After finishing and photographing several large projects, I wanted to do something on a smaller scale. I started building a basic little fighter and then thought it would be fun to make two of the exact same kind to evoke real fighter wings that are often composed of two ships. The design is pretty basic, with a little SNOT thrown in on the gun mounts and engine assemblies.
I wanted to try a new color combo and I like the sand blue and dark blue together along with white for the base color and black for accents. The engines were an initial attempt to establish a color scheme for an entire theme, but I had to remind myself to keep the project small! However, when you get to the bottom of this page you'll see a very large pair of engines I'd made first. As I started work on the ships, I tried to tailor the color scheme to match the big engines.
Even though I've been building with Lego for years, I've only recently begun to apply the aesthetic of choosing colors to identify certain objects. For this ship, I used orange for the seats, yellow for flight control, and tan for storage.
The new Exo-Force robot claws make a great targeting sight!
I built out the rear hatch a bit so that I could add bars in front of the rear window for extra protection. The pilot has to either jump off the nose or squirm through here, so one thing this ship definitely does NOT have is an easy egress, another design principle on which I must improve!
The storage compartment has just enough room for a standard sidearm, walkie-talkie and a rangefinder.
I used dark red around the bottom engines as a sort of visual danger signal. You can also see the power couplings going out to the weapons and the click-bricks I used to add further VTOL capability and an unusual landing gear solution.
I'd saved several of the Life On Mars cockpit pieces hoping to find some use for them. At first I'd just put them on the back for a little stylin' flair. Then I discovered that if I employed their click-y-ness they actually worked perfectly as landing gear. Another happy accident!
There's just enough give on the hinges to make for a nice, cushy touchdown.
These are the engines that I'd begun working on before I built the ships. I'd intended both pairs to be part of a theme based on pairs, but I decided to stop there. I'd intended for the engines to removable from a larger ship, but I couldn't think of an easy way to fashion a housing that would properly secure them. This part, as many know, has proved invaluable in fashioning very fun SNOT shapes, and a stack of them formed the core around which I layered a lot of stuff.
Another very serendipitous moment occurred when I discovered that the new large trans-clear dome from #7255 General Grievous Chase were a perfect topper underneath which I could develop some colorful engine details.
