer colors, while Dumbo is equipped for marsh and grassland combat.
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Building
Jeff Schroeder’s
Landing on Alpha Centauri
Article and Photography by Jeff Schroeder and Joe Meno
A visitor.
An overview of the layout.
One of the builds at Brick Rodeo, a LEGO fan event in Austin, Texas, was an alien landscape. Titled Landing on Alpha Centauri, the landscape had a monorail winding through alien plants and trees. When the lights went out to show the lighted models and layouts, it became a place that was, well, alien.
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Jeff Schroeder was inspired by the movie Avatar to build this model, or rather, layout. Instead of a single model, Jeff built an entire environment that looks otherworldly in daylight. When the lights are turned off, his landscape becomes a neon-colored landscape, just like night time Pandora as seen by Jake in Avatar.
The landscape wasn’t an overnight effort, taking about three weeks to build, working eight hours a day to complete. Jeff had gotten back into building much earlier from a 12-year Dark Age. He restarted building at the age of 26, when Star Wars came out. He had figured certain parts had a phosphorous glow to them. These parts had colors like Transparent Neon Yellow, Transparent Neon Green, Transparent Medium Blue, Transparent Neon Orange, Coral, and now the new Neon Yellow. Jeff thought it might be cool to have a MOC that looked one way in normal light and totally different when the lights are out, which led him to think of Pandora.
Building the layout was an organic process. Jeff had a paper sketch of the basic layout he wanted. As a free-form builder, Jeff figured out things as he went. The lava flow was the first thing built, followed by the mountains and the monorail track. The hardest part of the layout was getting the trees and the lava flow to look the way Jeff envisioned. He had to spend a lot of time working with the trees to make sure they were transportable and didn’t fall apart as he moved the layout.
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Modifying San’s hair.
Making San’s necklace for the cape.
The last three pieces today took me back to Meshmixer, and I think they have the greatest impact and were fairly easy to create. I started with two LEGO hair pieces that I downloaded from LEOCad part number 92746 and 20595. Let’s start with the easier modification of the two, and that was for San’s hair. I could have used 92746 with only mild modifications, as she wears a cape and I would need to shorten this hair style. However, if you notice, the hair is a bit long and her hair is more windswept and shorter. I decided to use a plane cut to remove the excess hair and leave hers more pushed up and out. I clipped these areas, added some texture, and then added a circle with her little round medallion on it, and then cut a LEGO head out of the circle. By cutting the circle, this allows the hair to fit on the LEGO head.
San riding.
Next I created the cape and hood that San wears, by using 20595 as a base. I scaled it up fairly significantly as I thought it resembled the wolf fur or animal fur she wears. I used many of the same techniques as I used in the saddle and her hair piece. I then added the ears, necklace, and mask that I created in Fusion 360 (again, there has to be an easier way). I drew out the fur accent, as I wanted this to be bold in the 3-D print and was worried about losing the detail, so it looks bold in the Meshmixer images.
Making San’s cape and mask. The completed but unpainted mask and cape.
With these parts, I have a solid foundation to create these two figures and three animals from the film Princess Mononoke. In the next article, I will paint all the parts and design the art for the figures, completing all of the figures. Now it is time for quite a bit of 3-D printing. Here is hoping it all turns out as great as it looks in the 3-D programs.
Come back next issue for more Minifigure Customization! You can see Jared’s webpage by going to http://www.fineclonier.com/ or scanning this QR code!
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Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color) Qty Color Part 7 Light-Bluish-Gray 99563.dat 1 8 1
Dark-Bluish-Gray 30374.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 4070.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 47905.dat
1
Light-Bluish-Gray 22885.dat
1 2
Light-Bluish-Gray 3003.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 58176.dat
2
Light-Bluish-Gray 577b.dat
2 1 6 4 14 1 2 2 2
Dark-Bluish-Gray 55298.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3024.dat Black 6141.dat Trans-Light-Blue 6141.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 32028.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 32028.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3794b.dat
4
Dark-Bluish-Gray 3794b.dat
3
Black
6
Light-Bluish-Gray 35480.dat
2 4 2 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 3710.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 92593.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3022.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 18674.dat
1
Light-Bluish-Gray 87580.dat
2
Light-Bluish-Gray 99206.dat
1 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 3021.dat Light-Bluish-Gray u8200.dat
1 1 2
Light-Bluish-Gray 2445.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3176.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 50948.dat
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Dark-Bluish-Gray 61409.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 54200.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3665.dat Yellow 3665.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 11477.dat Yellow 11477.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 29120.dat
2
Light-Bluish-Gray 29119.dat
1 1 1 4 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 32803.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 32000.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 4274.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 75535.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 12825.dat
1 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 3070b.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3070b.dat
35480.dat
