While I was building the Zerg ultralisk, there were many times I got frustrated because I couldn’t get it to work the way I wanted it to. This happens often when I build, because I want my MOCs to be as close as it can to the source material. The best way I found to get out of being stumped, or to get out of “builder’s block” is to just simply build something else, in which I will get stumped again with that creation. This surprisingly works well for me because there are times that while I’m building something else, I’ll discover a building technique and it will help with my previous builds.
Here’s one of those projects that came about from being stumped on another. Introducing the Terran medivac:
This has been a very satisfying build so far. It’s not that obvious when you look at the source materials but the medivac has a lot of curves and shapes that are a challenge to get right in Lego form. I explored different ways of making the wings and to get the cargo hold the right shape.
I looked through various kinds of cockpits and windscreen pieces, none of them really seemed right at minifigure scale. Other MOCs of this use a small A-wing canopy, but you’ll often see the minifigures in them really squeezed in there, laying down usually to pilot this aircraft. In the game, you’re supposed to be able to sit upright. This half cone piece 18909 is 6 x 3 x 6 doesn’t come in transparent clear, but black is not too bad either. It allows me to be lazy without having to work on the inside of the cockpit since you can’t see inside anyway. I will work on that eventually. I feel like it will come in transparent clear in the near future.
Speaking of insides… In the game, a medivac can transport all kinds of units, but realistically, I think it will just hold 8 marines. I also wanted to be able to have access to the insides, so I’m planning to design this so that the whole cargo area can be removed. You would think this cargo area is easy to design, but it has a trapezoidal shape, and I also need to make it hold landing gear. I also want to deploy the landing gear all at the same time with a switch or lever later. So I’m hoping this current design will have enough space to store all those mechanisms. Especially since it took me a day to get the angles right and make it look good all around on the exterior.
To be continued, it needs more color and I think I will just end up going with red again like I do with all of my other Terran units.
If you look closely at the wings, there is a Technic connector support to hold the hinge parts in place, so that they don’t move so much. Gives me ideas for other builds, even though it didn’t directly help with developing the ultralisk further.