Tag Archives: Starfighter

Full-spectrum starfighter runs on color

NASA and Space X might stick to mostly monochrome vehicles, but great LEGO spaceships play confidently with color. Maybe you take inspiration from one of the classic LEGO space themes, or maybe you just love teal. For Mason Martin‘s starfighter, color isn’t an aesthetic choice but the driving force behind a bold design that fuses sleek lines with scientific scholarship. The Color Theory incorporates RGB, CMYK, and the trusty RYB color wheel. It has a prism, gradients, and a mass spectrometer. How does all that color make it better at swooshing and pew-pewing? I don’t know, I’m no scientist. But it sure looks good from every angle.

Read on for more views of Mason’s colorful creation

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A starfighter that’s hench

Star Wars Outlaws, the latest video big-budget video game in the Star Wars universe, released last August bringing with it great new ship designs for fans to turn into models! Sentinel_Brix built a spot-on LEGO version of the DF-11 Scourge used by pirates and gangs in the game. Brix made sure to add all the tubes and greebles you’d expect to find on a beat-to-hell fighter in the service of a criminal syndicate including a pair of hot rod exhaust pipes (like those on this Diesel Daredevil) venting out the back. It’s got everything you need to arm a bunch of henchmen, mooks, minions, stooges – goons even – and general flunkies to plunder the hyperspace lanes for profit!

Starfighter or bomber? Y not both?

At the Battle of Yavin, it was the brave pilots of Gold Squadron in their Y-Wing starfighters who made the first trench run in an attempt to blow up the Death Star. Even if those ships failed in their mission (thanks, Darth Vader), they live on in our hearts and, courtesy of builders like talego, in our LEGO bricks. talego’s take on the iconic Star Wars vehicle is one of the best we’ve seen, preserving the detail reserved for a UCS ship but at minifig scale. The greebling is out of this world, but the color blocking on the cockpit is just as impressive. For the support pylons, talego employs vintage rails, all the better to stay on target. With the care that went into this model’s creation, it’s no surprise that the Y-Wing is talego’s favorite ship.

We’ve got a highly detailed TIE fighter on our scopes...

Not long ago, we featured Joel Short‘s screen-accurate LEGO X-wing. As great a replica as it was, it had nobody to chase it around. Enter Joel’s latest creation (well, actually an update of an old creation, but it’s a great update): the legendary TIE fighter. I don’t know if you can hear a picture, but I look at it and hear a TIE’s distinctive roar.

Can’t shake the fighters on your tail? Let’s get a little closer.

The “B” in “B-wing stands for “brilliant”

For a starfighter that appears for about 0.3 seconds in the background of Return of the Jedi, the B-wing gets a surprising amount of love (especially from our Managing Editor, Kyle). Maybe it’s the way it swivels, keeping the cockpit upright. Or maybe it’s just the enduring mystery of how exactly this thing is supposed to look like a “B” (what, was “T-wing” somehow taken?). Regardless, this LEGO version by Simulterious looks great. The model captures the asymmetrical coolness of the storied starfighter, along with a level of detail worthy of a film prop (look at the greebling along the cockpit!).

Here’s a view from the back, to give you a better view of the Quadrex Kyromaster ion engines and the hull plating along the ventral wing. Take special note of the sloping where the wing meets the fuselage, which gets just at the right angle. It’s been a while since LEGO has released an official B-wing model, but I’d love to see them try to match this level of detail.

In space, no one can hear you make swooshing noises

Sometimes, you can hear a LEGO model even when all you’ve got is an image. Take this spaceship by Al-Tair here, which inspires a reaction somewhere along the lines of KSHEWWWWWW PEW-PEW-PEW! For anyone who doesn’t speak spaceship onomatopoeia, that’s the sound that automatically springs to mind as you imagine yourself swooshing the model around, firing those deadly-looking wing cannons. Bonus points for the use of one of my favorite cockpit pieces (we all have those, right?): the newer trans-blue helicopter screen from the City theme.

