escape to insanity

I used to be a huge LEGO freak. My room was packed with various LEGO models that I'd either built from the box directions or — more commonly — scratched together from my own imagination. That's really the better way to do it. Any model from a box was likely ripped apart for pieces within a few days anyway.

My bedroom was practically a showcase for homemade LEGO creations first, bedroom second. I've still got some of my creations sitting around on the shelves. On top of my bookshelf, there sits a tribute to Star Wars: a TIE interceptor, R2-D2, and a droideka. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of my actual builds since I'm not at my parents' house right now. The TIE Interceptor that I built isn't the official LEGO version — when it was released, it was upwards of $200. That's too much change to drop on a LEGO model for me or my parents, so I took a look around my room, sized up my inventory, and decided “I can make that.” And so I did. Without having the thing in front of me for measurements, I believe it has something like a 14-inch wingspan side-to-side, and about 12 inches from the back of the wings to the wingtips. It of course seats one LEGO minifig in appropriate gear.

In any case, that was several years ago. Before I moved on to college, away from home and away from my collection. Now I'm starting to think up things I want to do with my collection again. I'm certainly not getting rid of them, and seeing as I'll be temporarily living at my parents' abode for a short while, I may as well make some use of them.

I've thought of some models I want to try to build this summer in my free time. First up, the one that's been in my mind the longest — a Cylon raider. It's just a sleek machine. It'll be a bit of a challenge to get the same swept-out effect with LEGO bricks, but that's the whole point. Besides, for as much of a Battlestar geek as I am, I practically have to try.

Next up is Toombs' merc ship from the movie “Chronicles of Riddick.” It might be a little easier to do than the Raider, but we'll see. It's just a cool looking ship. The hard part is going to be finding source material. I can't find any pictures of it online, so I'm going to have to stick to screen captures from the movie, like the one pictured to the right. It wasn't easy finding a decent shot of this thing.

After that I thought maybe the Serenity from the ill-fated television show “Firefly” and the capstone movie “Serenity.” It's not exactly the most beautiful ship in the 'verse, but… it's the Serenity. I loved the show, loved the movie, loved the characters, so why not make the ship?

My only problem will be finding the time and space to work on these. I need to work on finding a real job, and once I get one, I'll be spending the majority of my time working and finding a place to live that doesn't involve my parents' house; that won't leave me much spare time for playing with toys stretching my imagination.