The Aluminum Mallard: A LEGO® creation by G W : MOCpages.com

The Aluminum Mallard

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The Aluminum Mallard of Space Quest fame. A gift to my friend Kevin and his girlfriend Anika.

About this creation

Status: Intact... I hope. Given to my friend Kevin and his girlfriend Anika as a gift. Hopefully they aren't playing with it, as things that get played with tend to get dropped by accident. Oh well, I'm sure anything named after Rodger Wilco's ship is bound to crash at last a few times.

Update January 13th, 2010: Turns out that the round things are the engines, and the back is supposed to be flat. The rear section has been removed and the female mini-fig now has hair that matches that of the person it's based upon.

Other than that, nothing else has changed.

OK, let's get this out of the way right now: I know it's not exactly like the Aluminum Mallard in Space Quest. This is because:

1. There are very few good pictures of it. I've looked it up, and most of them were on a Space Quest wiki page.

2. Said pictures were from a game that was made almost twenty years ago. They had resolutions and graphics that are worse than what the cheapest cell phone can handle. You're lucky you can make out any detail at all.

3. The scale, shape and pieces required to make it an exact match weren't compatible. I could have made the fins on the side, but then the scale would be much bigger. I could have gotten the cockpit wider, but that would have also distorted the shape. I could have done this, I could have done that... but time and practicality determined that the design and size had to mucked a bit to make it work.

4. Not being familiar with the series, I can't be certain of what specific features were what. In act, I'm not even sure if the original ship had engines. The limited number of images didn't show one, so I had to make one up. Don't like it, too bad.

Besides, it's inspired by the original.

This cockpit design has been done before, but it's so nice. Wrap-around view, nearly completely unobstructed, roomy... it's a good shape and design.

You can see the pilots, Kevin and Anika, inside. More on them later.

I added an engine in the back, because I couldn't find any details about it from the game. It's slightly Firefly-ish, another show I know Kevin liked.

Or at least... I hope he did.

There's always a certain amount of playability to my MOCs, and this one is no exception. I used this idea on my Shield Breaker 2.0 WIP, but since that one has been pushed back to the drawing board, I figured I might as well use it for something.

I opted to ditch those ribs or whatever the original had for something a little more detailed. It adds bulk, depth and some texture, as well as used up some of those damn ribbed hoses I had laying around for the last few years.

The cockpit has two seats, control sticks, and a panel showing things like... ice cream container pressure... and speed of bittorrent downloads... and... other things. I think the switch on the left is for which gear the ship flies in. Do spaceships have gears? Or transmissions, for that matter?

And here we have the illustrious crew! Kevin (in the white with purple arms uniform of the series character) and Anika, all splendid and spiffy as usual. I hope the mini-figs came across as accurate enough. I think I will have to alter Anika's mini-figs head if/when LEGO makes one more suitable.

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