I had always been a little disappointed by the Insectiods line because the majority of the sets very rarely resembled actual insects. The Arachnoid Star Base was especially disappointing because it didn't even have eight legs, let alone other insect-like details. With my collection finally sorted (Yay!) I was able to undertake my first new project in months. After a quick build and several weeks of fine-tuning, my Widow is ready to spin webs between the stars.
The first thing I worked on was making sure that the model had distinct body parts. A head, thorax, and abdomen as well as all eight legs had to be present and properly proportional. I also wanted the color scheme to be a bit more lively, so I used black and red for the base colors and yellow and green for accents.
Here is the cockpit interior and the deployed fangs. I wanted the creatures populating the spider to appear translucent, so all the minifigs for this model have trans-orange heads and trans-neon green minifig hooks.
Each of the legs is attached to the thorax by two 1x4 hinge plates. The yellow pipes don't provide any sort of cushioning, they just accent the angle of the legs. It was most difficult to get the legs to fit onto the small area on the underside because I tried to make the thorax as spherical as possible. I modeled the top to look like some kind of power core. I came back to this area and added lights to enhance the idea.
I used quite a few of the old 1x4 light bricks and the effect was terrific. The larger, six-AA battery box provides enough juice for the whole thing to pulsate or just provide steady illumination.
Of course, the commander gets the top seat on the back of the saucer. I thought the Dinosaur tails helped to suggest horns or giant hairs. I used Brasso to remove the printing from the trans-green saucer sections from the Arachnoid Star Base. It only dulls the shine a smidge.
Now the top saucer with the commander has been removed and the control center can be seen. It took lots of 1x4 red hinge plates to build the angled wall around the rim which was necessary in order to raise the dome up and create some headroom.
I'm really happy with the tubing and engine detail here as it makes for a great silhouette:
Here's the control center and the rest of the crew members. That's a ray gun rack in the rear that folds down for easy access.
Here the ray gun rack is folded down and you can also see the vent in the floor that absorbs engine exhaust. The ray guns were made with red cups and trans-light blue goblets from Belville.
