The making of part nine

Copyright:

LEGO is trademark or registered trademark of The LEGO Group in Denmark and/or other countries.

All original work on this site is copyright C.K. Goh and may not be copied or reprinted without my express written approval.

-----

In this series: |part 1| |part 2| |part 3| |part 4| |part 5| |part 6| |part 7| |part 8| |part 9|

Workshop: |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6|

-----

Back in September I posted my LEGO creation part nine, a fighter jet that can transform into a half-jet-half-robot, and also a full robot.

Like most, if not all, creations, it's a refining process with multiple iterations, progressing through changes, trials and errors, ideas, until we get it right. Until we are satisfied.

It's no different for my LEGO creations.

Here's the record of how this particular creation came to.

Similar to how I deal with most things, I like to start my creation from the foundation. For this creation, it's the legs.

I was a bit obsessed with that particular feature, how the Macross afterburners changed into the robot's feet, so I tried a few designs.

First version of the legs

After the legs came the skeleton of the fighter jet body, getting an outline so I could transform the legs to afterburners in a seamless transition.

no head =P

realistic walking posture possible with this design

Then some "flesh" for the body was put on and the first version of the arms was created.

It's worth mentioning that this version of arms folded under the body in between the legs. This is actually the version I wanted to achieve but this design made the body very thick as well as I do not have LEGO parts to make some of the joints sturdy.

It's after all, a toy for the little monsters to play with. Flimsy and easily broken off parts are just not going to cut it.

second version arms

still no head =P

Then I came out with the second version of arms, and legs too actually. No longer has exposed joints and gaps in between upper and lower arms and legs.

This version of arms made the wings portion thinker than I like though.

first completed version

yes, with head. It's a completed version after all =P

Eventually, I created the first completed version. The legs, arms and head are exactly the same in the final version posted in September. However I did not like the wings and the body so I remade those.

Wings were not cool enough and body too squarish. My creation has to be aesthetically pleasing to me, hehe.