Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Classic Space: 6819 Orbital Shuttle

6819_Orbital_Shuttle_1000Don't bother looking for this one in the official catalogues; it's just a mockup, a graphical exercise of recreating the original Classic Space box arts (which I adore) as accurately as possible. The set number is fake, too ― among many other 68xx sets from the theme, the '19' is missing for some reason.

I've tried to keep the Shuttle more or less within the boundaries set by the Classic Space: blue hull, grey machinery, black and transparent yellow details, very simple and clean form-following-function design, and a prominently displayed Space logo both on the minifig and the craft. It's made of 55 parts, not counting the minifig.

The rest is straightforward. Spaceships are usually photographed from the starboard side at an angle and from slightly above, set against a starry background and above a beige planet surface ― tasks which any half-decent bitmap editing program can do with ease, and the background resources are found in abundance on the Internet.

Though the Classic Space is my favourite of all the Legoland/System themes, I like the Space Police Gen I too, and hope to come up with something interesting from that theme as well ― at least when the 6886 Galactic Peace Keeper arrives via Bricklink, which should provide some useful theme-specific parts.