Batman Beyond, Legacy of the Dark Knight

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The DLC Batman Beyond is an entirely new build for LOTDK. LEGO has never produced any sort of representation of this vehicle.



Fortunately, there’s no digital LEGO shenanigans going on. This is a totally feasible build. The only problem comes with the colours.

 

You can pretty much sum this build up with a palette of 3.

Black, Trans Red, and gray.

 

LOTDK is a dark game, with lots of moody lighting, especially around Gotham, so nailing down exactly what shade of gray comes down to comparison.

Here is the Beyond Batmobile next to Catwomans motorbike.




The gray trim is the same shade as the container piece on the back of Catwomans bike.

Catwomans bike is an accurate recreation of the bike featured in Batman & Selina Kyle Motorcycle Pursuit (76179) and in that set, the box is Dark bluish gray.

Therefore, the colors we’re going to look to build from are black, trans red, and dark bluish gray.

Decals

The only decals on this one are on the windows. 


Stripes on the 1x4 bricks along the side, and down the front of the 2x4x1 curved windscreen.

All black, these could easily be reproduced.

So can I build it?

Can it be built? Yes.

Can it be built to be color accurate? No, unfortunately there are a couple of pieces that don’t exist in the correct color and can’t be replicated.

Black isn’t a problem, everything in the build is available in black where it’s supposed to be.

In dark bluish gray (DBG) however,




This plate at the front, has no seam lines, studs down the middle, and flat tile at the front. The only part that fits the bill is 88646 

This isn’t available in DBG.

It could be closely replicated by either using 2 modified 2x2 tiles (33909) or a 1x4 plate and tile (all of which are available in DBG), but either of these options would create a seam which does not exist in the in game model (not such a big deal though).



The front and back wings use a relatively new element, 4x1 wedges left and right (5414 & 5415).

These are one of the biggest problems in this build. They’re not available in DBG, and there’s really no good alternative that maintains the same shape:


To avoid having 1 mismatched color wedge on the front, for this build I decided to just replace all of the trim with light bluish gray instead. 5414/5415 AND 88646 are available in light bluish gray so that felt like the best option to maintain the shape and stay almost color accurate (atleast for right now).

LEGO are still actively using 5414/5415 wedges, so hopefully soon (maybe with a curvy Star Wars ship) they will release them in Dark bluish gray so I can go back and make the build color accurate


In transparent red.

The back end uses a 1x2 – 2x2 bracket (44728) in trans red. This isn’t available. Though it is available in solid red and is mostly hidden so it’s not too bad.


The biggest problem in this whole build is the windscreen.



Unavailable in trans Red with no viable alternatives. The closest you could get is either using this element in dark red (losing the transparency) or Trans-Dark Pink.

To get around this, I used a red window tint over a trans clear windscreen. 



It's super cheap and easy to apply. The side windows ARE available in trans red, so you can use them in your build, but I would instead advise that you give them the same treatment as the windshield (using trans clear bricks with red window tint) so that they're an exact colour match. I found that although the tint did get pretty close to the LEGO trans red you would expect, when put side by side with a real brick there was a noticeable difference. So tinting up all 3 was a cleaner finish.


When it all comes together, this build is rock solid. I was a little worried about the wings popping off, but the connection is really strong. 

If you want 100% color accuracy, just wait a while and cross your fingers that LEGO find a need for those slopes in dark bluish gray.










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