Wonky TIEs are what got me to where I am today. Broke but with so much Lego. Lol. I built this Scuba TIE fighter by TJ's Lego Room  last week. I love it, the perfect mixture of cool and funny that I love in Lego designs. Kind of reminds me of those weird Batman action figures from the 90s with all the scuba gear. Like why? But also, cool! The TIE Convor by ScruffyBrickHerder was the design that got me into this whole Rebrickable/Bricklink aspect of the hobby. I've loved Lego for years but just kept to the official sets. Occasionally I would get it in my head to build stuff out of spare parts which was fine when I had the parts, but when I didn't I just shrugged and moved on with my life. But with BrickLink (and now my friend's second-hand store The Edmonton Brickyard) you can get any parts you're missing. Now entire universes open up to you!

But let's talk a little about reinventing the wheel. There are tons of TIE fighter variants on Rebrickable. Lego has produced a bench of versions. The eyeball cockpit is kind of the common denominator for most of them. Does that mean TJ or Scruffy or you have to design their own cockpit to MOC up a new TIE? Not at all (though I think sometimes they do, either improving or tweaking previous versions). It would be perfectly acceptable to take the eyeball from 75211 and build whatever wings you want or add a shark fin or whatever. (Please add a shark fin to a TIE fighter!)

I say this because I want my MOC contest to be accessible to everyone, not just people who can design a thousand-piece model with motors and hidden gears, you know? So, for example, I saw this awesome little bear at the Brickyard, and a few minutes googling tells me it is from this set, 31052. You don't even have to own the set, you can just look at the instructions for free and build one with parts you have. And that would be totally fine if you were making a diorama, say, based on a Homie Bear poem from The Ursus Verses. Homie and the Witch, or The F.A.F.A.F. which stands for The First Annual Forest Animal Forum, which is fun to say out loud. That's what I mean by you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can say "This is my diorama of Homie Bear and the Wizard Bear from Homie and the Witch, and I used the bear from that Creator set". Perfectly acceptable! 

On the other hand, though, if you wanted to depict the ancient abomination from Again, the Abomination, it would be unacceptable to make this amazing MOC and say you designed it. Right? Makes sense, I think. OF course, any questions, just ask. Or advice, help, whatever. The important thing is to have fun! Hopefully disaster won't befall you like it did to this Scuba TIE that was tragically shot down just doing a routine patrol:

Jawas of Doom!

 

I could've sworn the caption on this issue read "Jawas of Doom" but I guess not. Maybe I got mixed up with another issue? Anyways. All I know is I need more Jawa minifigures since I only have two! From the little battle pack that came out some years ago now, 75198. I didn't get the big UCS sandcrawler though I was sorely tempted at the time. I was able to make these two little builds from pretty much spare bricks- and a healthy dose of Edmonton Brickyard bulk finds. So cool! Love these little microfighters and customs speeders!

The little microfighter in the foreground is a modification of a Star Wars Celebration Exclusive set that I didn't even know about, but I found this MOC on Rebrickable and it was easy enough to build without spending hundreds of dollars on eBay or whatever. And the super cool speeder with treads in the background is by Mr Tarproman. The stand, too, actually. Brilliant stuff! 

 

I know there's been a million Star Wars mashups, but I don't think I've ever seen this done before, exactly. There was an AT-AT done up in Caterpillar colours, which was pretty cool, but not sure I've ever seen mining equipment done up in Star Wars colours. I feel like I am the right guy to do it, given my four-plus decades of Star Wars fandom and my not quite three decades of mining experience. I drove big haul trucks and loaders and shovels and drills and dozers . . . and I should stop talking before I commit myself to a years-long Lego project lol. But I am pretty pleased with this quick build! I just searched up a mining truck that Lego put out, to see what they have, and this set 4202 popped up. Kind of the perfect size, not a huge Technic build. All I really needed to get was the tires (Thanks Edmonton Brickyard!) and a couple of technic arms. Easy peasy! Oh yeah the TIE canopy was one of my very first finds at the Brickyard, and I've been trying to think of ways to use it. Mission accomplished! Fun little goober. Here's some more pics:

