Australia Day

The most recent Star Wars themed MOC competition I built something for was for Australia Day.

As January is in the middle of the southern hemisphere's summer, a day at the beach is a perfect scene. Here's my build.

And now let's have a look at some of the details...

Predator

Predator is one of my favourite 80s action films, and I just had to attempt to make one in LEGO form. I did a few online image searches for inspiration, but most results involved custom decals, or custom 3D-printed heads. I much prefer staying with official parts, which are easier to source and can easily be mixed and matched for other things later.

One picture did give me an idea though, and I went out to the shops and bought my first Chima sets.

This is what you get when you put a scorpion head on a crocodile body:

I'm really happy with the effect, and my "predator" has made his way into all my displays ever since.

The Horse's Head

The next building I made for Minotaur Bay was a pub, The Horse's Head. I wanted an old-style look for the architecture, so took a lot of the pieces from one of my favourite Castle sets, the Medieval Market Village. The horse-head sign from over the blacksmith makes a great painted pub sign.

Cafe

With plans for a three-baseplate-wide display, I needed a couple more buildings to line the street. I worked on a basic footprint of 8 x 16, which allows for easy rearranging of buildings alongside baseplates.

Below is a cafe, built on an upper storey above another business, a transport company. The side panels from the Cargo Truck were easily modified into building walls.

Mythbusters

Here are two minifigs I feature in my "Comic Con" themed display.

The bodies are both fairly common city workers found in many LEGO City sets. I had to find two bearded faces, with one having a prominent goatee. I used a light brown hairpiece to match the beard colour on the "Adam" figure, and of course found a beret (not a common part) for "Jamie".

Pizzeria

To fit in the Seafood Restaurant, my beach setup grew to two baseplates wide, which then meant more buildings to fill in the street.

The first addition was the Pizzeria, modded from its official form as part of the Town Square. I removed the outdoor seating area and moved it onto a 16 x 32 baseplate. I put a jumper plate behind the "City Pizza" sign so that it could be set at an angle, and then added construction workers to that it looked like the sign was still being fixed into place. The worker on the right is hanging the menu on the wall.

★

R.I.P. David Bowie (1947-2016)

It was sad to hear of David Bowie's death this week, and I wanted to do something in LEGO form to pay tribute.

My other album covers are still a way off being ready for display, and I hadn't yet started on a Bowie cover of any sort. Since I had a large quantity of white bricks to hand I started with his final album, "★" (Blackstar).

The other cover I would like to recreate as a mosaic is "Heroes". In black, white, and two shades of grey it should still be recognisable at this 32 x 32 "pixel" scale.