What Are We

What are we

Boop

That is a very boop question.

✨Mimic !✨

You opened the wrong chest this time !

This little build is a perfect decoration and was quite fun to build.

✨Trade Space Station !✨

[1/4] >Next>

Finally...More than 60 hours of work, I can present my masterpiece. I have been working and planning this project for a long time. Given the sheer amount of things to talk about, I will split all of my rambling in (at least) four posts : one about the concepts, ideas, and general aspect (you're here !); one about the technical side of things; one depicting how the project evolved (using pictures taken during the construction); and one dealing with all the smaller details, ships, and such.

Enough with planning, though. Explanations, other images and more explanations below the cut !

(less) edited picture of the build :

So. You might see, now that I got rid of all that pesky editing (or most of it) that there is a big arm holding the thing in place. It's easily a fifth of all the work of this build, because I absolutely wanted to hold this thing at an angle, and it's heavy, at around 15 kilograms (33 pounds). I'll talk about the technical difficulties of that in a later post, but it was important for it to be solid, because the station was the central piece of my second ever (very small) lego exhibition. AND it allowed me to meet the recruiter of a much larger exhibit. Long story short, in a month, I'm presenting this piece again (just before my exams, whoops-).

Anyway. Not only is it heavy, but it's also quite tall and wide. Around a meter at the highest point (tilted or not), while the diameter of the main ring is at around 0.75m. Quite a difficult thing to move around. Or is it ? Well, yes and no.

Here are all the main components (excluding the holding arm), when I move the piece around. Of course, all the ships are detachable (it allows me to move them around from one day to the other), but the dome carrying the antenna can also be removed, and then, the entire ring can be disconnected (that, too, was quite a challenge).

Removing the ring obviously makes it waaay easier to transport, because a single wooden plank can then be used (again, except for the arm, but that thing was made to be sturdy, so it can be transported with less care); and , once the dome is removed, I can just let the central cylinder stand upside-down (useful for storage). The only trouble I found with this system is that I once connected the ring the wrong way around, meaning everything in the small hangars was upside down. Quite an embarrassing moment.

Speaking of the hangars, I initially wanted to keep them all empty, to store ships inside, but it didn't really offer this piece the sparkle of life. Setting up these small decors inside most of them, with colors contrasting with the general theme of the build, was actually a really good addition.

The colour scheme as it is now is not exactly the one I had planned at the start of the project. I originally planned on using bright light orange (bricklink colour name) instead of sand green, but I found out that this colour was tough to find in large quantities, and I already had quite a bunch of the sand green, so this tragic decision was made. I think it would have offered a more vibrant colour to the build (resembling a Subnautica default palette, which I enjoy quite a lot), but in hindsight, the green works really well, appart from a small detail I'll expand on in a minute.

What's really funny for this project is that, when it started, I actually only wanted a nice way of showcasing all the little space ships that I tend to make whenever I have access to a small amount of cool pieces. Then came a long time where I only daydreamed about it and planned how I would want it to go, and only when I had a clear vision did I start the actual building process. So, taking all that into account, you can probably double the amount of time I spiritually spent on this project.

What I knew is that I wanted to get this huge ring held by beams to the station's body, which made the build both more interesting and more complicated that it would have been. But the challenge was appealing.

At first, the main body was completely flat and white, but I soon had to add texture, both because it was becoming ugly and because the 2*2 white curved slopes were starting to diminish fast. The first modifications I did were to add the sand green curved slopes instead to create stipes, then letters : the big A-2 you can easily spot. With the few bits of lore that I have created for this piece, you have to imagine that there are hundreds of these stations spread in the galaxy, which can be easily described through 3 criteria : the Letter, the Number, and the Colour. That would mean that, if you wanted to meet with someone at the exemplar I made, you would say something along the lines of 'Meet you at Sand Green A2'.

Texture-wise, the other element of the largest cylinder is the exposed bits of machinery, very classic in sci-fi, I know, but it does work well in this context. The second cylinder has much less textures, with only a few grates, and some 2*1 ingot pieces (because they look cool); but it also has its own, smaller ring (diameter slightly larger than the largest cylinder's).

Then come the smaller cylinders, which don't have much texture, except in their transition from one to another (barely visible in any of the pictures, but it exist).

Overall, I'm also really happy of how round it looks, given that circles are not my speciality.

Here is a completely unedited picture of the support arm (Lewa for scale), with a nice counterweight which might be necessary to hold the entire thing in place (it may not be, but I'm not trying to remove it. Bad idea.).

As you might notice, my studio is not a shelf anymore. I built something new from scratch with a green screen, because I thought it would make my editing job easier. And it would have, if I didn't use sand green in my build. Anyway, I'm keeping this for a few days, to snap some pictures of the MOCs which don't fit in my shelve (and are not green, meaning editing will be easier.

Here is the 'studio' from an outside point of view :

I know it's quite a mess outside of my clean perimeter, but I do as I can. You can see one light in the foreground, but there is also one (less visible in the background), symmetrical to the first one, and a third one behind and above the camera (outside of the picture).

