Boonta Eve and Beyond - My Podracer MOCs
I've been doing this for the past year and figured it might be time to do a reddit post since up til now the only people who have seen these have been in discord as I've finished them.
So, here's the deal with these. If I'm being completely, brutally honest, I've gotta say, I've not been impressed by other podracer offerings online. Half the ones I've seen have antistuds showing, pretty much all of them are woefully undersized, and the scale of the models themselves is wildly inconsistent. So, instead of bellyaching, complaining, or being a nuisance and making people feel bad, I thought I'd just do it myself. And, well. Here we are!
It took me a month to settle on the scale, but I finally decided that the 2019 Anakin podracer is the most lore-accurate in scale and design that has ever been officially released by LEGO. With that size chosen, I decided the most accurate scale for these things came from "Star Wars - The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels" (which was published in 2003). With those in place, I now had everything I needed, save for the actual designs for the dang things.
While things like the podracer models found in "Star Wars Episode 1 Racer" and "Racer's Revenge" helped, they tended to be a bit low poly for the Boonta Eve offerings (and revenge doesn't have all of them, anyway). I did manage to find a rip of the models from the Kinect podracing game, but notably models are lacking for Ratts Tyrell and Neva Kee (who was the podracer I began with).
Salvation came in the form of a 2-disc PC game released with the movie: "Star Wars Episode 1 Insider's Guide." This disc was a godsend, and it contained an absolute treasure trove of early-production models (both 3d and physical) as well as 2d concept art for all the pods, even including three of the SWE1R exclusive racers. With this in hand, I could finally truly begin.
Neva Kee was completed first, followed by Ark Roose. I began work on Mars Guo, which ended up being maybe a bit too much to chew so early into the project so I worked on Ebe E. Endecott, then couldn't finish him either so I dropped the project for half a year. This march I picked it back up again, completing Endecott and making Boles Roor, then Dud Bolt and finally, finally finishing Mars Guo, then finally figuring out how to even begin working on Ben. I've begun work on Teemto and Aldar, but I am in the middle of another slump at the moment.
7/17 Boonta Eve podracers complete. 10 remain, and then I'm done.
Well, except, as you might have guessed from the title, stopping there seems like quitting while I'm ahead. I am unbelievably proud of everything I've done so far but, would it be right if I neglected the video game exclusive podracers? No, I decided, I decided that no that wouldn't do at all actually and so I am done with 7/32, 35 if you include the non-canon Maul, Vader, and Watto from Racer's Revenge, and actually 40 if you include the podracer-themed mounts from SWTOR, and 41 if you include the TIE Bolt which is apparently a real thing according to one youtube video ranking every TIE variant that has ever existed in a piece of star wars media, so maybe I won't do that one but *WHO KNOWS* I sure don't yet. There may even be podracers I am as yet unaware of!
So, basically, I am now announcing to the world that this is a project I am working on, I have the intention to make the instructions available in the future but I don't intend to release them *yet*, I still need to make sure that they won't fall apart once they are built (Neva Kee has a pretty nasty sag in his engines so I need to figure out how to remedy that) and stickers are kinda going to be a requirement for guys like Guo so I'm going to need to find someone willing to design a couple of those... Basically, there's a lot of things that still need to be done before I'm convinced these aren't going to be of a sub-par quality but just be aware, they are coming.
TL;DR: these are the first 7 of the 17 Boonta Eve Racers, I intend to make the ones from the games too eventually, and I might be beginning to think of myself as a god because of all the work I've put into this. Everything I make is mostly in scale with the 2019 Anakin's Podracer released by The LEGO Group. Neva Kee is a little bigger though.