Mecha MOC - MAD-CM-01

December 20, 2005

Mecha MOC - MAD-CM-01

MAD-CM-01

(MOC - My Own Creation - a Lego creation not designed by the Lego company)

The inspiration

I have created another Mecha. After I finally built the CAD files for my War Of The Worlds creation, I disassembled them, and tried to start building creations from the Lego sourcebook in the titan XP set again. I built the second mecha - a short stubby thing, and was inspired to building this. You can probably see the inspiration, and the feet and forearms started life as the legs/arms for that mecha - although everything has definitely been altered, and it doesn’t look much like the inspiration mech now. It would be unfair not to give credit where it's due though.

After building more MOC’s than original sourcebook sets immediately after opening it, I have to really credit Lego for creating one of their most inspiring sets yet. Who knows what I will think to build before I get through the whole sourcebook? There were interesting build techniques, and some pieces I didn’t yet have in my collection in the set.

Now - to my creation.

MAD-CM-01 - Specs

This section gives a bit of story for people who are into mecha and like that kind of thing.

MADs designation is "Medium Armoured Dexterous-Combat Mech - Revision 01".

It is a versatile mech, combining a dexterous hand with flexible fingers designed for gripping, punching or using hand-held weapons, with some reasonable artillery including a large rotary cannon and a missile pack.

Rotary cannon:

For speed, and scout missions, it can be deployed with or without the missile pack:

Being fairly sleek, it can get up into a run, and has human movements.

It can be equipped with a hand-gun which fits well into its dexterous fingers:

Build challenges

This mecha was built around the click-ball-joint parts which are generously supplied in the 4508 kit. This meant I had to think of the positioning and movements of them a fair bit to get the poseability I wanted. I will freely admit I am not 100% happy with it.

I am not sure really if I adhered to any particular style (anime mech/battlemech/mechwarrior). One good thing about keeping myself limited to the Titan XP set is that there is already a nice vivid colour scheme to work with.

I had a bit of trouble with balance at first, but it can stand fairly well now, although open stances are preferred, which is fine when going for the "dug in with heavy weapons" look.

I had to bolster up my arm design, although the outside remained the same, I ended up disassembling each of the upper arms a few times to try and add more strength in them, as I had a few disaster moments of trying to rotate the forearm click hinges - and the whole assembly popping apart as I did so.

Poses

A mech like this couldn't be done justice without a few class poses.

MAD draws back for a punch:

I built a sword to go with MAD using parts form the Titan set, as this was a constraint I had set myself and stuck with. Unfortunately - it looked severely blocky. So for a pose with a sword, I used a rotor blade from the recent technic prop plane model.

MAD about to swing a sword: