Brickformula

I wanted to provide a quick update. I will need to delay coming back to Youtube until maybe February 2022. I’m sorry for this announcement, but there’s a good reason for it. I’m in the middle of buying a house and there have been unexpected delays associated with it. While I tried pushing for this month, it does not look like it is happening. Otherwise, everything is almost set. One of the reasons why I couldn’t do Youtube in all these years is because I’ve been living in a very small apartment. Getting this new house will finally give me the great man cave I need to do my work. In the meantime, especially since the vast majority of my Lego collection is in storage, I’ve decided to just work on the stuff I haven’t finished building yet. It would be nice to start wrapping up all the builds I started.

I now present, the updated A-10 Warthog.

Notice the background is improvised. The Youtube diorama is already packed away. For starters though, I made almost all the improvements I wanted to make from the original model, starting with the wings. I was able to get them angled without using hinge plates and they’re now slightly thinner than my first model.

I also changed the cockpit and canopy. Now I know that this is now how the real A-1o canopy opens up, but I find this part to be the closest shape of the whole canopy when it’s closed. I am hoping, some day in the future, Lego will finally make new canopy parts that will go better than the one I’m using.

It’s almost complete. Just need to add missiles and some tiles to fill up the empty areas under the wings. I’ve decided not to add flaps to the wings and tail, but I can always add them later. There are also no covers for the landing gear too. I didn’t add these details because I like to swoosh with this on a daily basis. My experience with flaps is that they always move when it was unintended. I could make them stiff, but since most of my Lego parts are packed away already, it will have to wait.

The parts I ordered to complete my Youtube diorama have arrived. I had to do a small redesign so that I can cover more background space with less parts. My old gray diorama was about 2.5 feet tall and I’m planning to make this one the same size too.

All this construction takes a while, and then I have to work on the floor afterwards. It should be easy since it will be made mostly of 6×6 tiles. I’ve been experimenting with different size turntables that I will build into the floor.

Once that’s done, I will start filming my comeback video. I’ll still update this site every now and then with my MOCs, but my main focus will be on making videos again from here on. That said, I also have a rough idea of when I’ll start posting videos again.

I should be coming back to Youtube in December this year. I know it’s a few months away, but I still have some things to take care of in my personal life, but I should be good by then. I also need to learn a lot of the new software that are out now. When I was actively Youtubing I was only using Windows Movie Maker. After seeing some of the quality of videos out there, I have to learn some new stuff. If you try looking at this blog with a smart phone or tablet, you can see even the quality of my blog could use some work too.

Once I’m back, I’m looking to post at least 1 video every 2 weeks. I originally wanted to do a weekly video but it would be hard to do that consistently. Still, I’m really looking forward to coming back. I have a few ideas I think everyone will like.

Another weekend goes by and still did not receive the extra parts I need to complete my diorama. At the same time, I’m trying to see if I can really maintain an update each week. So while I’m waiting, I’ve decided to use my Lego time to build something I wanted to do for a while. Ever since The Space Rover Explorer 31107 came out, I can’t help but notice how cool the starfighter alternate build is.

Upon examining the instructions, this actually can be a very simple build if you have the parts. It’s also a creator 3 in 1 set which means the builds are accomplished with the restrictions to the parts in the set. By using my own parts, the build uses less pieces and the outcome is pretty cool too. With the most recent Minifigure Series 21 carrying a Space Police Minifig, I couldn’t help but make him a starfighter.

Partially Inspired by the Space Police 5981 Raid VPR.

The color scheme is strictly white, black, gray with the transparent red and blue. I can further enhance it later, but I wanted to show off how cool this creator build is.

Needs landing gear, I know. I’ll add it later. I might even consider making a small vignette to place this in.

I changed the tail to just 1 stud instead of the yellow white 2 stud from the original.

I also got rid of the clips in the back that holds the radio and binoculars. It really was an odd spot to store it.

For a build that only took me an hour to do. I’m pretty happy with the results. I’m thinking about building a few more in slightly different shapes and colors and maybe put more effort to complete this one too. This is why, the Creator 3 in 1 sets will always be my favorite Lego theme.

This is long overdue, but while I am still waiting for parts to arrive to complete my diorama for my Youtube channel, it’s a good time to mention the A-10 Warthog I had on display during the Philly Brickfest 2014.

Like all of my MOCs I’ve displayed so far, this one is not finished either. Even for the convention, it wasn’t finished, but it was good enough to display. I’m planning to redo the whole thing but before I disassemble it I thought I’d show off the pictures of it up close. There are some things I’m proud of in this current design.

First, the retractable landing gear. By simply pulling or pushing the any of the rear landing gears, all three wheels will retract or come out at the same time.

I remember spending a whole evening just to get it to work and I will keep this feature when I redo this MOC.

Next, I like the angle of the wings.

BUT…. I don’t like how the hinge parts I used to get the angle right are all exposed.

I found a new way to build the wings so that all of that can be hidden, and I can properly put in the foils. I’ll also put in the proper arsenal too, right now I just have generic missiles as a placeholder.

This build still has a lot of good things going for it though. Aside from the landing gear, the plane sits the way it should if it were to land without landing gear. The rear wheels and the tail touch the ground.

What I plan to improve are the wings, the underbelly, and I’ll try harder to make it smooth all around with less studs appearing. Stay tuned for more.

Every week, a new idea will enter my head. Sometimes, those ideas lead me to be very motivated to build. That’s how I started building the SCV.

