Nite-Owl's Owlship
page 2
We'll start by taking a quick tour of the exterior of the craft. There's really not a lot going on - the comic version of the craft was the very essence of "streamlined" - a brown spheroid with two lenses in the front and a vertical "beak" between them. Even the jet engines were subdued - shown only as two small circles flush with the rear of the craft. The end result was a very organic feel to the vehicle - an interesting contrast to the dark and jagged bat-vehicles.
The movie version of the ship was a bit more steampunk looking - the front beak was enhanced with spotlights and other greebles and the engines were given a much more prominent exposure. The skin of the craft was more textured as well, showing the seams and joins of an obviously metallic construction.
Making the conversion to LEGO several compromises needed to be made. My primary concern was scale - I wanted something that was roughly compatible with the standard LEGO mini-figure. I'm within 15% of my target - it's a bit large, but not obnoxiously so.
Further complicating matters, there are only a limited selection of LEGO bricks that have a nice curve to them - and the color selection in those bricks is even more restrictive. The front windows are light blue because that's the only transparent color LEGO has released that part in. (I would have preferred clear or even a smoky transparent-black.)
Still, I think I was able to capture the iconic shape well - if you know what the Owlship is supposed to look like, you should recognize my homage as well.
Later, I would rescale the ship to better match the comic version. The trade off was, as expected, in the windows. Instead of the clean lines of the "macaroni" bricks I went with bunches and bunches of robot arms from the Exo-force line and an inverted Belville dish for the glass.
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