Spanish Mission and Shattered House

Spanish Mission

Sorry that it's been a while since I've posted. Maybe I should just work out a schedule and stick to it, huh? To make up for it, here's two creations to share for MOC Monday. While perusing some of the latest creations posted, two in particular caught my eye, and they happened to be created by the same guy, Jorge Barros. The first is an adobe style Spanish Mission as seen in "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly". The use of the curved blocks to form the back and the front around the bell and cross are spot on. I also like the ceiling beams that are sticking out of the front face of the building. To complete the western feel, there's a cactus, wagon wheels, and, of course, a cow skull.


Shattered House

The second creations is titled Shattered House. The house also appears to be a western style or maybe even Mediterranean type house, but in a dilapidated state. I particularly like the missing bricks on the corner and how random blocks are strewn about. The reddish brown bricks in the middle of the white wall give off the impression of stucco or adobe falling away. With the architectural highlights like the red tile roof and the diamond accents, and great use of color, I kind of wish I could see what the house looked like before it fell into disrepair.

Adventures in LDD: X-Wing 10240

I had some free time, so I fired up Lego Digital Designer and thought I'd try my hand at duplicating the Red Five X-Wing, the newest Star Wars Ultimate Collector set to come out. As I've mentioned before, the best way to learn the program is to download one of the instruction manuals from Lego's website and try to build the set in the program. You'll learn a lot about what the program can and can't do. Here's the results after a little work, rendered in POV-Ray.

POV-Ray Rendering of LDD model

Looks pretty nice, in my opinion. I had to make a few allowances to get it looking like this. For one thing, that windscreen is not the one used in the actual set. In the actual set, a new piece (it's one stud longer) was created and has custom decals on it. LDD doesn't have that piece available so I had to use the closest approximation. The other allowance is that it's missing 4 of these pieces.

Technic shock absorber

The picture is a screenshot from LDD of a shock absorber piece often used in Technic sets. It has a spring and the black part telescopes in and out of the white piece. On this set, it would be used to make it easier for the mechanism to open and close the wings to work more smoothly. However, in LDD, it's basically one solid piece of a fixed length. So you can't really adjust it to fit perfectly on the set like you would in real life. So I just left those pieces off. By the way, the 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon I did in LDD is FULL of shortcuts and pieces that were left off because of just how complicated that monster is.
Based on this build and others I've tried in the past, here's some of the things I've learned. Don't bother trying to build anything with a lot of Technic elements. A few Technic blocks, lift arms, and axels are fine, but once you add more than a few gears, the Hinge Tool and Align Hinge Tool start to slow down or give you really wacky results. The same goes for moveable parts like hinge plates or rocker style plates. The more of those that are in the model, the harder the program has to work to rotate them. Sometimes it's easier to break the model off into a simpler sub section to get all the rotations right, then add that sub section into the rest of the model.
LDD is perfect for building static, mostly stud-on-top models like the sets you see in Architecture, City, or those Modular buildings that are popular with the adult collectors. It's not as great for complicated Technic sets or anything that uses a lot of "unorthodox" building techniques. For example, one limitation is that LDD will only let you place bricks either on the gray building plane or on a suitable attachment point. For instance, you can place a sword on the ground, or in a minifigs hand, but you can't put it inside a barrel as if it was dropped there. This means you wouldn't be able to dump a bunch of clear studs in an empty space so that it looks like water as some AFOLs might do.
Where LDD really shines, is if you're making a model that has a lot of repetition like a mansion with a ton of identical windows or columns. In real life, it would take a while to build each individual feature and add it, but through the computer magic we all love, you can just copy and paste those bricks again and again.
Once you figure out what LDD can and can't do, it will really help you understand the possibilities of the program and give you an idea of what kind of models it would be useful for designing.

HUGE Star Wars Ewok Village coming soon

I'm starting to see a lot of buzz for the new Ewok Village Lego set that will be coming out in the near future. At close to 2000 pieces and 16 mostly exclusive minifigs, it's a monster. FBTB does a great preview with plenty of pictures, so give it a look. I'm pretty excited about this set for several reasons. For once thing, it looks like the designers put a lot of work into it. And the 16 minifigures is staggering. However, the one thing that strikes me about this set is how similar it looks to another Star Wars toy from my past. It bears a striking resemblance to the old playset from the Star Wars toys of the 1980s. It even has the net, the fire spit, and the ramshackle divan used to carry C3PO around. The Lego set has added a bunch of new features such as catapults, secret passages, and (best of all in my opinion) greenery. But the similarity is pretty noteworthy.

Project 10179: 27%

A couple of updates on my efforts to collect the pieces necessary to build the monstrosity that is LEGO's Ultimate Collector Edition of the Millennium Falcon. I now have a total of 1454 pieces, which puts at just over a quarter of the way to my goal. I've started picking up a little speed lately, due to some decent sales on eBay. Part of my goal with this project is to get all the pieces I can as cheaply as possible by buying and selling used Legos via Craigslist and eBay. Also, we're heading into warmer weather, so that means yard sale season! I can usually make a little money this time of year, and there's always the occasional Lego set to be found in the neighborhoods.

In slightly related news, I closed down my BrickLink store. I continue to use BrickLink as a buyer to procure the pieces I need, but selling was just a little too time consuming for me personally. It took forever for me to list any inventory that wasn't a part of a set. I find it much easier to sell bulk lots of Lego on eBay. That probably makes me a bit lazy, but oh well. However, having a BrickLink store for a little over a year gave me a new respect for the BL store owners that have been around for a while. I'm certainly glad those guys are out there and continuing to put inventory up. Thanks to you all!

Fun with Craigslist

I don't use Craigslist ONLY for Lego stuff, but it is pretty essential to finding cheap Legos. A lot of people are a little skittish about using Craigslist, but as long as you use some common sense, you'll be ok. The crazies that show up on the news from time to time are definitely exceptions. I've met a lot of cool people and made a lot of great deals.
Case in point, I stumbled across a table customized for playing with Legos. I'm sure those of you that search for Legos on CL are aware that those little kid play tables are all over the place. People are constantly trying to get rid of these things for ridiculous prices (usually because they paid too much for what is essentially a tiny table with a Lego baseplate glued to the top). I thought this one was the same thing, but it turns out some enterprising dad bought an old table and glued a border to the top to keep the bricks contained. He then screwed a few plastic containers to the side for sorting. The leaves fold down, too. And the whole set was $35. He (sadly it seemed) needed to clear up some space and his kids had outgrown Legos. As I'm sure you know, I totally disagreed with him on that point, but at that price I'm keeping my mouth shut.
I brought it home, put it in our bonus room, then dumped all the random Lego bricks into the top and turned my daughters loose. Already I'm seeing less stray bricks in the carpet for me to damage my bare feet on. Since there's a much wider surface area than the plastic tub I usually have the bricks in, it's much easier to rummage around and find pieces you're looking for.
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The King's Riverside Fortress

I seem to be drawn to the complicated castle type builds. This is a particularly colorful build by Thoy Bradley called the King's Riverside Fortress. In addition to the greenery and lovely water, he seems to be using a combination of European and Eastern Asian style in the build. Be sure to visit his MOC page as it has TONS of pictures!

Modular Pharmacy & Doctors

I really like the modular designs that seem to be gaining popularity in the Lego community. As a result, some great MOCs have been coming out that are built around that theme. This particular creations, Modular Pharmacy & Doctors, was created by Andreas Grogel. On the outside, it has a very old timey, big city architectural feel to it. Teh accents over the windows and along the corners are wonderful.  On the inside, he has created the pharmacy on the first floor complete with blue and white tiles, and the doctors' offices are on the second and third floor with a lot of details including an exam room and x-ray machine. Under the dome on the fourth floor, there's some shady business going on, but I won't spoil the surprise. You'll have to see for yourself.

Happy New Year

Lamest post ever, I know. I think it's been about a month since I posted, but I do intend to start posting more useful stuff in the very near future, including a tutorial on how to use BrickLink's Wanted List interface to find all of those missing parts to your old Lego sets. Basically, over the holidays and into the new year, I've been very lazy as far as updating the blog has been concerned. But stay tuned. More Lego goodness will be happening in 2013.

