13-Foot LEGO Star Destroyer Heads to Kickstarter

[StewShearerOld]

13-Foot LEGO Star Destroyer Heads to Kickstarter

[kickstarter=1471327222/executor-13-foot-90000-piece-super-star-destroyer]


Thomas Benedikt wants $15,500 to fund the construction of 13-foot, 90,000 piece recreation of the Super Star Destroyer Executor from Return of the Jedi.

We've seen some impressive <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/lego>LEGO spaceships in the past. Back in June, for instance, one builder unveiled a <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134987-Star-Wars-Star-Destroyer-Recreated-in-40-000-Piece-LEGO-Build>LEGO Star Destroyer that made the <a href=http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-75055-Imperial-Destroyer-Building/dp/B00J4S962W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410233811&sr=8-1&keywords=lego+star+destroyer+2014>official version look meager. A few months before that, builder Mark Kelso completed a 4-year, 7-foot build of Halo's <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131915-LEGO-Artist-Completes-Four-Year-Halo-Project>UNSC Spirit of Fire that left us pretty danged dazzled. If veteran builder Thomas Benedikt has his way, however, these builds (and pretty much every LEGO project) will pale in comparison to the project he has planned. A project so huge, he's taken it to Kickstarter. '

After nearly 1,000 hours of design work, Benedikt has completed plans for an epic 90,000 LEGO recreation of the Super Star Destroyer Executor from Star Wars. The end result would be a 13-foot model of the famous Imperial starship weighing more than 220 pounds. To construct this beast, Benedkit hopes to raise $15,500. It's a sum that he knows could come across as exorbitant.

"With the cost of everyday living expenses, I do not have the money to spend on creative endeavors," explained Benedikt. "That's why I'm on Kickstarter. I can't spend half my salary on Lego." He would go on to affirm that the Kickstarter funds would, in fact, only cover around 60 percent of the model's final cost. The rest would "come from yours truly."

This, of course, won't be the first massive-scale Star Wars build that Benedikt's worked on. <a href=http://lego.gizmodo.com/5177817/52-pound-lego-mon-calamari-star-cruiser-can-kill-darth-vader-on-impact>Back in 2009 he completed a 7-foot, 30,000 brick model of the Mon Calamari star cruiser from Return of the Jedi. Benedikt's Kickstarter, meanwhile, has currently raised $246 and has 24 days left on its timer.

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Source: <a href=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1471327222/executor-13-foot-90000-piece-super-star-destroyer>Kickstarter


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[octafish]

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After nearly 1,000 of design work,
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Nearly 1,000? That is a lot of design work.

 

[GundamSentinel]

"Pay me to play with children's toys!"

If that's what people want to spend their money on, more power to them, I guess.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Don't get me wrong, it does look damn cool, but I'm not about to spend money on some other guy's hobby. There are much better charities out there if people want to throw money away.

 

[NickBrahz]

So you pretty much give this guy money to pay for his lego and in return you get pictures of his completed lego and you get instructions on how to build a 13th model of it which you would prob find for free elsewhere.

So im gonna go play a video game and if you give me some money i will send you some screenshots.

 

[vun]

I backed this, mostly because I wanted the instructions for the small one, but also because this is a thing I would love to see actually done, even if I don't get to interact with it personally. I believe the world needs 13-foot LEGO Super Star Destroyers.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Considering the cost of Legos, his goal is far more reasonable than what that potato salad kickstarter managed get in total donations. Wasn't the official Star Destroyer set around $1000 and maybe 2 feet long?

 

[StewShearerOld]

snip
After nearly 1,000 of design work,
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Nearly 1,000? That is a lot of design work.

I know, right!?!

Thanks for catching this. Should be fixed now.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

From his Kickstarter page:

Why should I give you money to play with a toy? Technically, to play means to have fun. Constructing this will be torture. Besides, I never ?play? with my ships. I always sell them to collectors for funding future projects. Again, this is an art project.