 

Here is a photo montage that looks like it was made with a  1997-era photoshop competitor that has gone the way of AltaVista. And I'm ok with that! I'm all about 1997, which is when Crimson Empire came out. I loved those covers! Not enough to buy the series, apparently. I don't clearly recall why I didn't just buy them when I saw them on spinner racks- maybe I flipped through them and didn't care too much for the 90s era story-telling. I have a memory, which I don't totally trust as accurate, of being on my Cross-Canada hitch-hiking trip and seeing one of the issues in a gas station, and if that's the case, I definitely would have left it there as there was no way to transport a comic in my backpack without hopelessly crumpling it. 

Anyways. Not too many people remember ole Kir Kanos nowadays. And that's ok. I've always loved the Royal Guards and their various iterations- the Shadow Guards from The Force Unleashed were especially cool, and might have looked to the Kir Kanos/Carnor Jax stories for inspiration. I was at my local used Lego store (aka the best store ever, but actually known as The Edmonton Brickyard) and they have a table there where you can build a minifigure. One section for helmet/hair/head, one for torso, one for legs, and one for accessories. So I pretty much kit bashed together this Kir Kanos form there. I made his little pike staff or whatever with parts from home. Wish I knew where his legs came from- Ninjago maybe? Not an exact match but a good enough rendition. 

I also made a Lambda-class shuttle for him! Because why not, right? I love my Tydirium, especially now that I have a stand that shows off its full glory, so I thought I would build a whole nother one with Royal Red colours. And, mission accomplished in that I was totally able to replicate a set 75094 out of spare parts I had on hand, the bulk bins at the Brickyard, and not a terrible amount of specific BrickLink orders. It's maybe a bit more candy caney than I had envisioned but I still think it looks pretty cool. They make great bookends!

 

Microcosms have always fascinated me. Little worlds. I think our own universe, the cosmos, is probably just a microcosm of some other more bigger universe, as in the first Men In Black movie, that little necklace that the dog had. Was it a dog? That movie came out 25 years ago so I don't remember it very well. I know it was 25 years ago though because that is also when I was hitch-hiking across Canada having the time of my life, exploring the microcosm of Canada. Which isn't very micro.

What is micro are Microfighters! Love these little guys, I think they fit the Lego esthetic so well with the design of the minifigures which, after all, were always meant to be cute. The little Y-Wing shown above, the yellow one, came in a book about Lego Star Wars, and I always loved the design. So I built another one out of spare parts. I was going to make it red to be like the Resistance Y-Wing micro fighter (75263) but turns out I don't have that much red parts. I have a ton of grey though! So I built a Mandalorian version. Even stole the nacelles off of the Razor Crest microfighter (75321) which, honestly, kind of missed the mark of that cuteness that I like so much. They plugged right in! Since Din Djarin already has a bunch of ships, and fragments of ships (lol) I thought would give this one to a random Mandalorian mini figure. Pretty cool.

In other news, The Librarian Kickstarter was wildly successful and is going to come to an end next week. Thanks for your support! Completely by coincidence, another anthology featuring one of my stories will launch on Kickstarter next week. One of these days I should do my own Kickstarter since I already am getting kicked so much! Seriously, I would like to Kickstart The Ursus Verses Volume 2. One day. This upcoming anthology is from The Dragon's Roost Press and is called LOLcraft. An anthology of humorous  Cthulhuesque stories. Mine is really fun, I can't lie. It's about the cosmos. Well, cosmic horror! There's kind of a microcosm in it! Several, really. Sort of. Honestly, you just have to read it. Microcosmic horror? Hmmm....

 

Years ago I read a book called Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Mind still reeling from it lol. There was a lot in there, but one of the things I often think about was how, in that universe, any raw material like asteroids or, say, the Moon, was a terrible waste until it was converted into processing power. I'm ok with the Moon just being the Moon but my gigantic horde of loose Lego bricks definitely seems like unrealized potential.

Luckily I have discovered Rebrickable! The best way to convert loose Lego into Awesome.