Description Tile 1 x 2 Chamfered with 2 Top Indentations Bar 4L Lightsaber Blade Brick 1 x 1 with Headlight Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Two Opposite Sides Brick 1 x 2 x 1.667 with Studs on 1 Side Brick 2 x 2 Cylinder Domed 1 x 1 x 1.667 with Bar Minifig Lightsaber Hilt with Bottom Ring Minifig Tool Screwdriver Plate 1 x 1 Plate 1 x 1 Round Plate 1 x 1 Round Plate 1 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 with Door Rail Plate 1 x 2 with Door Rail Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud Plate 1 x 2 with Round Ends and 2 Open Studs Plate 1 x 2 with Round Ends and 2 Open Studs Plate 1 x 4 Plate 1 x 4 with Two Studs Plate 2 x 2 Plate 2 x 2 Round with 1 Centre Stud Plate 2 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud Plate 2 x 2 x 0.667 with Two Studs On Side and Two Raised Plate 2 x 3 Plate 2 x 4 with Square Underside Studholes Plate 2 x 12 Plate 3 x 2 with Hole Slope Brick 3 x 4 x 0.667 Curved with 2 x 2 Cutout Slope Brick 18 2 x 1 x 0.667 Grille Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 Inverted Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 Inverted Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 with Cutout Left Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 with Cutout Right Slope Brick Curved 2 x 2 Inverted Technic Brick 1 x 2 with Holes Technic Pin 1/2 Technic Pin Joiner Round Tile 1 x 1 with Clip with Rounded Tips Tile 1 x 1 with Groove Tile 1 x 1 with Groove
You Can Build It MINI Build
MINI Vakbeor Frigate
Design and Instructions by Christopher Deck Hello everybody, and welcome to one of our highly coveted classic Star Wars mini model building sessions! Today we have prepared a spot-on capital ship from one of the latest Star Wars movies: the Vakbeor-class Frigate from Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. It was among the four capital ships of the Resistance seen during the long starfleet chase sequence in the movie. The ship’s front section consists of a very greebly core surrounded by rounded hull plating. It is connected to a bulky engine block by a narrow and more fragile looking beam. These design elements are similar to those of a Nebulon-B Frigate. While the Vakbeor Frigate is missing the Nebulon-B’s comb-like structure below the front part, it has a large fin below the rear part with additional engines. In order to include as many details and unique shape elements that enable a high recognition value of the frigate, the resulting mini model reaches a piece count of more than 170 parts. There is an inverted stud on the underside that allows for a balanced attachment of a display stand. I hope you will enjoy building this ship! Stay tuned for more mini models, and have a great time until our next building session!
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Arquitens cruiser
Raider
Gozanti Transport TIE Fighters
Lambda Shuttle
starship fleet
Imperial Fleet
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Daniel Eisenhauer’s
Starship Fleet
Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by David Eisenhauer Galactic greetings! I’m Steven Smyth from Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. Since the community’s founding in 2016, on an almost daily basis, I have witnessed amazing and creative Star Wars builds in the best Star Wars themed building brick group on Facebook. Daniel Eisenhauer is one such builder with a unique UCS Star Destroyer scale collection of ships. I thought it would be fun to spend a little time checking out his builds and getting to know the person behind this awesome ship collection!
Steven Smyth: How’s it going, Daniel? I know you have quite a following with the members of the Bantha Bricks group, you have shared some amazing MOCs (My Own Creations), but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do. Daniel Eisenhauer: Hi, I am 24 years old, from Atlanta, and have been into LEGO Star Wars since I was nine. I am a relative newcomer to the Bantha Bricks group, but I have been part of the LEGO Star Wars community over on the Eurobricks forums for the better part of a decade now. I have been building and playing with LEGO sets since I was a toddler, but until recently I mostly just collected official sets without engaging much with the MOC building side of the hobby. Starting in early 2021, I began publishing a series of models of Star Wars vehicles built to scale with 75252 UCS Imperial Star Destroyer, which specifically is 1:1455, or 11.64 meters per stud. So far, I have designed around two hundred models for this project, and I am adding more all the time. Jawa Sandcrawler.
Would you say Star Wars is your favorite theme? Or do you have a shocker for us? No surprises here, I have built a lot of other sets at various times, but Star Wars has always been my first love. I am a huge fan of Star Wars even outside the LEGO space; I am a member of the 501st Legion costuming group and have been a volunteer for the Star Wars track at Dragon Con since 2011. Besides my MOC building, I am a fairly dedicated collector as well; I have around 650 Star Wars sets totaling roughly 300,000 bricks. Why do you choose the LEGO brick as your medium to express yourself? This is going to be an atypical answer to this question, but I do not feel that I am expressing myself through my LEGO building. Of course, literally everything that anyone does can be taken to be a form of self-expression to some degree, but I am not trying to say anything about myself here. My only goal with these models is to be as accurate to the scale and source material as possible. I am far more comfortable thinking of myself as an engineer rather than an artist. With larger models it makes sense to talk about building styles, preferences for tiles or plates, and so forth in ways that require more of what I would consider artistic intent, but that is harder when the design constraints are this narrow. If my goal is to
get an accurate model of something that is less than, say, three studs long, there are often only a limited number of possible combinations of parts to achieve a given shape, and I tend to view the model more as a 3-D puzzle than anything else. On models where I do have more options, I try to stick to the official style LEGO used for 75252. If I am doing it right, the style should be replicable by any other MOC designer who is familiar with the official UCS sets, such that my models could be mixed seamlessly with theirs or with official builds. What made you choose the UCS Star Destroyer scale, or 1:1455 scale, to build in? I have always loved the idea of scale models. In my eyes, any individual model may be interesting enough, but there is far more value in having a whole group of them that all match each other. 75252 UCS Star Destroyer is easily my all-time favorite set, and probably my favorite feature of it is the scale model of the Tantive IV that it comes with. I wanted to extend that to other ships, and two hundred models later, here we find ourselves! I do not know whether 1:1455 specifically had any meaning to LEGO when they designed the UCS ISD or if that is just how big it ended up being—it is kind of an arbitrary number, so I suspect the latter, but it turns out to be a very convenient scale. It is a nice middle ground, small enough that even very large ships translate into reasonably sized
Rebel Fleet
Nebulon-B Frigate
Braha’tok Ghost
Hammerhead cruiser
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