Tag Archives: Star Wars

LEGO Star Wars is one of the most popular LEGO themes of all time. Far beyond X-wings and TIE fighters, there’s a whole expanded universe of inspiration, and an army of LEGO fans ready to build whatever comes out of George Lucas’s head next.

Obi-Wan Kenobi rides through the desert on an eopie with no name

Native to the sands of Tatooine, eopies are a great way of traveling the desert planet. Builder Shaun Sheepa gives us LEGO Obi-Wan Kenobi with a cute brick-built eopie, the former Jedi’s only companion in his exile. Shaun uses an angled cone piece to capture the iconic snout of the desert dwelling creature. The eyes are absolutely adorable with those printed round tiles, and I do like how the legs are rendered. The use of bars for the slender front legs is a clean approach. Linked bar holders standout for those rear legs, giving them the thicker appearance. The greebling of the harness and saddle is simple and effective. I do like those quarter round tiles for that back saddlebag. A nice usage of another Star Wars piece is the poncho Obi-Wan is wearing–this part is from a Luke Skywalker minifigure.

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This sail barge is large and in charge

As the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+ invites us back to the harsh sands of Tatooine, Shaun Sheepa reminds us that you can still travel in style on a desert planet. This fantastic rendition of Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge from Return of the Jedi is just 50 studs long, but is still packed with all the comforts you want in your intergalactic super yacht, like hover engines and deck-mounted cannons. The pentagonal tiles and ingots do a great job of adding some screen accuracy to the ship’s hull.

Inside, there’s room for a brick-built Jabba and plenty of the Hutt’s crew. The front also features a cockpit worthy of the finest starfighters, a feature that both of LEGO’s official sail barge sets has lacked.

The spice trade is dangerous business

From the Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett, builder Ordo (Fabian B.) brings us a wonderful LEGO depiction of Fett and his Tusken Raider clan taking on the Pykes atop their repulsor train. There’s just some fantastic sculpting at the front of the train, using hinges and bars/clips to create the right domed shape for the nose. I also appreciate the texturing choices along the cylindrical engine, providing variety while at the same time focusing on clean lines. But what really takes the cake for me here is the speeder bike design! They look so lithe and agile, zooming across the Tatooine sands. And the clouds of dust they’re kicking up are ingeniously built!

Go bananas for this Boga

A long time ago, knights would sometimes ride into battle on a trusty steed. I’m not talking about horses of course – that’s so this galaxy. I’m talking about Jedi knights, and Okay Yaramanoglu is clearly on my wavelength. They’ve reconstructed Jedi knight (okay, he was a master at the time) Obi-Wan Kenobi’s varactyl mount from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, named Boga. It’s quite a unique ride, and with its bright colours it certainly stands out a bit more than the traditional equine mount. Okay’s build is no different, cleverly using palm leaf elements for the beast’s headdress. (Is it a headdress? Maybe it’s a mane. I don’t know, I’m no varactologist.) The coloured feathers contrast nicely with the dark green of Boga’s body, with a couple of boomerangs used for her tail feathers. More leaf elements are used as an excellent match for the feet – perfect for chasing after fleeing cyborg separatist leaders.

Bossk is the boss when he’s in his battle-mech

Greg Dalink is slowly making his way through the bounty hunters from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back with his awesome battle-mech concept. With IG-88 and Boba Fett already part of the roster, it’s now the turn of the Trandoshan terror Bossk. Unlike the previous two, Bossk naturally has a lot more ‘organic’ parts on show, and Greg has boldly elected to stick with olive green for his scaly skin. There are still a limited number of parts in this colour, so there are a few creative choices – most notably the use of a dinosaur head for, er, the head. Bossk’s signature yellow jumpsuit is well integrated with mechanical details accomplished by greebling, which makes it look more like armour than a cloth suit. It adds some good emphasis to the heavy-duty feel of the mech.

Greg has gone the extra mile and created a sandy base for this bounty-hunting walker to stand upon as well. My favourite detail of these battle-mechs is the fact they can seat a minifigure version of the mech itself, and they can poke their heads out of the top. I can only assume that Bossk is having a friendly conversation with this Tusken raider, rather than looking to gobble him up…

From Star Wars: Visions comes a duel in motion

Star Wars: Visions is a testament to what imaginative and unbridled creativity can do with Star Wars storytelling. This LEGO build by ABrickDreamer continues in this same spirit of creativity. The scene, from the short film The Duel, focuses on the two duelists–Ronin and the Sith Bandit Leader. Both wield their crimson blades with skill while perched upon a log headed for a waterfall. The Sith Bandit Leader deflects a rocket meant to destroy her while one of her bandits watches from the riverbank. This build is all about motion! There’s a flow from the tree in the back to the waterfall in the front, near the Ronin’s side of the log. The water’s movement is achieved through alternating how the transparent clear and blue pieces are positioned. The flower petals in the water also help show the river’s flow.