Spoiler- I also discovered BrickLink stores, the best way to acquire even more Lego so that my pile doesn't really actually seem to shrink at all...

So there's this guy that I follow on InstaGram, ScruffyBrickHerder, who is an accomplished Lego builder, and he makes what he calls 'Uglies'- mashups of Star Wars ships. They're pretty cool, the design language of Star Wars being very amenable to this sort of thing. When he posted this TIE ugly, I fell in love. So pretty! He calls it the TIE Convor, after a bird creature seen in Clone Wars, Rebels and so forth. Simultaneously cute and cool. Right up my alley- I had to build one for myself! And he was thoughtful and kind enough to post free instructions on Rebrickable. In my innocence I just started building, from step 1. Oh sweet summer child. I know better now. But this was as far as I got with the parts I had on hand before getting stuck:

Which, not a bad start, but I didn't want to just discard it as I had so often in the past doing similar things. That's where BrickLink came in. Turns out there's a guy just across the freeway from me, so I bought the parts I needed and was back in action. The best part, though, was that my daughter Pallas asked me what I was up to, and I showed her and pretty soon she was right in there, digging for parts and just being a great Lego building partner. In fact, it's become a thing for us now. More on that later! Here's another view of the finished model for now. I stole the cockpit window from Yoda's Starfighter (75168) and I feel bad but he wasn't using it so. Cheers!

I missed Star Wars day but honestly, every day is Star Wars Day over here at the Woods. I did start building a V-19 Torrent micro fighter, which was super easy to build once I found all the parts. Microfighters are tons of fun, love the chibiesque aspect. I have a bunch that I bought, but also some that I cobbled together out of spare parts, hence the whackadoodle colours on some of these. The instructions for all Lego sets are available on their website, so as long as you have the parts (and for bigger sets you almost never do!) you can build them. And the V-19 as seen here was never put out by Lego so I found a great YouTube channel and followed his instructions.

The V-19 Torrent is one of my fave Star Wars ships. Introduced in Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2D Clone Wars micro series which is now available on dsnypl+s. It also showed up in the 3D Clone Wars show, but has never made a live action appearance as far as I know- could be an Easter egg in one of the new movies idk. I have a 3.5" scale Hasbro version as well, not Lego. Lego did make a non-microfighter of this ship but I don't have it. And they made a sort of microfigher but not in this style, so. I need some Clone Pilot minifigs!

I can't believe I didn't dust off this old blog last year when The Mandalorian premiered! That show is like everything I ever wanted in Star Wars. I did take the above photo for my Instagram about this time last year. It definitely seemed like Filoni and Favreau's philosophy was to make a show as if they were playing with their old Star Wars figures. This week's episode was amazing- maybe the best? I dunno, I have like a top ten already and there have only been 13 or 14 episodes. But I don't want to talk too much about them- people on Facebook on Twitter just can't help themselves it seems, they gotta spoil shit. Well, not me. 

Can't wait for next week! 

  

Perhaps you heard that The Clone Wars is ending after five seasons. Originally I seem to recall it was slated for three with a slim shot of making it to five, so I guess we can't really complain. Still, a little sad. I'm still working my way through the Season 4 blu-rays, and Pallas and I have lots of watching ahead of us- she loves the feature film (technically it was 3 episodes strung together and released in theatres) and I haven't even really showed her that there are like a hundred other episodes! I've said it many times, The Clone Wars is the best animated show on television, and is the best thing about the whole prequel era.
Here's a really sweet farewell letter from the voice of Obi-wan Kenobi, James Arnold Taylor.

There's this cool exhibit in Edmonton right now. It closes April 1st so I finally got around to taking Pallas to it today. Star Wars Identities. It's an interactive thing where you create your Star Wars identity, persona, alter-ego, what have you. Plus tons of models and concept art and costumes from the movies. So it was pretty sweet. They project your characters on a screen at the end, and then email you the high-res image along with a character bio based on the things you answered and entered. From Pallas' bio:

I remember this one time when I was attacked by a wampa and badly injured. This had a pretty big influence on me, I guess, because after that I founded a support group for victims of wampa attacks.