A Star Wars force to recon with

At a glance, one might mistake this exceptionally tidy creation by Thomas Jenkins for an official LEGO set, and you could be forgiven for that, as the Jedi craft’s distinctive lines are recreated spot-on. But there’s a lot more going on here than you will find in any set (including easily triple the parts count!) – a result of Thomas’ “totally SNOT approach” to the subject. To my knowledge, the “Eta-2 Actis-class Light Interceptor” or simply the “Jedi Interceptor” has been offered three times as an official set at this scale, all of them using some variation of the same Bubble Canopy element seen here. No doubt starting with that element, Thomas’ build easily blows them all away, having tried “so many combinations to get the angles to match just right” before striking “just the right balance of aesthetics and compactness”. I couldn’t agree more! Time well spent, sir.

To borrow from another franchise for a moment, this is not the Jedi Interceptor we got, but it’s the one we deserve.

This LEGO starfighter with teal accents has got it all

The angles on this LEGO starfigther in the Star Wars style are out of this galaxy! But I expect nothing less from Inthert who is well-known for his black magic brickery, merging smooth sections with studs in all directions. With not a single stud in sight, there’s still plenty of greebly textures (as in, like the surface of the Death Star) and excellent part usage. One example of this is the tooth element and the roller skate on the front section. The way the angled wing accents attached to the side guns look like they fold right into the main wings is magical.

This picture of the underside reveals even more note-worthy details, like the hint of landing gear next to the gun attachments. There’s also some well-placed original dark gray elements to give the belly of the craft a weathered look.

A ship called Soulless from that galaxy far, far away

General Grievous’s ship from Star Wars gets some love in this great LEGO build from Fuku Saku. Known as Soulless One, the ship is a customized starfighter that features some slick lines. This build makes plentiful use of curved LEGO pieces and tiles to keep the shaping true to the ship’s design. The clean appearance allows our eyes to pass over the ship’s lines with ease. The orange and yellow details draw us to them, breaking up the overall grey of the ship. I particularly love the construction of the orange and yellow sections that join the wings to the main body. These are typically more muted, but in this build they’re brighter, making the ship feel a little bit like a hotrod. Looking at this build, the ship looks sleek and fast–I’d love to see this thing with some racing upgrades for a galactic contest.

Take a quick peek inside the cockpit to gander at Grievous’s controls. It’s a truly spectacular culmination of angles creating that cabin-sized cavity.

A cool new ship for an old, icy theme

Back in the mid-90s, LEGO gave its Space theme a cool refresh with Ice Planet 2002. Now, EMazingbrix invites us back to the frozen planet of Krysto with this Frostbite Fighter. Full of clever curves and amazing angles, this sleek craft is a big upgrade to Commander Cold’s usual fleet of vehicles. The Ice Planet theme’s color scheme has been strictly adhered to, but there are plenty of parts and technique being used that weren’t available in the original line. The most incredible upgrade, from the explorer’s perspective, has got to be the fully sealed cockpit. That was a real rarity in the line back in the 90s. But I bet that inside of this pilot compartment is warm and toasty.

A boxy X-Wing precursor from a bygone age

If you’ve ever wondered what starfighters looked like in the days before “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” Alex Simion imagines one possibility with the non-canonical X1 Freedom Rebel Fighter. I love the rugged texture of this ship, trading in the typical sleekness of Star Wars fighters for something a bit more utilitarian. All the sharp corners and exposed mechanical panels definitely add to the implied age of the craft, and it feels reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon as a result. And check out those massive blasters on the front! I’d hate to be in front of this thing while over Alderaan.

And here’s a view of the back. I love all the mechanical texturing around the six engines. I can only imagine how fast this fella could go! This angle also highlights one of my favorite bits in the build: the pair of red friction cylinders on top of the craft. I love the pop of color amid so much gray and black, drawing the eye in to all the details surrounding them. And the technical connection to the two pairs of wings feels appropriate given all the other mechanisms on display. But where does the astromech droid go?

This arrowhead-shaped spaceship gets to the point quickly

Modeled after the Trilobate arrowhead, builder Rubblemaker provides a speedy LEGO starfighter made for quick trips across the cosmos. It’s not everyday that you see Bionicle parts interspersed on a space creation, but the builder navigates it well, using the Rahkshi legs to great effect around the cockpit. And the shaping of the rear engine with toothed wheels and gears feels right at home here. But overall, while I understand the ancient inspiration for this build, my mind is instead taken back to 1998 and the Aquazone faction Stingrays. With a high concentration of dark gray, highlights in red, and wing curves reminiscent of a squid’s body, I feel like this fighter would be at home in the stars or the sea.

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