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Hazel's Website

Current commander

Hi so this has been the main thing I've been building for maybe the past year at this point (?) and I've realised 'wow i've actually got all the photos of this in progress so I should probably put them somewhere'. And what would you know, that somewhere is THIS VERY WEBPAGE!!! wow

So, come end of second year of University - I haven't built much in a while, except a few floodland wips (RIP), and I'm looking for something new to build. Lucky for me I am extremely unoriginal, and Toby (Intense Potato on flickr) had built probably one of the best helicopter's I've seen. The design doesn't strictly follow any real world helicopter (as far as I'm aware) yet still feels like something you could find on an actual helipad. My conniving mind thought 'I could do that...' and my year long project of love and hate began.

On holiday in Exmoor, I started to draft out a few ideas. Pretty early on I was already set on the large pill shape below the propellers, and the 100% ergonomic cockpit that's tilted up in flight. Do either of these things make sense? No, but fuck the haters - If I wanted to build something that is actually feasible in real life, I'd go work for lockheed martin or something.

The last part I landed on here is what I guess has been affectionately called the 'streched cat' pose. The sort of way it juts out gives it a silhouette I really like. So these 3 parts are the crucial pieces I want to keep throughout the build: Pill, Tilted cockpit, Cat pose.

OMG was this first try a huge failure. The whole build felt insect-like - not at all the industrial look I wanted. I played around with this for a while but really the main problem which required me to scrap this was its scale. Usually, this is around the size I build, but it wasn't having the effect I wanted, feeling more like some kenner toy instead of being to scale with a minifig. The cockpit though I did like; the two windscreens paired together for that blocky look was fun. I would come back to this but skip the unnecessary 'SNOT' which was required for it (SNOT is a word I hate dearly, but thats for another blog post)

This is where I was getting happy with it. Yes, maybe it's a skeleton, but it was the point where I could see pretty much how everything else would come together with it. The pill from the scrapped first attempt had been carried over, fitting in a lot more with this than the prior, but nothing else had. The cockpit had taken slight inspiration from the prior, scrapping the smaller 4 wide windscreens to the classic 2x6x2 windscreens. Maybe I could've done something more impressive, but sometimes you just need to go simple (which I would say works here. If you disagree, FUCK YOU).

Importantly, it being scaled up gave a lot more space to play around with all the giant curved slopes in dark green without feeling too forced. I'm a huge fan of these overly large lego pieces - They're unwieldy but if you can get them to work, they're cleaner than any SNOT clusterfuck you can make. I'm not here to do maths in my hobby, I do that for a degree. Let me shove shit together like its a kitbashing project and see if it works.

Lastly, what really clicked here for me was the silhouette. When in flight, it really seemed to have a line of action which 'weighed down' towards the centre, whereas in it's landed position, the line of action seemed more alert, going upwards through the tail. The idea that it could have two distinctly different silhouettes without moving any parts really itched something in my brain. Maybe I'm going insane and no one else can see this, but I can... and that's all that matters to me...

Although previously I may have said I could see how things would work from here, doesn't mean I wouldn't procrastinate!! I really really loved what the build had going for it, and posting anything less than perfect would be a waste.

This does not usually effect me as all my builds are shitposts, but I was really starting to like this one. I got them butterflys in my tummy hehehe

Sometimes shit hits the fan and everything fucks up. Around this point, I had paused my studies in university for mental health reasons, and really this build became an omen of evil at the corner of my eye. I really tried to come back to it and finish it many times, but I'd made it into this gigantic project which I will never be capable of completing. On top of that, I hadn't built anything else for the past six months and felt seriously washed up.

Eventually reason to finish this hit. Bricktastic in Manchester was getting closer and I needed SOMETHING to bring to it, so I put in a few Bricklink orders to actually have a decent dark green collection.

One thing that won't be seen on any of the finished photos is that I did actually give this a finished underside, so all 360 degrees of viewing were perfect for pics. Sadly in the final photos I couldn't find a way to get pictures of this without it looking dumb.

Wow, I love drinking and hanging out with nerds.

As some people may know (those who were there) I did not in fact finish the helicopter come Bricktastic. On the Friday, I had arrived with a bag full of parts and Bricklink orders, stole Finnnn's storage box, and got building. While everyone else was setting up, I was once again building on the day (sorry fairybricks for doing this the 3rd time in a row).

The result was mediocre. Good enough to display but there were many parts you could tell were not the ideal solution, such as the tail and cockpit. Although many people may say it was 'done' from this point, it was not good enough for me, especially not good enough to post.

I guess the one cool part I got out of this was the original idea for the final picture. This style, with all the degredation, was intended for doggy dog world but it didn't fit with the vision for that. Thanks to Simon for letting me use his aircraft carrier to photograph on. The idea for a magazine advert for HW inc. would have fit the bill perfectly. Sadly, this build was not up to par, so when it was done I couldn't get another photo on the aircraft carrier, significantly deterring me from trying it out again...

A month or so after bricktastic, I finally came back to this. Refreshed, and slightly more sober, I went over the parts I didn't like. The underside of the pill was redone with the 'Laurenz special' and a shark head instead of an ugly LBG box. The pill itself lengthed cos it was lowkey a small chud. And then it was time to deal with the cockpit.

I think the one thing that people critised the most was the cockpit. Although I love it, I am not immune to the cries of the populus. The main issues was the gap between it and the body, and the 'ugly' look of it. People do not like the boxiness of it.

I tried a few different things, each slightly better than the last. The mouth print was probably my favourite, but it is probably better placed on a different build. All in all I ended up with a relatively similar yet slightly more curvatious look ;)

I hope you've enjoyed this insight into the process and my ramblings. More to come from this mysterious HW inc. !!!