I'm heading to the Calgary Expo tomorrow!  I'm gonnabe ascited! Here's some of the geeky things I'm into lately.
Game of Thrones season 2, of course. Who isn't into that?
The Legend of Korra is finally here, and cheers to Nickelodeon for making the episodes available online for free, even for us Canucks. Sometimes we have a hard time watching tv shows from American websites, something to do with CRTC rules or something. (but wait, didn't you say you were watching Game of Thrones....) Korra kicks ass!  Worth the wait (it was announced at SDCC 2010, though I wasn't in the room at the time of the announcement, I think I was just down the hall...). A perfect show for Pallas, at least as far as having strong female protagonists to emulate. We like to fight bad guys, Darth Maul being a particularly persistent foe, he shows up several times a day to get his butt handed to him. By a 3yo girl!
Darth Maul shows up in the current season of Clone Wars, looking forward to seeing that on DVD. The Cartoon Network being one of those networks that don't let Canadians watch their shows. But that's ok, I have the entire original Marvel Star Wars series in Omnibus form! Finally finished reading it. I think it's really cool that the final (and my personal favorite) run was done by a female writer and penciller, Jo Duffy and Cynthia Martin. For the mid-80s that was a rarity. Hell, it's a rarity now.
And I'm rereading Perdido Street Station, this time for book club. Loving it just as much, maybe more, this time around.

You probably already heard that Ralph McQuarrie passed away the other day. Sad. Obviously starwars.com and every major Star Wars site has tributes, and here's a nice simple one from JimSmash.

So The Phantom Menace is being released in 3D this Friday. I knew it was coming but I didn't know it was so soon. I'm kinda torn about what to do, as far as taking Pallas goes. Pallas and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D last week and she did really good, so that's not the issue. I was her age the first time I saw Star Wars, lo almost 35 years ago now. But that was Star Wars. The one where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Princess Leia are the good guys and Darth Vader is the bad guy. In The Phantom Menace Darth Vader is the good guy and he's a little boy. BUt Pallas has no idea that's who he'll be. I think I want her to experience it the same way I did- watching Star Wars first and then Empire, and then all the others. She's already been exposed to Star Wars, obviously- when the art teacher at her birthday party asked if anyone had a robot, she said "Boba Fett and Clonetrooper!" Who aren't robots at all but that's okay. Took me forever to realize stormtroopers weren't robots and that that backpacky thing doesn't say OIL. (What IS that thing, though? Does anyone know?)
Still. I want her to feel that shock when Vader tells Luke that if Luke moved to Russia he could call himself Luke Vaderovich. I don't want her to think Jarjar is better than Boba Fett.
And you know, there's another thing that as a parent I'm kinda questioning. In Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin turns to the dark side, he goes and kills a bunch of kids. Younglings, if I recall- so like 4, 5 yos. You watch it as an adult fanboy and you think, geeze, that's taking it a bit far, Lucas, but whatever. But how do you let your youngling watch that and then when he turns back to a good guy in Jedi, everything is ok? Personally I don't think you get to come back from that. Who knew Star Wars would bring such moral quandaries?
Well, there's one thing- it might not matter too much. Yesterday we were watching the CG Astroboy movie, and there's a part where a robot is given a negative energy core- he takes it in and says, all roboty voice, "Core accepted." Pallas turned to me and said; "Did you hear that? He said, "Hot summer." So even though we're watching the same thing, we're not necessarily seeing the same movie...