Variations on a theme: Slave II

While doing my usual perusing of MOC pages I came across this little doozy on the left. It's the Slave II (Boba Fett's spaceship from the Star Wars universe) but done entirely in a LEGO fire theme. There's so much good stuff on this build from an extendable fire ladder, to the original guns being replaced by water hoses. The build is by Giovanni Seynhaeve, and if you go to his MOCpage, you'll see that not only is he an accomplished AFOL, but he's got more of these variations on a theme (VOAT, for short) in his builds. All of them are equally wonderful and creative in their own way. Included are a construction theme, pink girly theme, Batman, castle, and Fabuland. In the comments for the fire theme, Giovanni has revealed that he's currently working on an ambulance version. I can't wait!

10179 in POV-Ray

After yesterday's post, I wanted to try out some limits on POV-Ray. I had an LDD file of the UCS Millenium Falcon that I created in Lego Digital Designer (which took a few days of spare time) sitting on my computer. Using the LDD to POV-Ray Converter, I loaded it up and started POV-Ray. I started out with a small picture and messed around with settings, so each of the renders took about 20 minutes. Then I upped the resolution to 800 x 600 and cranked the quality settings all the way up and let POV-Ray work it's magic. 5 hours and 37 minutes later, this is what I got. It actually looks somewhat like a professional photo of a fully assembled Lego set, complete with shadows. I'm really liking this POV-Ray stuff!

LDD to POV-Ray Converter

I explained in a previous post how to take a model in Lego Digital Designer and through several steps, create a realistic looking picture of your Lego creation via POV-Ray. While perusing MOCpages recently, I came across a very helpful article (LDD models rendering tutorial) that explains an easier way to achieve, in my opinion, better results. The method used in that article uses a program called LDD to POV-Ray Converter which, shockingly, converts LDD files into a format that POV-Ray can then use to render an image. It's very streamlined and you can setup almost everything you want (quality, lights, colors, etc.) in the Converter instead of fiddling with endless text files in POV-Ray. Once you have all the settings the way you want it, you just click Convert and let the program work its magic. Once it successfully completes, the Converter will even automatically launch POV-Ray and start rendering the scene right away. It's a great tool for both POV-Ray pros, and people who are intimidated by POV-Rays minimal interface. Depending on your quality settings and how big you make the final picture, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to an hour or two. With just a little fiddling with the controls, I turned this Turkey creation in LDD...

...into this glamour shot.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Now instead of the flat, shadowless colors in LDD, we now have shadows, textured surfaces on the sloped bricks, visible seams, and that shiny, plastic Lego brick sheen we all know and love. My favorite part of the finished results is that the light on the wing makes the LEGO logo easilty visible on the studs.

French Frigate Minerve

The Pirates theme was just starting to come out shortly before I went to college and didn't have much time to play with Legos, but I always enjoyed seeing pictures of the different sets. The sails and twine rigging were a new and welcome addition to the Lego system. Come AFOLs, like Bonaparte Napoleon on MOCpages, took the theme and ran even further with it like with this French Frigate Minerve. Instead of just settling with a bit of thread here and there to keep the sails in place, he went so far as to create rope ladders and  intricate rigging with block and tackle. Add to that 20 cannons and around 12 sails, and you have a very nice looking sailing vessel from years past.

SR-71 Blackbird

Yeah, I'm a day late with my MOC Monday entry, but I just had to post this. I was into military planes when I was a kid, and my absolute favorite was a beauty called the SR-71 Blackbird. At the time, it was the fastest jet in existence and could go faster than Mach 3. I think even today in retirement, it still holds the record. So as you can imagine, I was very excited to see how well David Low at MOC pages captured the essence of this flying beast. The build may be aided by the use of black bricks hiding some lines (the original jet was black), but I can't get over how realistic and faithful to the original it looks. Wonderful job!