So he's funding something so he can sell it off to a collector?

Not sure if that sits well for me. I mean when you fund a game or a product or something you generally are also essentially preordering whatever it is. With this its like you're funding him to to build something to sell to a single collector while you get a few pictures ... I mean if it was going to show up in some kind of museum or something for public display, then sure maybe ... eh, seems kind of like a bad investment to me.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Just noticed a potential little problem with the numbers provided. The one you show earlier is 2 meters long, or 6.5 feet, and uses 40,000 pieces. This one is meant to be twice as long, so I would presume it is also twice as tall and wide. What with how volumes work and all, it should be a bit more than just 40k*2+10k bricks. Unless he's using some different technique to do this, but the other one was near hollow with nothing but a bare frame keeping it up.

Not that it matters to me, since I'm not giving him any money. Just couldn't help but have to point out some potential problems in the math.

-Edit-
Well, just looked a little deeper into it, and I found out how he's doing this. He provides the dimensions he'll be working to (12?6? x 4?1? x 1?), and sure it's a lot longer, but my original assumption about the width and height getting larger were wrong. The 40k star destroyer was 1.25 meters wide (4'1", the same width) and 58cm tall (1'9", nearly twice as tall as this larger one).

So, we're going to get a rather flat star destroyer it seems, since the other one looked pretty fantastic in terms of proportions.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

From his Kickstarter page:

Why should I give you money to play with a toy? Technically, to play means to have fun. Constructing this will be torture. Besides, I never ?play? with my ships. I always sell them to collectors for funding future projects. Again, this is an art project.

So he's funding something so he can sell it off to a collector?

Not sure if that sits well for me. I mean when you fund a game or a product or something you generally are also essentially preordering whatever it is. With this its like you're funding him to to build something to sell to a single collector while you get a few pictures ... I mean if it was going to show up in some kind of museum or something for public display, then sure maybe ... eh, seems kind of like a bad investment to me.

I have to agree. His answer to that question smacks of playing with semantics in order to justify getting funds from Kickstarter. Sure he isn't playing with them, but this is his hobby because it's something that he enjoys doing. Call it whatever you want, but he's ask us to pay him to play with Legos, then to sell the results. Meanwhile backers just get some instructions to a model that will cost even more money to actually make since they'd likely need to go buy the parts for it.

 

[senordesol]

I'd love to see it, dunno who has that kind of disposable income to pay for it. Maybe ask the Lego company itself? Get it set up in a Lego Land or somethin'.

 

[Strain42]

"Pay me to play with children's toys!"

If that's what people want to spend their money on, more power to them, I guess.

Eh, like he says on his own page, at least this could be considered an art project, and I could see Star Wars fans wanting to donate for this to be a thing. I mean I won't be, but yeah.

This still sounds like a better use of money than the dude who got over 50,000 dollars to make potato salad for himself.

 

[ritchards]

If people will donate to a potato salad they'll never get to taste, this isn't that crazy...

 

[Excludos]

"Why should I give you money to play with a toy? Technically, to play means to have fun. Constructing this will be torture. Besides, I never ?play? with my ships. I always sell them to collectors for funding future projects. Again, this is an art project."

Yeah, no. I'm not going to donate money to this guy so he can earn more money. If it was donated to a museum or something I could consider it.

 

[DTWolfwood]

So he wants investors except for the part where investors get a cut of the profit when he sells this for money...

Hey all the power to him if he can convince that many people to give him money for his hobby.

 

[Avaholic03]

Yeah, shouldn't he be talking directly with LEGO about this? For them, it would be a much smaller investment (whatever plastic + manufacturing time) to just give him the parts as part of a LEGO advertising campaign. Going to kickstarter just seems like the lazy route, and I hope it doesn't pay off for him.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The internet did this [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad] using crowdfunding.

The fact that happened makes me feel that if this fails, there is a great inbalance in the Force.