The log’s shape comes from a pretty cool method–there are flex tubes linked together at the log’s core. The sides and top are clipped on the core, creating the stage for the epic duel. The riverbanks have some nice variations of green in with the greys to capture mossy river stones. A cool little Easter egg is the little brown piece floating in the water behind the log. It’s actually from a broken reddish-brown plate! Above it is some fire dripping from where the log was cut by a lightsaber. The wonderful piece used is from the minfigure blast effects pack, same for the explosion splash by the Sith Bandit Leader. If you want to take a closer look at this LEGO creation, check out this video where ABrickDreamer talks about the build and how it’s constructed:

Straight from the Boonta Eve Classic, it’s Anakin Skywalker and his custom podracer!

This dynamic vehicle is lovingly crafted from LEGO by Matt in excellent detail! I’ve always loved this podracer, and this build reminds me why. The engines are slick, and the cockpit is stylish. Of course, it doesn’t hurt it’s the fastest racer ever! Can you hear those engines purring, the energy binder humming? Some cool parts usage at work in those racing engines, like the yellow helmets from the LEGO Space theme. Another nice callback, this time to the Arctic theme, are the yellow snowshoes on the engines’ midsection. They have the waffle cutouts perfect for those vent covers! Something I appreciate is the use of transparent cones for that undulating effect of the active energy binder.

Check out the rest of this podracer

Fly into the sun with this LEGO Sunriser

One of the key design elements of the Star Wars universe is its ‘lived-in universe’ feel. A consequence of that is that some of the ships can sometimes look a bit drab in their greys and blacks. Joey Klusnick has seen fit to remedy that with a ship designed to fit in the Star Wars galaxy, but with a colourful twist! The bright yellowish-orange paintwork, alongside the purple canopy, really makes this little spacecraft pop. There are some design cues taken from elsewhere in the galaxy far, far away. The unique, asymmetrical shape reminds me a bit of a B-wing, while the smaller engine ports follow the same Incom design used on the X-wing or U-wing. There is just about enough grey and battle damage (created with stickers) to keep that signature used feel. It even comes with a few play features – the cannons on the end can rotate on their axis, and the Astromech’s port actually opens rather than being an empty 2×4 hole!

If Tatooine was in 30’s era Detroit

I used to think I was the only one who did this; you look at a Star Wars vehicle and imagine its Earthly counterpart. For example, the Millenium Falcon could be a Ford Falcon, Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter could be a Jedi Starliner and Darth Vader’s TIE-Fighter could be a bitchin’ 70’s era Econoline with shag carpeting, beef jerky dispenser, lava lamps and a Boris Valejo space-wizard airbrushed on the side. Right? Well, it worked better before I put it to writing. Anyway, LEGO car guru and real-life car guru Peter Blackert clearly thinks of this stuff too as evidenced by this terrestrial 1939 Buick Y-Job concept made into Luke’s Landspeeder. There aren’t a lot of these lying around so I had to Google the vehicle but once I did, I can see how Peter saw the retro-futuristic shape of the Landspeeder. This computer render, in my opinion, perfectly melds the swooping curves of both designs.

Doing this sort of thing is a fun and imaginative exercise but if you prefer to keep your Landspeeder designs true to the movie, then try your hand at building the official UCS Luke’s Landspeeder LEGO set that has come out recently. Installing a beef jerky dispenser in the dash would only sweeten the deal.

Revisiting the classic TIE Fighter from Star Wars

TIE Fighters are one of the most iconic spaceships in pop culture today, and one of the most fun to see built with LEGO. Faku Saku returns to the classic ship with this redesign of an earlier TIE Fighter model he did a few years back. Redesigned and built from the ground up, the wings on this fighter stand out with some exquisite details. Right from the gate, we can see Faku kept the grille tiles for the solar panel detailing on the outside of the wings. Tiles and wedges nicely fill in the inside of the wings. The points where the wings attach to the ship’s body feature greater screen accuracy than the original model. And the outside of the wings? They have a cleaner and stronger appearance than most builds I’ve seen for a Tie Fighter!

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Rancor vs Skorpenek – Microscale battle between two miniature monsters

If you were as thrilled as I was to see the mighty rancor roar in the basement of Jabba’s palace in theaters when Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi premiered in 1983, despite the stop-motion effects that showed us something of its actual size, then you would probably enjoy the season 1 finale of the Disney+ show The Book of Boba Fett. Tim Goddard has recreated the scene in miniature, pitting a pair of newly canonized Skorpenek devastator droids against Boba Fett riding on the back of a raging rancor.

SPOILER ALERT The rancor not only wins, but more than a few parts get ripped off and shoved in places they were not meant to go.

LEGO Naboo starfighter – An elegant ship from a more civilized age

Say what you want about the prequel trilogy, but it is hard to deny that the films came with more than a few iconic ships to give the Millenium Falcon some merchandising competition. Koen Zwanenburg was inspired to make a larger version of this ship having acquired a 4×4 Artoo head from a 2017 polybag. The entire ship was built to scale for this larger printed dome. Koen did a masterful job with the sleek lines and the delicate tail section. The engines are made from hollow tipper drums, which allow the thin wings to hold the weight without bending.

And check out this beautiful head-on view, which really shows off the delicate wings with the large engines that present one of the major challenges with building this ship, which Koen handled like a Jedi.