Project 10179 : Update

I mentioned earlier that I'm currently slowly collecting pieces to build the ultimate Lego collectors set, 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon. As of right now, I have 486 of 5195. So I still have a long way to go. Since I don't have a lot of money to sink into this, I've been funding my project by buying and selling Lego sets I find at yard sales or on Craigslist (keeping the relevant pieces for myself, of course).
One crucial question to ask yourself if you decide to collect pieces for a project this size is "Do I want to own the set with it's original pieces, or do I just want the building experience?". One of those options is much cheaper than the other. For instance, the original set is almost all gray. Specifically, it's the newer shades of bluish light and dark gray in use right now. However, if I my selection to use some of the old light and gray bricks that are the same types, then I can speed up my collection quite a bit. Also, I think the final result would look more like the original movie version of the Millenium Falcon which was a piece of junk in the story.
Also, some pieces that are used will never see the light of day once built. For instance, this little piece here was yellow in the original set. Since the yellows are relatively rare, they cost more on Bricklink than the black ones do. But those yellow pieces are only to hold the guts of the model together, so you can't see them once it's built. Some very rare pieces like the custom painted satellite dish can set you back $50. However, a plain gray dish that is the same size only costs $1. If you want to own the original instruction booklet, you might have to shell out $100+ on eBay. If you just want to build it, you can download the instructions in pdf form for free from Peeron or even the official Lego site. It just depends on how much you care. As for me, I just want to build it, view it in all it's glory, and feel how heavy the sucker actually is.

50s Soda Shop

The first thing that caught my attention about this model (Soda Shop) was that it looked like a typical modular 3 story building, which I like. It is indeed modular, and the bottom floor is amazing! Builder Henrik Hoexbroe has recreated a 50s era soda shop complete with black and white tiled floor, jukebox, and vinyl booths. The blue and white wall tiles and his use of some strategically placed blue translucent blocks finish out the appearance. Also, kudos on the dessert display on the counter. Great touch!

Mercedes 300TD

For once, I'm not posting someones castle MOC this week, but a vehicle. Reality based vehicle MOCs usually don't grab my attention, but something about this station wagon by Senator Chinchilla made me want to stop and take another look. I'd highly encourage you to do the same for this Mercedes 300TD. You can tell he put a lot of effort and thought into every detail including the V8 engine, opening and closing doors and hood, the folding seats, the gear shift, and even a tiny glove compartment. My favorite little details are in the headlights, and the use of wing elements to give the hood some contour.

LDD 4.3.5

I have been way out of the loop lately on all things LEGO. I'm really hoping that sometime in the near future, I will suddenly have more time to mess around some more in LDD, but that time has not arrived yet. I'm due for a Florida vacation next week, so maybe after then.
However, I did recently fire up LDD just because I haven't in a while and was excited to see that they have a new update, version 4.3.5. Sweet! The major change as far as I can tell is that they have reorganized the brick palette, as seen on the left. Most of the standars are unchanged, such as bricks and plates, but some of the huge, unwieldy categories have been broken up into more categories. In the previous version, everything that had to do with minifigs would be put in one category. So if you just wanted a torso or set of legs, you'd have to scroll threw a bunch of wigs and hats to get to them. Now it appears there are categories for heads, minifig body parts, wigs, hats, tools, animals, and other sub categories having to do with vehicles. This should make it much easier to get to the part that you want with a couple of clicks and less scrolling.
Other than that, it's not obvious what has been changed, but supposedly some other user interface improvements, connectibility enhancements, and a few other under the hood mechanics have been improved. The brick palette alone is worth the update, in my opinion. Enjoy creating!

Lego Treasure Cave

It's probably becoming pretty obvious that I tend to be drawn to the Lego creations that try to make a natural looking scene using the precision of Lego bricks. In that vein, here's a great piece by Mark Erickson, entitled A Treasure Cave. Obviously, it's a pirates themed Lego creation involving a group of pirates landing a small boat on a beach to hide their treasure in a cave set in a rocky hillside. The palm trees, vegetation, bits of flotsam washed up on the beach, and occasional parrot hanging out on the top of the rocky cliff gives the whole piece a great tropical Caribbean vibe. The total lack of any defined lines (other than what's inherent in individual Lego bricks) makes the whole piece look very natural.

Tiago the Toco Toucan

Normally, I tend to be drawn more towards spaceships, castles, and other microfig centric models on MOCPages, but this one really caught my eye; Tiago the Toco Toucan by DeTomaso Pantera. For one thing, I love toucans (who doesn't, really?) and DeTomaso nailed it. His use of red, orange, and yellow in the beak give the piece a little extra life and the countouring of the wings in the back look very nice.

Rural Church

Once again, I was playing around with LDD and on a whim decided to try to make a model for a simple rural church. This one in particular is modeled after a historical Methodist church in the Appalachian Mountains location of Cades Cove, Tennessee. Most of them are pretty much the same in their simplistic design, though. You can usually tell the old Methodist churches apart from the others by the two doors leading into the front of the building, one for men and one for women.