Hey there. After a long absence of eurobricks (I've managed to loose my PW and wasn't able to reactivate my old account )

I'm using now the chance to showcase my latest two MOCs in this topic as those are somehow related. Probably most of you have already seen a feature of my Shuttle Tydirium on blogs as eurobricksstarwarsforum (amazing article by the way, thanks!) and elsewhere. In my latest works I`m trying to create a key image for each model, therefore I'm often building a whole scene. I think this is an extra challenge and also a nice way to present the model differently. For the Shuttle Tydirium I went with the two scenes below:

The goal is to present the model in the best way, so I had to adapt some points in its favor as camera angle, proportions, lighting and so on. All the elements in the shot are created with physical bricks (except the sky/backdrop).

But to showcase the model with all its details and features a video is still the best medium. What do you think? Do you like this format or would you prefer an other presentation form such as seen (f.e.) in the LEGO designer videos (a longer more descriptive video with voiceover)? I'm happy for any suggestions and feedback 

As a left over of the second scene I had the nice midi scaled Star Destroyer sitting around my desk. Credits to Brickdoctor for his LDD hull design. The biggest problem I had with the 40 studs long model: finding a nice scene and way of presentation. 
I love the breathtaking vistas in Rogue One! This is one of my favorites: A menacing Imperial Star Destroyer hovering over Jedha City. It was easy to include a small sculpture of Jedha City in the stand. Most important: building an unobtrusive connection, which was able to distribute the weight of the main model. This was extensive, it was always tipping over! The final solution are two technical axes connected at the focal point of the lower hull.

Best thanks for your interest. Cheers! MB

Edited July 1, 20177 yr by marshal-banana

Hi !

Your Tydirium Shuttle is my favourite MOC ever ! I love this ship and your model looks just perfect in every detail ! I would be so happy to have the talent and money to build a beauty like this. Your video is very cool but a more detailed video would be very nice too :)

I also love your little diorama of the StarDestroyer over Jedha City ;)

Keep up the good work !

Ramses25

Hi marshal-banana, welcome back to Eurobricks

I always thought that the original UCS 10212 was pretty stunning, but this is in a totally different league!  The level of detail is just incredible; the engines and exposed pipework really add to it, and the wing deployment is very smooth, especially considering the load that the motors must be under.  To be honest, although the white LEDs are movie-accurate I still prefer them to be light blue but perhaps that's because of LEGO's influence!  Another masterpiece to add to your UCS Sandcrawler and Falcon; do you have plans to do anything else?

Wow. Your shuttle is amazing, especially the cockpit, never seen a better representation of that part of the ship. The top fin is also just breathtaking, the whole shuttle is just stunning. 

Wonderful Star Destroyer as well. 

Great stuff.

Home-run on both builds.Love the videos you have talent my friend.

That star destroyer is great - any instructions kicking around?

Once again, this leaves me in a complete awe. You brought the model beyond perfection.

Any LDD Files for any of this? Both models look fantastic!

That shuttle is perfection.

Well, you already know how I feel on your Imperial Shuttle (glad you like it!), so I won't elaborate on that. But I do want to declare my love for that Jedha city stand you created for the Star Destroyer. You're such a great builder that even your stands are more interesting than others' UCS creations!

You manage to scale the scene so perfectly, that the forced perspective pictures look exactly like they would come straight out of a movie thanks to your own "special brick effects". One of those effects is using some pretty small offsets of those slopes to replicate the "merlons" and "buttresses" of the city walls that give it a subtle texture with a regularity that sets it apart from the more random rocks underneath such that you don't actually need the color difference between the city and the rocks: in that first picture they're pretty close in color, but your texturing keeps it perfectly understandable. I wonder whether the level difference between the buttresses and the intermediate walls wouldn't be even more subtle if you'd offset the slope bricks in the vertical direction rather than the horizontal one given the steep angle of the slope that reduced the effect.

To me, the most mind-boggling of your special effects is how you scale details. A mindset of "more details everywhere will make it look bigger" looks valid at first, but you saw an even better option. You restrained yourself in inserting small details: just look at all of the big pieces used in the middle section of the build. You could have easily gone for more smaller pieces to get more texture, but you saw that the result of that would be that the middle section of the rock wouldn't stand apart from the bottom section anymore. All of it would just be uniformly detailed, while in reality there's definitely more intricate detail to be seen at the bottom than in the middle with all of the multifaceted smaller rocks compared to smoother, big rock faces. Your approach of using bigger pieces in the middle section, on the other hand,contrasts with the fine detail at the bottom, tricking you into thinking the details in the former section are just too small to see. I love it how you even went through quite a bit of trouble to hide most of the lips at the bases of the slope bricks forming the city walls by covering them up with the rock pieces in a way that's so seamless. That's one less small detail to see that increases the strength of the illusion. In short, you manage to maintain the relative sizes of the textures by restraining the amount of detail to really get a scaled, proportionate version of the original. You even use it in the other pieces of landscaping as can be seen in the first shot: rocks nearby have multiple levels, more jagged edgers, while those in the background have less detail that can be made it. I've never seen this technique used in any other creation, but you show how much it adds to the creation. Including less detail to make something look bigger. Only a genius like you can come up with something like that! 

It's always difficult to judge somebody's skill when they've built something big like you often do, because the fact that it's big is enough to make it impressive. But now that I know that you can completely blow me away with such a small creation, you've only become more of a legend in my eyes!

 

Blogged!

Those pics are SO GOOD! These are some of the best mocs I've ever seen! I love how you made an environment for them. I also love the motorized wings on the Shuttle. Could you make a mod on the UCS Imperial shuttle set to make the wings do that?