You may also notice a lot of sorting boxes. Sorting pieces can greatly improve your productivity, if you label all your box correctly. Covered by the greenscreen is essentially a shelf full of these sorting boxes, labelled by colour and piece type, and it was really practical. Anyway. Thank you for reading until this point, I guess ? If you survived through all this rambling, you probably deserve something...

I mean- Have these pictures I took during the exhibition, I guess...

(You can notice that these are two different days because of the ships’ placement).

✨Santa’s sleigh !✨

I showed last week the Christmas tree I made last year, now is time for what I did for 2023 !

Closeups and commentaries beneath the cut !

Sleigh closeups :

Reindeers closeups :

Santa :

SO. Had a lot of fun with that one. The sleigh doesn’t have much exciting parts, except the blades, which are actual blades (Ninjago sabers, to be precise). The back is filled with presents from top to bottom, so they can be rearranged to give a different look each time it’s put together.

The part connecting the sledge to the reindeers probably could use the help of an iron wire to keep its shape (a neath technique I’ve used for a flower in another one of my builds to make the bendable pieces stronger), and the threads between the reindeers is a very cheap finition, but in my defence, I was on a time limit.

Reindeer-wise, I’ve hesitated whether to give them all a red nose, but they didn’t look nearly as cute without. And the antlers, I must admit, are very unsteady, because they’re illegally connected, but this was the best way to keep a small overall shape.

Finally, the Santa minifig was probably, and surprisingly, one of the hardest parts of this MOC, because the parts I stole borrowed to other minifigs were spread in multiple places, and I didn’t have one of the official Santa minifigs. So most of the piece come from different Star Wars advent calendars (mostly Darth Vader and C-3PO).

✨Trade space station !✨

<Previous< [2/4] >Next>

Today’s gonna be about the progress of the build in time, which allows me to ramble about the building process. Yay !

Before actually commenting the build. You may notice chocolate and my (empty) tea mug. They should be apparent in most of the earliest pictures (there was not enough space on the table for them at the end of the project, sadly~

So, here, you can see that my first step was to see the scale of my project. The template of the large ring to see how much space it would take, and the small ring to see how round I could make it (and at the bottom, you can see the white curved pieces. Enjoy this view, it won’t last.)

You can also notice above that I already stared making some small ships.

The next day ! You can see on the left my long rod. This was the ideal height for the central cylinder. I also created the first core of the build (replaced later because too fragile), and the first arms to hold the ring (too fragile too).

Progress ! This is the moment I realised my original color scheme would not work (you can see orange and bright green on the side, which I tried before the sand green).

I had half of the big cylinder added (you can see the slots left for the additional details) and another naked half on the right side. And my collection of boxes on the table is growing. It’s only getting worse after that.

See ? More boxes (and pieces) scattered all around. And a hammer, too. I at this point mostly finished the big cylinder (or so I thought, some reinforcements were necessary), started the smaller cylinder, and realised white pieces were running out. I also still haven’t touch the ring yet, as I wanted to stay focused on one bit.

Mostly done with the cylinders at the point (you can even see the start of the smallest one on the right side). Agin the boxes grow ominously.

Since it was time to start the ring, I created a replica of a sixth of it. Given that there were twelve sections, I wanted to be sure of the design before starting to build them all, starting with the facade. It took some fiddling around (you can see these aren’t symmetrical, as I was trying out different designs). Really, if you have this kind of things to do, try to make it in a vacuum first, you’ll gain a lot of time later, once the prototype has every problem answered (mine were mostly the curve, and the link between each plates (solved with mod 1*2 black plates).

See ? After the prototype was done, I simply built all of the facades and attached them (you can see my 1*4 curved pieces were all missing at the time though).

I kept the prototype on the side, because I’ll still need it later. I also am missing half of the ring (the part above, since there is only a structure below), because I was not sure of how everything would fit, and I waited until these parts were assembled before making it, in case adjustments were needed.

Here is the top part ! And all the hangars done, too. It took me a surprising amount of time to do all twelve of them…

Huge progress ! There is no more room on the table for the boxes, but you can see them…on the floor, on the left…Lot was done, from the bottom cylinder now finished along with its ring, the covering pieces of the big ring (except the internal faces), the hat of the station, and a huge reinforcement for the six arms, which was done separately). At this point, except for a few details, the station itself is finished.

And there is a picture taken moments before disaster. The station is done (ignoring the transitions between cylinders) the arm…supposedly, too.

Sadly, the arm wasn’t, in fact, finished. If you read the first post, you will notice it isn’t as bulky, and isn’t attached on baseplates yet.

Well, guess what ? When I finally tried to see if the arm would hold onto the station, it broke. Rather, two pieces broke, then the rest came down, and so did the station, which shattered on the floor below. Luckily for me, the main cylinder was so dense it practically completely survived. Most of the hangars of the rings only broke section per section, so it only took a few hours to get it back together, but much more time to make the arm solid. And now, it can hold the station for ten hours without flinching ! So, here is a lesson. If something you do fails when you do it with your heart, let the rage flow through you and build it back out of spite. It works* !

*don’t hold me accountable for any failure using that method

Get booped

Get booped back ! Ah !

Oh, and have an actual (Lego) cat while I’m at it !