The airport may not look like much but it truned out to be a relatively big project.
Part of the problem was artist’s block, probably caused by the stress of moving (which had just started) which also meant that many parts lay in no particular order in various places and finding some individual parts literally took up to an hour in some instances.
For reasons of stubborness and/or a committment to artistic uniqueness integrity I refused to look at Lego pictures of aeroplanes even though i’d never really doen one. The drone jet fighter which you see is the result of hours of work designing, redesiging and then polishing, so to speak, that design repeatedly till it looked and felt right, aesthetically, in its balance and weight and most importantly it seemed to make the plane look realistic it needed to look aerodynamic above all.
The scene also comprised a triple split perspecitve with the commercial airport on one side in micro scale, the jet fighter at regular scale and the tarmac, runway and trees on the other side done in mid-scale. The real trick was not so much in developing the scales but incorporating them in a way by which they blended seemlessly together in the set.
The rabbit with the headphones as well as the custom made repair tolley, the patterns in the airstrip, the design of the small airport and aeroplanes as well as of course the main fighter aeroplane, were all created from scratch with little to no outside artistic influeneces (in sharp contrast to the ’68 Land Rover).
As I said, perhaps it doesn’t look like much on the surface but the design of this set runs deep and took time to slowly put each piece of the puzzle together. There are too many little things I like about this to point out, but the hinged jet engine to give the angle and shape of the flame I feel really gives an impression that the engines are firing. I also like the somewhat spaceship-like desing of the airport tower.
Anyway, overall it was a nice set to build and worth the time involved if only becuase though it’s small and nto particularly eye catching it’s a nice, unique and coherent set. The customer was also very nice and patient which was good because during that stage of the move some things such as this project were significantly delayed and it already took far more time than originally envisaged. But it was certainly a nice set to finally finish.