Back to work today, but it was a really good day (for being at work) since I listened to a whole ton of podcasts and before I knew it the day was all done! Probably the most interesting one was an episode of NPR's This American Life about a bunch of prison inmates who put on a production of Hamlet. Mostly I'm a CBC podcasty kind of guy, but lately I been branching out to NPR for a little variety- I also really like Pop Culture Happy Hour, which is all about nerding out.
And I couldn't wait to get home to check out Wookiee the Chew, especially fitting because of our Winnie the Pooh outing earlier this week. That from another geeky podcast, the name of which I forget. I'll have to show this one to Pallas when I get home, since she loves Pooh Bear and she loves animated Star Wars stuff, Star Wars Gangsta Rap being her current favorite cartoon. I kind of wonder what sort of twisted version of Star Wars she's building in her head, since I haven't shown her the actual movies yet. She just really really loves Boba Fett (she always makes me Boba Fett tea, it's bountylicious!) and I think she will be devastated to learn that not only is he not the main character, when he does finally show up about an hour into the second movie, he's a bad guy. Who meets a stupidly silly end in the first hour of the third movie. She'll have to learn the truth some day. As Hamlet might say,

I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind

Art day! Fanart Friday you could say. I drew "Bobbo bott"at Pallas's request. Drawing has never been my strong suit that's for sure!

Pallas informed she wanted to watch the "bobbow bott" movie this morning. My Boba Fett bobble head has been a favorite toy of hers since she was just wee. See? But as much as I can't wait to share Star Wars with her, I didn't want to disappoint her, she has a hard time watching movies when her favorite character is not onscreen. Sleeping Beuaty takes forever before "Pincess Aueya" shows up, and then she (Aurora, not Pallas) falls asleep for the rest of the movie. Boba Fett is only in Empire Strikes Back for what, three minutes total screen time? Patience, young Padawan. You will see the greatest movie of all time, many times. Just not yet.
What else. I shaved my head last week, figured there was no sense in pretending I still had a full head of hair any more. I know big changes like that can be hard for a two-yo to absorb, so I told her before hand that I was gonna cut my hair just like Uncle Bee. (My brother-in-law has a shaved head and all the bald men we see are Uncle Bee to her.) "Is that a good idea?" "Yeah!" But even so when I got home I made sure to wear my hat and remind her that all my hair was gone. When she was ready, I took my hat off. "Hat on, Daddy!" She was a little upset. BUt I explained her again,and she was better. "Daddy's hair fall off."
Yup.
"Pallas hair not fall off?"
No sweety, your hair isn't going to fall off. And then she was happy.

A new set of Star Wars steampunk mashups is making the rounds. Cool, eh? The artist is Bjorn Hurri. I think he owes a bit to Sillof, though, don't you?


Steam Wars Boba Fett by ~sillof on deviantART

I know this cosplayer as definitely influenced by his designs:

Back from another round of work. Good week- first day was a little lame since I was on shovel 9 and it was on another makework project- skim a meter off a ramp to even out a hump in the road. Which we don't use. Course the ramp wasn't drilled and it's all frost lumps anyways. Beat up the shovel and beat up the operator with that kind of nonsense. Day 2 I was back on shovel9 but it was in a better spot (somewhat anyways) for digging and plus I got to retrain a good guy who's been off for four months with cancer. Fuckin cancer.
Day 3, my truck was still down and with all the new hires and overtimers they had nowhere to put me. So they gave me a choice of hanging out with either the pump crew (my old job) or the utility crew (my old old job). I gave them option 3 and bumped a green guy off a redbox and spent the day hauling coal. Much better. Yesterday was more of the same.
but really the worst part of the whole week was driving home in the crazy blizzard. I waited till today to drive though rather than risk it last night. I've driven that highway in whiteout conditions enough to know it's doable but not very fun and to give it all due respect. The worst part, of course, was trying to get into my garage, I got stuck and had to dig myself out.
Well with all the snow there's just no choice but to hunker down and watch DVDs. You know what kicks ass? Clone Wars Season 2. Season 1 was great but season 2 is pretty much eclipsing the movies. I think Dave Filoni is borrowing a few pages from the BSG playbook, which is fine since all those shows owe a lot to Star Wars and thus the circle is complete.

Sad news- Irvin Kershner passed away today. He was a movie director, most famous obviously for Empire Strikes Back but he made others as well.

So one of my Flickr friends, Skipthefrogman, not only takes fantastic photos of his Star Wars and GI Joes, he also even dabbles in casting moulds. Moulding casts? So he made his own mandalorian helmet and made up a figure for me, complete with old-skool card. Sweet!