A Spaceship Holiday Special

I haven't built an M:Tron Moc all year... 

I like the theme, but whenever I'm building, I tend to gravitate toward builds that use trans red, trans blue, or trans yellow...

poor M:Tron.

So earlier in the year as summer began I built a Futuron cough... but I'm getting ahead of myself... I built a Classic Space A-Wing... 

The Classic Space color scheme was borrowed from 6820 Starfire 1 

which in my opinion looks similar to the above water color scheme of the Seatron development theme I based my modular shapeshifting MOC on.

At this point it was not pure A-Wing design, it was the idea of an A-Wing in service to my own Lego Space idea.  I added lots of rockets.

Variant 2 became the first of my 3 takes on a Futuron A-Wing.  For this version I kept the base model the same, swapped in or added some trans blue or tastefully selected trans red, and used the 6990 extended cockpit for my cockpit choice.  I also swapped out the classic blue astronaut for a blue futuron astronaut.

I replaced the Starfire 1 V print with the Classic Space moon print that had some distribution on regular slopes in Futuron... I've always thought it was a good Futuron print, by themselves the stripes don't say quite as much as a good moon print does.  In my opinion, this still didn't capture the A-Wing flavor.

Enter Futuron variant 2  As you can see, I shortened the cockpit and completely redid the nose to get the A-Wing nose with the central split in the front. I changed the armaments to a more Starwars esque build style, less emphasis on transparent elements, more emphasis on a heavy firepower look.  I also removed the rockets and revisited the tailfins which had been part of the initial design.

In place of the rockets I went for more obvious A-Wing styling in the rear.

Here's a topdown view... I think the shaping was quite perfect at this point, and a forum viewer asked if I'd change the window to the blue one matching the red one... soo

I revised the design further... maybe he just wanted the window changed... but I took the opportunity to make further improvements.  I brought in more slopes, and returned some of the rockets to simulate the A-Wing's flattened football curvature.  I think the design really flows from this angle.

I haven't really shown off the interior up to now, here's the one photo I took for it.

So, you might be asking... why show off a Futuron A-Wing if you led with I haven't built an M:Tron MOC...

Well, I decided to build a B-Wing, and what got me on that mental track was that I'd built an A-Wing and I liked the result.

So, to get back to my longwinded story.  

Here's an M:Tron B-Wing and the still assembled A-Wing.  I built the B-Wing on Christmas Eve... to answer the call I kept giving myself... Build again, build again!

The design is vaguely like the very first 2000 B-Wing, but I only looked at it as I was wrapping up to see if the extending foils should have more lasers on them.  Otherwise I was building off memory of catalogue photos, and the Jangbricks review for it, that I watched recently.  

So, before I show it off I wanna brag on my solution... see, the cockpit swivels as a solid body front and back unobstructed by the arm leading into the main craft... and for a while I was trying to use the Particle Ionizer cockpit for my design, but with the efforts to get the rotating body, and the limited attachment points for the window I was looking at the bottom of the cockpit falling off with each rotation.  And the window was too long, which meant the body either had to be bigger than reasonable relative to the wing assembly, or featherlight, with only a few pieces to it.  After about an hour I changed the window choice for the prefab half octagon piece from Vector Detector.  It's a bit too open by Star Wars standards... but for Legoland Space, I think it's perfect.  

And that brings me to my solid rotating cockpit solution.  Since the Legoland Space theme didn't have 1x2 bricks with axleholes for easy front and back stiff attachments, I didn't use them here.  Instead the front and rear have plates pressed onto the side of the technic bush that can receive studs.  Then I built up the space around the plate with standard bricks.  I did this in the front and left it exposed to slot in the lowered cockpit, and it's buried inside in the back.  You can also see I've left a wrench for our astronaut to use on those necessary repairs.

I had a grand scheme to have magnets hold the foils out in the extended formation, and it dragged out the design troubles for 2 hours.  I eventually realized the magnets didn't fit, made the wings too heavy, and... the hinges had enough strength to hold position without the magnets.  So I ditched the magnets for the foils.  I still think it would have been cool if I could have made it work... but I think I'd need to make the model bigger, and I wanted it to be close to the first B-Wing's scale.

I did get M:Tron magnetized boxes on the ship though... and then I thought... but where will the engines go?  Soo, I pulled out the grey cups from Particle Ionizer... and I think they look really splendid.

For accent I added a few turntables to give the impression of a partially exposed mechanism turning the cockpit.

I had made a design decision early in the main body that gave me a SNOT opportunity, soo... I have an M:Tron logo slipped in on the bottom? of the fuselage.  Still using Legoland era parts.  You can see the fence inside attached to an eyelet plate... and I originally had a fence on either side of the eyelet plate, 

To get it positioned for the upside down studs I stepped the eyelet plate on a 1x1 plate into the back of these headlight bricks.  you can see the placement because it's the spot where I mounted my spare astronauts wrench

And tada... one upside down M:Tron printed slop tucked away... so the B-Wing has an M on the central fuselage no matter which way is up.

I was wondering how I would photograph the fully deployed engineering, but... cue 1 monorail stanchion to the rescue!  Sweet B-Wing posturing, and I'll see myself out.

Merry happy Holichrismakwanzonukah to all a ya.  

Sincerely the Cure-all Pill.