MOC: Venusian Balloon

This is a MOC I made recently for the Lego Ideas challenge Exploring the Cosmos. The challenge requested either a space inspired vehicle or base. I quickly landed on the idea of wanting to do something atmospheric, as I like the idea of alien life maybe being buoyant creatures existing in the upper atmosphere of Venus, or within the vast cloudy environs of the gas giants! 

I could have taken that exploration down the base path, with some sort of floating observation platform or city, but as someone who has long held a fascination with airships as a form of transport, I thought a balloon based vehicle would be fun to play with.

Here's my little blurb from the original Ideas submission, which outlines the world this vehicle exists in, and what it can do:

An airship for scientists travelling between the floating research bases in the high semi-habitable layers of the atmosphere of Venus! While the surface of Venus is inhospitable due to high temperature, pressure, and acidity, higher altitudes provide a climate similar to Earth. This balloon is used to travel between the floating bases established to allow scientists to explore the planet from this safer environment, and if lucky, to catch sight of rare flying creatures that were found to also inhabit this gentler part of Venus.

The build includes a balloon with adjustable propellers to steer and move. The one-person capsule suspended below gives the pilot views of the cloudy world and the strange creatures that live around them. The seating and control section of the capsule is connected with a single stud to make it easy to position the pilot inside, while one side of the capsule hinges open to allow this.

Also included is a cloudy stand, and one of the Venusian aliens.

Continue after the jump to check out more of the design:

Behold, the new face of Kong

I've been working on improving my King Kong model (and Lego Ideas project) recently, and saved the trickiest bit for last, his face. I quite liked the old face, but felt it was very much an impressionistic take on a gorilla, lacking the character of Kong. The detail of the brow was also all wrong, set back from the eyes, rather than above them.

I went through many iterations of the mark II face; struggling to get the details and proportions to work, but have finally landed on what you see here, which ended up not retaining any of the details of the mark I face. I hope the new face comes across as more expressive, emotive and characterful. Much of this comes from the use of the new printed eyes from the Mixels sets, which are maybe a little more cartoony than is ideal - If this ever did get made into a set I would hope new printed eyes that are more gorilla-esque might be created. For now these eyes will do though. The brow design also means they can move, which gives Kong some different expressions.

More images after the jump:

Lego Ideas King Kong update: New body!

Continuing work on updating my King Kong model for my Lego Ideas project, I set out to improve his back legs this week, but before I knew it that lead to me reworking bottom, arms, and chest too!

My initial objective was to redesign his legs to allow him to stand upright. Kong does this a few times in the films, most notably right at the top of the Empire State Building, so I felt it was an important pose for the model to be able to pull off. The mark I Kong could almost do it, but because of the shape of his legs and the body around them, they had to be twisted in at a weird angle. It was also perilously unstable!

To make the pose possible I decided to use a completely different hinge, the really strong Technic beam joint found in AT-AT walker sets. This made for a really stable joint, but also meant completely redesigning the leg and adjacent body to build the beam ends in, in place of the brick connected joints I used previously. I also made the legs come out from the center of the body slightly further, so they have more freedom of movement without hitting the sides of the body. All the rebuilding also meant Kong’s bottom was destroyed, so I completely redesigned that to look better, and fit around the new joints.

And then there was more I had to change, which you'll find after the jump:

New York World's Fair Astro-View

If you're a reader of my Star Trek site, The Trek Collective, you might recall my Drex Files in Exile post on the New York World's Fair, which included the iconic Astro-View towers, buildings which were transplanted onto a Star Trek matte painting and made forever a part of the future. Later their flying-saucer-esque design prompted them to appear in Men in Black too.

Well having become familiar with those buildings, I found myself starting to build the Astro-View towers out of Lego recently. A little while later I had created the model you see here.

My model includes a working elevator (in so much as you can clip it to any point on the rails it would have glided between back in it's operational days), and a row of luminaires (the distinctive street lights that could be seen throughout the fair).

Pleased with my little model I also decided to submit it to Lego Ideas, where, if ten-thousand people support the project, Lego might consider producing it as an actual Lego set. So if you like these buildings, in the real world, Star Trek, Men in Black, or for some other reason, please do pop over to Lego Ideas and add your support.