It looks finished, but it’s not. The arms need work. The legs aren’t as solid as I’d like them to be. The scale seems about right. It’s mostly just minor work left. I also need to add a turntable at the waist. Actually, I feel like the whole waist area where the legs connect should be redone because it doesn’t look like that at all in the game.

The back looks pretty good for the most part. I can probably redo the vents at the top to make them look smoother, but I have no ideas at the moment so I’ll just roll with that for now.

The arms look good from this angle, but it seems like the source materials I used all have different arms. I have to rethink about which ones I want to use to be part of my build.

I do however, really like the inside.

Something about controls, gauges, screens and buttons all in my face seems so cool. I’ve had that fascination since I was a kid.

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.

It’s funny, when I first started working on this, Starcraft 2 was still a very popular game. I wanted this to work so bad that what you’re looking at are the results of many many trials and errors. I wanted this to work so bad because I thought it would be so cool to have a Zerg ultralisk that can move AND swing its kaiser blades. Given how official Lego Technic sets are mostly vehicles with wheels, this is refreshing.

I recently made a breakthrough, and that is I finally got the legs to move. Before, it would just dance in place. It still suffers from balancing issues, but I believe that can be fixed by making it more complete looking. From here on, I can start making it look more eye appealing, by adding the skin, armor, horns, etc.

First, let’s get straight to it’s main feature. The blades themselves.

Don’t worry about the length of the blades, I know they’re not the right size. I will admit, I am conflicted about what color to make the blades in. Initially, it seemed natural to go with white. Later on, when I was comparing my build to the source material, the blades are never white, which makes sense. It’s not like the Zerg brush or use whitening strips or anything like that. In the game, they’re dark brown. In other Lego MOCs of the ultralisk over the internet, other builders make them in white. Maybe I’ll end up making a few sets of blades to try out since they’re easily replaced.

Besides, the important thing for me was to make it work. Since the blades are the main feature of this build, I worked on it first. Surprisingly, it only took me 2 days of building to get it to work and I’d say it works exactly the way I want it to, especially given the limits of power function motors and the controls on the remote.

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The controls are made up of two remotes, oriented in such a way so that you can use your fingers for the triggers on the bottom. The idea was to control it with your thumbs, to move the ultralisk forward, backwards, and turn. The pointer fingers will be used to operate the triggers. A single trigger, when pushed in one direction, will move the a pair of blades to the outer position. Pushing the trigger in the opposite direction will close the same pair of blades. This will be so much cooler to see when I make a video of it. These pictures simply do not do it justice.

It looks a little disproportionate in this picture, but this is still a work in progress. I hope that by making it all brown won’t affect the workings of it too much. I will upload more pictures in the future as it nears completion.

You may have noticed in the background of my Vulture pictures that there is a new background. The old grey factory looking one is gone. It has been dismantled and used for other projects. I liked that background for a long time, which is why I never changed it. The only reason why I’m making this new one is because a white background makes the objects in the pictures look brighter. I didn’t want to use plain paper or boards, so I made a Lego one instead. I had no particular design in mind. Instead, I gathered all the white parts I collected from the local Lego store Pick a Brick wall over the years and put it together.

You’ll notice there are a lot of white chairs. At the time, it didn’t seem like a hot seller because every time I went to the store, it seems that none is ever bought. So I bought a cup. I played around with it and came up with a simple design.

I noticed that the next time I went, there were still a lot of chairs. So I bought more and more until they ran out. The same applies to all the other white parts you see in this diorama. Every single part is from the Lego store Pick a Brick wall.

As an unintended consequence of limiting myself to using only Pick a Brick wall parts, I ended up with a lot of 1x6x4 window frames. I had originally bought a small quantity for my kids to make a building, but the Lego store didn’t carry any window panes to fill them and so I was stuck with them since my kids didn’t want them without window panes. Seeing how they still carried the window frames for months after I bought my first cup, I went and cleaned them out too. The structure holding the chairs sideways isn’t that stable standing on its own. So I used the window frames to support it. Then this neat idea came, the back of this diorama can double up as a minifigure display stand.

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Now that the back is used as a minifigure display stand, I now have to rethink how big I want it to be, because it will hold all of my minifigure series. As many of you collectors may know, minifigure series started out with 16 minifigures per series. Nowadays, it’s 12. I don’t think it’s a difficult task to display them, but trying to find a way to display them in a uniform pattern can be a little challenging. This way of doing it seems to be a fun way, for me at least. It sounds expensive, but the regular official display stands cost around $20 if you find it cheap through a third party, and they can only display 8. I have over 20 different series, and a large Pick a Brick cup at the store is $16. Over time, building my own display stand is slightly cheaper. It’s easier to modify and add more.

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Finally, it all sits on 2 large gray base plates, with a 1×4 technic brick near the corners to help connect more. This diorama isn’t done yet. Its current design is to just help me to take pictures. It still needs to be a lot bigger. I also have to redo the floor because I plan to install a turntable so that I can spin minifigures and small models around when I make a video of them. This of course, will be the small exception where I don’t use parts strictly from the Pick a Brick wall.

Many of you may be wondering where I’ve been, what has happened, and if I will be coming back to Youtube. Short answer is, I will explain everything in my eventual comeback video. A lot has happened and I will be returning to Youtube hopefully some time this year.

For the time being, I’ll be working on getting my web site back up and running. For starters, I will be displaying all of my work in progress projects and MOCs that I’ve completed.

Here is my Terran Vulture, which is smaller than my original, but it’s in minifigure scale.

See more pictures in the MOCs section.

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