By VinceHoffman
Feb 04, 2016
Welcome to Part 1 of my 3 part Gallery posting (Hey MB Moderation Team, allowing for more than 5 pics per gallery post would be a good thing!). I've spent over a year working on this build in fits and starts, waiting patiently for other new sets in the same purple to be released so I could expand the parts palette I had to work with. This rebuild required A LOT of extra slopes, curves, tiles, etc necessitating the purchase of several Shadows, four of the Walmart exclusive Revenant, and a v2 Vampire to use as additional block fodder l its finally showtime!
Smoothing the model out and obtaining a more curvy organic look was for the most part simply a matter of substituting plates for either tiles, curves, or slopes without studs. Where possible I did this pretty much anywhere that wouldn't be considered a walkway. In these overview pics you can also see that I swapped the Scarab's AA turret single plane rotating swivel with a ball and socket attachment so the AA Cannon could actually be elevated and aim at airborne targets properly. The Scorpion and Hog were incorporated in the pics to provide a sense of scale. My leg redesign (described in Part 2) added several studs worth of additional height which helped with the comparison to other MB Halo vehicles.
Yes halo fans, there is an official canonical precedent for the existence of a hidden cockpit/control room within the Scarab. Both Sgt Johnson in H2 and Sgt Forge in the Halo Wars campaigns managed to 'jack a Scarab by operating the vehicle from this room. However the player has never been allowed to breach the cockpit door force field behind the first floor ramp. I removed a layer of plates and bricks to lower the cockpit floor making it level with the remainder of the lower deck. I redid the cockpit seating using seats scavenged from Brute Prowler sets and it now accommodates SP Elites. The stock human-centric seating did not.
The lower deck access tramp was redesigned using bricks and slopes and pushed rearwards to allow game accurate access to the cockpit located behind it. The lower deck sidewalls were reduced to two studs thick while the floor and ceiling were also redesigned making the deck much more spacious with functional headroom.
Continued in Part 2...
Smoothing the model out and obtaining a more curvy organic look was for the most part simply a matter of substituting plates for either tiles, curves, or slopes without studs. Where possible I did this pretty much anywhere that wouldn't be considered a walkway. In these overview pics you can also see that I swapped the Scarab's AA turret single plane rotating swivel with a ball and socket attachment so the AA Cannon could actually be elevated and aim at airborne targets properly. The Scorpion and Hog were incorporated in the pics to provide a sense of scale. My leg redesign (described in Part 2) added several studs worth of additional height which helped with the comparison to other MB Halo vehicles.
Yes halo fans, there is an official canonical precedent for the existence of a hidden cockpit/control room within the Scarab. Both Sgt Johnson in H2 and Sgt Forge in the Halo Wars campaigns managed to 'jack a Scarab by operating the vehicle from this room. However the player has never been allowed to breach the cockpit door force field behind the first floor ramp. I removed a layer of plates and bricks to lower the cockpit floor making it level with the remainder of the lower deck. I redid the cockpit seating using seats scavenged from Brute Prowler sets and it now accommodates SP Elites. The stock human-centric seating did not.
The lower deck access tramp was redesigned using bricks and slopes and pushed rearwards to allow game accurate access to the cockpit located behind it. The lower deck sidewalls were reduced to two studs thick while the floor and ceiling were also redesigned making the deck much more spacious with functional headroom.
Continued in Part 2...