PS, my Lego King Kong project is also still seeking support on Ideas, I'd be delighted if you could support and share that project too!

Lego Ideas King Kong update: New hands!

I have started work improving the model for my King Kong Lego Ideas project. I decided to kick things off by improving his hands. This was motivated by the wrist connection being a weak point in the model, and the new ball-and-socket joints introduced this year offering a new way to connect the hand.

The new hand uses the ball joints, which alas are not available in black, so don't blend in seamlessly. I also redesigned the entire hand assembly, using two SNOT-plates to hold together many of the elements together in a sort sandwich, making a much more stable body part. This also allowed me to set the part holding the thumb on slightly further back, so the thumb now closes into the palm of the hand better. I also switched out the finger elements from the parts I had used a pen to make black (as the part is not available in black) to the grey colour the part is now available in, which more or less matches other "fleshy" bits of the model.

To test out his new-found dexterity, I treated Kong to a giant-sized banana. It turned out to be less of a treat for poor old Ann Darrow, as you'll see after the jump:

King Kong gets his first 100 supporters

Huzzah! My King Kong Lego Cuusoo project has passed the first one-hundred supporters milestone. Just nine-thousand-nine-hundred to go!

To celebrate I thought I'd reward Kong with one of his favourite snacks, a delicious Skull Islander - I'm endeavouring to emulate the cut-to-giant-head Kong shots from the 1933 version here:

If you're curious, I thought it might be an interesting scale comparison to see Kong alongside the Delorean set. His torso is about the same size as the car, so it would be a larger set with all his limbs too:

If you haven't already, please make your way to Cuusoo and support the project, so hopefully Kong can join the the Delorean as a real Lego set!

King Kong, my first Cuusoo project

My first proper MOC in far too long, and also my first submission to Cuusoo: King Kong, eighth wonder of the world!

King Kong is one of my all time favourite films, both the original 1933 version, for it's pioneering visual effects and incredible atmosphere, and the 2005 remake, for bringing Skull Island alive so vividly, and giving us a much more touching relationship between Kong and Ann Darrow. I've yet to see the 1976 version, although I get the impression I'm not missing much there... The original is, incredibly, eighty years old this year!

To celebrate Kong's birthday, and to challenge myself to build something other than a spaceship for once, I decided to build Kong, and have also submitted him to Cuusoo, in the hope he might one day become a real official Lego set as well! As one of the icons of cinema he certainly deserves that privilege!

I've based my Kong mainly on the more realistic gorilla anatomy of the 2005 version, but I hope he feels right standing in for either incarnation. He has articulated hands and limbs, and a poseable head, so it's possible for him to stand on all fours, just about stable up on his hind-legs, and he can also carry Ann.

I've cobbled Ann together from existing minifigure prints, so a bit awkwardly she has white socks on with her white dress. If the set got made I'm sure she'd have a better outfit designed. I think the Hollywood starlet hair is perfect for her though.

Most of the parts in my design are readily available, although I did use the bulb-pin type pieces for his fingers tips, to give them a nice organic roundness. These are currently only available in transparent colours or metallic silver, so for the purposes of finishing my model I actually coloured a few in with a marker pen! The first time I've modified a Lego piece in that way - I feel like I've committed a crime, but he looked silly with bright coloured see-through finger tips! Should the Cuusoo project get the required support, and Lego chose to carry that element of the design over to the final set, then that part would become available in black, or maybe dark grey (to match the other fleshier highlights), for the first time.

When I was initially thinking about making him I had in mind that I would couple him up with the T-Rex (or V-Rex in the remake), to recreate the encounter between the two in the film. As I was building him I realised thought that Kong on his own would be quite a large set by Cuusoo standards so far (his torso alone is the size of the Delorean), so for the Cuusoo proposal I've just done Kong on his own. I'll probably still have a crack at making a T-Rex for fun too though, and maybe a biplane as well, for another fun combination.

There are a few more pictures after the jump. If you like my build, or you're a fan of King Kong, or just like gorillas, please make your way to the Cuusoo proposal and add your support. He'll need ten-thousand supporters to be put to the Cuusoo review for consideration to become a real set. So please also share him around your preferred social media to help drum up some support! It's a long shot given the number of Cuusoo projects already in review, but I really like the idea of the eighth wonder of the world becoming the eighth Cuusoo set!