20100809--First Floor: Trash Compactors, Tractor Beams, Turbolasers...

Day Six:

In my last entry ages ago, I mentioned realizing that the section of the Death Star "basement" that doubled as the bottom of the chasm Luke and Leia swing across may serve another purpose in recreating all the Death Star scenes from episodes IV and VI. Check these out:





Yep, the angle's different, but this spot serves nicely as the walkway Chewie and the guys walk along to get to the elevator that takes them to the detention center to rescue the princess. Factor in that an elevator will eventually go in the hole in the center and you're good to go.

I also realized that I hadn't shown you the sticker sheet that comes with the set. It's pretty small, given the scale of things:



I've already used a couple as mentioned last time, but you get the idea.

Anyway, day six was all about adding the first floor to the Death Star--the first one to really feature "stuff." Because the chasm is included on this level, the floor is divided up into three section, as the fourth quarter is left open.

First up is the section that will ultimately become a cargo bay:



Lego uses an interesting layered approach to give the floors added stability. Panels for the "ceiling" are connected by a series of "support" pieces, and then the "floor" panels over that:



Here's the finished section, with a mini-figure for scale:



It's pretty expansive for 1/4th of the level, yes? Here it is attached to the "foundation:"



Next up is the second section. Keeping things interesting, each section is slightly different even before adding surface details. Where section one was all grey, section 2 is half grey, half black:



This is because this section serves two different areas. The grey part is the armory, and the black part is one half of the trash compactor. Here it is with the surface details added:



The round disk will be the base of a turbolaser. It may be hard to see in the picture, but some of the smooth pieces on the black area are transparent. I was wondering why briefly, but then I remembered that the floor of the trash compactor was covered in water! Here it is attached:



And here's another angle showing a better view of the surface details in the cargo bay, which I forgot to show earlier:



Finally we have section three, which again, while identical in structural design is different in color, and this one's all black:





This section houses the other half of the trash compactor and the tractor beam chamber. Since this Death Star doesn't really structurally have room for two bottomless chasms, the tractor beam pod will be suspended over a black floor, creating the illusion that old Ben Kenobi could at any moment plunge to his death while stormtroopers chat cluelessly about that new T-16.

At this point my camera died, so these last pictures of all three floor sections attached were taken much later to finish out this entry and allow me to finally proceed:







With that taken care of, we can now start building up the first level. This is where the fun really begins. Meanwhile, I leave you with a shot of the completed utility cart--while working on this stage, I finally found that one errant piece! :)



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20100227--The Dreaded Imperial Basement

Of course, I haven't just been building people since my last update in December. I have actually started the Death Star itself!

Days Four and Five:

So in this round I did what is essentially the Death Star's basement. Not much form the movie here, just a space filler to allow the Death Star to maintain its spherical shape. Still, we get some great Lego engineering even at this stage, and for what I thought from the pictures would be barely a crawlspace, we actually get we few nice details showing the designers didn't skimp completely on this phase. :)

First, the ground floor. A typical base plate isn't really an option here, so we get a roundish floor made up of three layers of plates:



Here's the finished floor, with some minifigures for scale. I didn't measure it, but I'd estimate it to be about 8 inches wide. The Death Star as a whole is supposed to be about 16" wide and tall, which doesn't sound like a lot, but trust me, it's huge as Lego sets go. The minifigures are only 1 3/4" tall on average, after all.



Next they had me put these round beige pieces on the bottom of the floor. In addition to adding to the structural integrity of the floor itself, these smooth, rounded pieces will also make it easier to rotate the Death Star to get at the different sides.



Here's where I ended on Day 4. About halfway up the wall supports.



On day 5 I finished up the ground level. The next step would be to start building the first floor. As you can see, it's a full size level with four "rooms," just tall enough for a minifigure to stand upright in.



As I mentioned, the wacky Danes added a few details to this level to keep it interesting. As you'd expect in a basement, there are some random pipes:



And some storage containers:



Not much going on in this room, so here's another Stormtrooper:



Note the little lights on the walls in these rooms, too. The Lego design team could have really phoned in this part, but the went the extra mile, definitely.

The last room isn't really a room--it's actually the bottom part of the chasm that Luke and Leia swing across. Note the first labels were added, replicating the unique pill shaped windows that exist throughout the Death Star.



(After I took these pictures, it also occurred to me that this part serves another function, which I'll elaborate on next time with another photo.)

With the "walls" added the basement's span increases to about 12." It's a pretty good sized structure---but then I looked at how it compares to the rest of it!



What's worse, on the other sides where there's floor over it, you barely notice this space is there at all!

And that catches us up. Tomorrow I will start up the building process again and start work on the first floor, where Stuff Actually Happens. :)

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20100225-Say Hello to My Little Friends

Hi guys... I know it's been awhile, but I'm back to pick up where I left off with the big ol' Death Star Lego blog. One of the reasons for my procrastination has been that this particular installment is a bit photo heavy and I knew it would take awhile to do, but I will put it off no longer. Today we look at our massive cast of characters!



Day Three:

The first thing most every Lego set starts with is the minifigures, if any are included. Well this one has them in spades, providing you with almost everyone you need to re-enact any Death Star scene from Episodes IV or VI. We start off with the three main heroes, Han, Leia, and Luke:



Next up are the supporting characters--Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2:



We also get Han and Luke as Stormtroopers. These two also come in handy for boosting your regular Troops when Luke and Han are in their normal outfits.



Luke get the most versions in this set, since he's the only Rebel to be on the Death Star in both films. Here's his grim, clean cut Jedi Knight look--note the single glove:



Of course, the Death Star is the home turf of the bad guys, and here are the two biggies, Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin, the latter looking suitably stern and wrinkly:



Backing them up is a pair of Death Star Troopers and a pair of Stormtroopers, or "cannon fodder" as they are sometimes known:



And of course, from Episode IV there's the lovely Emperor and his cool looking but otherwise pointless Royal Guards:



The Death Star is also populated by an assortment of droids. Pictured here are an Assassin droid (though I don't recall ever seeing one of these on a Death Star in any of the movies), an Imperial Protocol Droid, an Imperial Astromech Droid, and the dreaded interrogator droid:



Here's another shot of the interrogator droid. It's kind of hard to see, but they've got a screwdriver standing in for the original's high tech syringe:



The droids were especially time consuming to build, since they were comprised of very tiny bricks as opposed to people parts--bricks which had to be fished out of those huge piles of parts I showed you last entry. This was especially true of the mouse droid, shown here being yelled at by Chewie (again):



Last but not least is the lovely Dianoga, the critter who for some reason lives in one of the Death Star's trash compactors:



Quite a beast, hmm? This is all we really got to see of him in the movie:



In addition to the people, droids, and monster, at this phase I also was told to build this swell utility cart:



It is a Useful Cart to Put Things In, as it turns out:



And it can be pushed around by your one of your hapless Death Star Troopers:



The cart, like the droids, was difficult to build. In fact, there is still one corner, hidden in these shots, that is missing. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last 30+ years a Lego set has actually been missing a piece, so I'm sure it will turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, here's some more pictures for your enjoyment:



Artoo seems a bit big, doesn't he?





















Next time: we actually start on the Death Star itself, and based on how big just the "basement" is, this thing is going to be huge!

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