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!

Steps Complete: 0 of 193
Pages Complete: 4 of 260

20091211--Look at all the bits

Day One and Two:

So I learned quite a while ago that sorting the pieces of a Lego set of any significant size helps immensely in preserving sanity during actual construction. As the Lego sets have be come larger and more elaborate and the number of piece shapes and colors has multiplied, it's in fact become essential. (Even Lego has a graphic suggesting you do so in the front of many of their instructions!)

So how do you go about sorting 3800+ pieces? First let me show you just how many that is.

Most Lego sets have the bricks in various little baggies. I guess partly to provide more durability for the larger box, the Death Star box opens up to reveal four plain white boxes, each the size of a largish Lego set itself.

I noticed while taking these pictures that each box had a different symbol on it. I hoped it meant some kind of modular building system (e.g. conquer a box at a time) but alas, no. They're probably for the packers to make it easier to get a set of four different otherwise very similar looking boxes together.

In the boxes were the little baggies. There were 54 in all, plus some smaller ones hidden in the bigger ones.

For sorting I use a lid from a large plastic bin as a tray. For the very large sets I've build more recently I've added a box or two from another large Lego set, each with a closing lid. When I'm not building I can just close the lid(s) and cover the tray with a plastic bag--this seems to work to keep the my out of things. This time I used a tray and two boxes, and that turned out to barely be enough. In fact, I could probably stand to have a third box instead of the tray.

Dumping the sealed bags on the floor, I dug in. I worked on sorting for over two hours before my back started bugging me. When I called it a night I had sorted 31 bags, with 23 yet to go.

The next day went much better--I finished in about an hour. I had done a lot of the bags with the small (and downright tiny) parts in the first round, and the larger bricks and plates went much faster.

Anyway, here's the whole lot, sorted out:

As tedious as sorting can be, especially when you're tyring not to spill/drop any of the tinier components on the floor, it also is fun because it helps build the anticipation for the actual construction. You see odd parts and wonder where they're going to go. For example I've got two cylindrical parts, frequently used as the body for R2-D2 and other Astromech droids. These two however, appear to be dark green, and they are the only parts in that color in the whole set. Where could they possibly go? I can't wait to find out!

One thing I can already tell is going to give me a problem is the subtle shades of the colors. The set is (unsurprisingly) mostly comprised of light gray, dark gray, and black parts, which are easy enough to distinguish in reality, but not always so much on the instructions. Also there are a few pieces of a very subtle dark shade (blue and the aforementioned green) which for me at first glance were mistaken for black. I believe the part shapes in these colors are unique to those colors so it should be OK.

As before, I've sorted them by size (large pieces more than 4 studs in any direction in one box, parts 3 to four studs long in another, and the itty bitty stuff in the "tray." As I said before, I could have used a third box--I'm going to have to be careful when moving the tray so as not to spill anything. Note the bowl in the lower right hand corner. I decided early on to keep all the mini-figure and easily identifiable droid parts in a separate bowl, since that's what gets built first. The people parts were like little Easter Eggs--a handful are in each bag with no apparent rhyme or reason. The downside to that is you really have to open all the bags before building. Of course, by doing that, since you build the mini-figures first, you'll know right away if you're missing a bag. (Not that I've ever had that happen in 30+ years of collecting Lego, however.)

So, now that the tedium of sorting is done, we can get on to the fun stuff. Next: little tiny people!

20091210--The Lego Death Star Project

So as a surprise for last Christmas (a very BIG surprise) my parents got me the Lego Death Star. And now, almost a year later, I've finally made time to build it.

The Death Star (not to be confused with the Ultimate Collector Death Star II) is by far larger than any Lego set I have built or will likely build again. Not surprising as, piece count wise, I believe it is the third largest set Lego has ever made (1 and 2 being the Taj Mahal and the Ultimate Collector Millennium Falcon respectively. While those sets each boast a staggering 5000+ piece count, the Death Star is nevertheless impressive at 3803 pieces.

On top of that, the Death Star is probably the biggest piece count set for the mainstream Star Wars line, or perhaps even any mini-figure centric Lego set. (The UC Falcon is also in mini-figure scale, but they only fit in the cockpit--there's no other interior features.) There are certainly other sets that exceed it in physical size, but the emphasis on this set is playability and interaction. In its three story structure are rooms that allow you to recreate virtually any scene that took place in either Death Star I or II in episodes IV and VI, with the help of 19 mini-figures as well as 5 other droids and the Dianoga monster that lives in the trash compactor. To me the Death Star is to the Lego Star Wars line what the USS Flag was the 1980's G.I. Joe line, and I am stoked to build it.

This is actually the third time my folks have surprised me with a Death Star at Christmastime. the first was waay back in '78 or '79 when they got me the original Kenner Death Star (I had been told that all of the larger vehicles and playsets were out of the question, so this was quite a shock). That Death Star met a tragic end when I tripped and fell on it a few years later--an event I always lamented. Even though most of the Kenner line has been re-issued with improvements, they've never matched the scope and cleverness of that playset. Then a few years back Mom and Dad shocked me again with another Kenner Death Star they assembled on eBay. Now, this one joins the ranks. My parents are pretty awesome folks.

The purpose of this blog is mostly to share with my friends, brother, and parents the process of building this beast of a set. I'm not looking to set any speed records--in fact, the longer it takes, the better! I am committed to working on it a little each day and I would like to have it finished by the new year at the latest.

That's it for now--tune in tomorrow as we cover the daunting process of sorting all the parts!