Back in 2013, I built a small LEGO MOC scene depicting Gandolf (from The Hobbit 30213 polybag set) riding on one of the great eagles (LEGO Creator Fierce Flyer 31004). The scene shows a miniature river flanked by mountainsides. I used one of the mountains to anchor a Technic support that buoyed the eagle carrying Gandolf on an important Middle Earth mission. Positioned correctly, the support isn’t seen and the eagle appears to be in midflight.
I built this gargantuan three-level Stark Tower LEGO MOC (my own creation) to bring together three concept spaces: Iron Man’s Hall of Armor, Tony Stark’s Workshop, and an X-Men Danger Room-like testing area. Also, it was a model that didn’t take up too much desk space, so I got the enjoyment of seeing it while working without it monopolizing my desk. I wasn’t going for accuracy to something canon-established. Instead, I was mashing up some different ideas into a single model with a high degree of built-in playability. Eventually, I disassembled it and used many of its bricks to create the taller Avengers Tower MOC that I built and wrote about here.
The first iteration of the mode was only two-levels tall and focused on the Hall of Armor and Workshop.
Industrial Robot on Slider
But, I thought adding a high ceiling level for testing and training, kind of like The X-Men’s Danger Room, would be cool. So, the build grew in height to enclose the Hulkbuster Armor facing off against Loki, the Winter Soldier, the Mandarin, Ultron, and an Extremis soldier.
The knobs at the bottom center move the armatures forward and back for Ultron and one of his familiars.
This is a lightweight custom display stand for a stock LEGO 75212 Kessel Run Millennium Falcon from the underrated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). Like the stand that I built for my heavier modified Falcon discussed here, it provides an angle upward and a swoop to the left. The landing gear lock into place on the stand and are held in place by gravity.
I hope there will be more Han Solo and Lando Calrissian adventures with Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover. I don’t think he and the rest of the cast of Solo got a fair shake due to the behind-the-scenes production turmoil. Let’s keep the dream alive!
Following some of my recent LEGO MOC and MOD posts here, here, and here, this LEGO scene of the Desert Skiff rescue above the Sarlacc Pit from Return of the Jedi (1983) is another pre-pandemic build of mine. The desert skiff is an unmodified 9496 set from LEGO. However, I added more minifigures (Han and Chewbacca), and I recreated the scene as it roughly appears in the film when Lando Calrissian falls overboard with one of Jabba’s henchmen who is devoured by the Sarlacc. The base of the build is the high walls of sand surrounding the Sarlacc’s maw with a toothed opening and digestive tract beneath the sand full of bones and skulls of its past meals.
Before building this version of the scene, I had constructed a wider base and used the Sarlacc Pit monster build that came with 9496 as shown on the top shelf in the photo above. Also, Lando was holding onto the Desert Skiff by a whip instead of a chain, which I used on the newer diorama shown in more detail below. Pity the poor bastards who get slowly digested over a thousand years–that is, until Boba Fett took care of the buried beast!
I’ll note that when I was a kid, the Power of the Force Tatooine Skiff by Kenner was one of my favorite vehicles next to the Millennium Falcon, not only because it had a lot of playability and features packed into but also because I recognized the engineering and craftsmanship that went into its design, including retractable skids, extending/dropping plank, and a sideboard action figure launcher.
One of my favorite mid-1990s video games is Star Wars: Dark Forces for PC. In the game, you play as Kyle Katarn, a mercenary employed by the Rebel Alliance, who stumbles on the Dark Trooper project through one of his missions (none of Dark Forces is considered canon, but the Dark Troopers were brought into canon via the second season of The Mandalorian). I played Dark Forces often on my 486DX2/66MHz machine, but I was unable to beat it back then (the video game Force is weak in this one). Thanks to DOSBox, I finally beat it about 25 years after I first played it!
The Star Wars universe created by George Lucas is, like his earlier film American Graffiti (1973), about motion, movement, travel, and vehicles. The importance of movement in Star Wars is what elevates vehicles like Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon to be a character in their own right. The same is true for Katarn’s HWK-290 light freighter named The Moldy Crow. I liked its angular, bird-like appearance. It reminded me also of He-Man’s Talon Fighter from 1983’s Point Dread and Talon Fighter playset. The image of the Moldy Crow stuck with me, and when I was building with LEGO in Atlanta in 2014, I thought of a way to capture the Crow’s design in a LEGO MOC (my own creation).
Unfortunately, I sold my LEGO Moldy Crow on eBay before Y and I moved to Brooklyn (along with a boatload of other LEGOs). I wonder if the buyer still has it or modified it in some way.
A lot of the bricks that I used in the build were older style dark grey, which I don’t have many of any more. I would like to take another stab at The Moldy Crow with my newer bricks and use techniques that I’ve learned over the years since then. Another project added to an already long list!
