Exile Phoenix

So in Kaelthas' review of the porg set I thought a color swap with some of these colors to make it look like a cooked porg would be good, but seeing this it turns out it is actually terrifying. I think part of the creepy factor for me is that in the first picture because it still has the orange hair at the top it kinda looks more like it has a slit throat with dried blood down the front as opposed to being cooked.

What I mean for the first point is in the middle of the engine swap the 1x2 with studs on side for one of these with a plate on top of it (you would need to swap the 2x2 behind it too)

The colors for your model line up really well with Black One, and I really like the way the wings line up properly. Couple of things that stood out to me when looking at the new model The change to the engines and wings to increase stability also added a gap between the two halves when the wings are closed, you could swap the 1x2 with 2 studs for a 2x2x2/3 with 2 studs on both top and bottom to close the gap which also will bring the top of the curve in line with the body of the engine housing The front tips down which makes the side profile look odd, you might want to try looking at other pieces in place of the bottom boat part, you could probably use the clip connection you have to turn the nose up slightly and then a piece like the 4x4 bow instead of the 4x6 one (you might have to stretch the nose about a little to do that) Also from the side, your bottom is mostly flat, however the T-70 tapers on both the top and bottom, maybe see if you can work an extra plate in to taper towards the rear fuselage If you could drop the canopy a plate you could get rid of the lip at the front of the canopy and have a cleaner taper from the side profile The back of the lasers where you are using the wheels, on the t-70 it gets smaller after the main laser housing, on here it gets larger, maybe flip the peg it is on and use a 1x1 round tile I don't recall there being a light of any kind in the middle back of the fuselage where you have the blue one. If you're using any parts that don't exist in the color (I didn't actually check) you could swap the hinge connecting the big tapered piece on the side of the nose to orange (only really helps for rendering so the orange line continues a bit cleaner, when you're actually going to build I don't think that part exists) I'm not really a huge fan of the engine detailing from the front, but I also don't have a good solution for it. You could try using a 1x1 with shaft in the corners and then one of the stick/tubes with holder in black attached to it so it has a little bit of a fake radial pattern to it.

Other than a cooked porg-recoloring of it, the techniques used here would make for a pretty good base for a penguin since the shape of a porg isn't that different. Did any of the pieces strike as new to the color they were in, or are all the pieces (minus the sticker) from existing sets?

If I end up completing any of my half baked ideas for this (and the pieces are actually in the palette) I feel like I would share it, primarily as a means to draw feedback so I could improve it before the window closes, or before trying to actually build it with bricks. Sadly it seems like brick.io still has no support for the flexible elements (or I'm just missing it in the 2.0 beta), even with LDD->IO which hampers a couple of the things I had started for this.

Definitely a lot easier than swapping pieces to studded pieces to try and line up in the right spot. If you want more length you can also use an axle with a 2x2 circle (or really anything with a hole on it) however that clip template looks useful. Is there a reason you're using a different clip for the Z axis, or does the clip used not matter? My issue when doing this has always been that I will do something that gets the piece off the rail in LDD and then getting it back on, kinda like shown in the video when you went off the edge.

That connection kinda looks like you could remove some of the front bricks and add some back bricks and just pivot the head entirely (would need to shorten the bottom mouth probably). I'm not concerned with mini-figures so the lack of them for the price isn't a concern to me. Looking at the pieces again, I bet you could do a color swap with black/dark red/browns so it looks like a cooked porg.

Your pictures in the grass make it look good, however I think the other pictures confirm my fear from the box-art, the head looks like it is angled up, which unless I'm displaying it on a low shelf feels like it is going to look awkward. Does the head just attach with a technic pin and rest there (which it kind of looks like)? If so maybe it could be modified without too much work to be looking up a little less with a slightly open mouth. I'm not as familiar with how lego does pricing for the European market, but from what I recall that price seems in-line with the BB-8 and cheaper per piece than smaller licensed content so I don't know why this is considered pricey?

That makes more sense, I had completely forgot that those were in this topic so when I saw the here I assumed it was a link (which I tried clicking a few times before realizing it wasn't one) instead of saying this actual topic. I'm interested to see what ends up being the 20 selected submissions, and if we end up with any duplicate designers

It was what I expected, just a downside (to me) as there is a lot of creativity to come from re-imaging or scaling content (which I tend to enjoy), since things such as architecture or scale models should fall under other people's IP also. I expect we would have gotten something such as Ninjago eventually, as Lego does keep themes going (City for example) even while introducing new ones. They also have come back to a couple with them being re-imagined a little (blacktron and space police for example). Did you intend to link to a topic with planes in it?

My key piece for this relates to this part of the FAQ: Yes, it is currently for the 60th anniversary, however from a business standpoint with it being Lego providing the bricks, it replaces a small portion of the current secondary market for bricks which is people making sets from instructions they purchased with used parts, in addition to using their existing molds more, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was implemented as an annual-type thing. The only really big downside is that by removing existing and previous Lego themes, it rules out all of the remakes/stylized continuations of old themes like Blacktron, while also removing licensed IP like star wars, which means I expect to see a lot of buildings and scenes.

If you don't want to adjust the height at all (if you drop the gap by one plate you would have a tight fit on the top and bottom of the sponson and you could build the entire front side portion out as a solid piece as the gap is 4 studs wide then) you could connect it using part 99206 (2x2x2/3 with studs on side) underneath the 2x4 tile at the front.

It is still a really nice and good looking model (and with Lego restrictions on the parts you have make for some impressive building techniques). Apart from having a little more room (which is always a nice option) was there something specific that was made more difficult with the space in the rear? I know the mechanism for the wing you called out as troublesome. Structurally how difficult would it be to extend it by a stud, alternatively could the wings move forward a stud (not sure if that would mess too much with the front dimensions though)?

Are all of the laser shaft options partially flex tubing, or does one of the variants use a solid bar for the length of it? Looking at the reference shot you used, I think that it is more the end of the body, not the engines that feels off to me. In the reference image it look like you could roughly split the engine tube at the back (I think they are actually the engines with the large cylinders being power generators but I don't actually remember) in half that would be where the end of the body is, and if you cut the upper portion in half again you would get where the wings end. All of this could be based on the perspective in the photos though, since all of them are slightly different perspectives.

If you're talking about the gaps between the walls and the sponson being too large, you could use the 1x1 with stud on the side to build out into the gap, and use some 1x2 cheese slopes to close it similar to this: