Techniques

How To Build A LEGO Minifigure Habitat

Friday, 25th October 2019 By Caz

A couple of months ago, The Rambling Brick website announced a competition to win Series 19 Minifigures, by building a Minifigure Habitat to a template by Handoko Setyawan posted on Flickr in 2016. While I didn’t enter the competition, I did notice some habitats built by Steve Guinness and others on Instagram, and really liked the concept of these little interlocking stackable vignettes based around an 8×8 plate.

These are the pieces you will need to build a basic habitat:

One 8×8 plate
24 1×4 bricks (I’ve shown them in two colours here so it’s easy to see how they are placed in the build)
8 1×3 bricks
4 1×2 bricks
2 1×6 tiles
1 1×2 plate
2 1×1 plates

This video shows you how to put them to gether to form a basic habitat, which you can then decorate to suit the minifigure at hand.

Micropolis Tutorial #7 – Triangles, Circles & Other Tricky Shapes

Wednesday, 17th April 2019 By Caz

In this LEGO Micropolis tutorial, I show how to make buildings which are triangular, cylindrical and pentagonal, as well as other shapes which are not just square boxes. Using different shapes will give your builds much more interest, especially when combined together to make a larger city.

Micropolis Tutorial #6 – Think Outside The Box

Monday, 8th April 2019 By Caz

In the sixth installment of my LEGO Micropolis tutorials, I discuss how to make your microscale MOCs less square and boxy, and more visually appealing.

Watch the other videos in the series here:
Micropolis Tutorial #1 – Baseplate
Micropolis Tutorial #2 – Vertical Scale & Floorplans
Micropolis Tutorial #3 – Window Elements
Micropolis Tutorial #4 – Design Patterns: Repetition & Variation
Micropolis Tutorial #5 – Block by Blockhead #45 – From Start To Finish

MOC: St. Octavius’ Church

Saturday, 24th February 2018 By Caz

A while ago I was messing about with some transparent boat studs (2654) and thought they would make interesting cladding for a Micropolis building. However, the difficulty using them is having to build the walls with plates facing studs-inwards. No the end of the world, but not as easy as studs-out would be.

It’s very straightforward to build square stuff with LEGO, but I also wanted to challenge myself to build something a little different, so I opted for an octagonal shape, mainly due to having an octagonal plate with open centre (6063) in my parts drawers, which I thought could possibly form the basis of the roof structure.

Octagonal Technique - Bodged Brackets — Octagonal Technique – Bodged Brackets

Getting the geometry right to make the plates fit snugly under the roof plate was tricky. I spent ages faffing about with various designs. The sides which were aligned orthogonally with the studs weren’t too difficult, but those on the 45° were proving to be a right pain. Eventually, I came up with this bracket arrangement. It wasn’t terribly stable and required some packing behind (the white plate and magenta tile in the picture) to stop it from wobbling.

The assembly was also quite tall, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to cram in another one lower down for stability. This would be required as otherwise the walls were liable to collapse at every opportunity. It was getting rather frustrating.

Octagonal Technique - Internal Bracing — Octagonal Technique – Internal Bracing

Eventually I came up with this internal bracing arrangement, connected in the middle vertically too, in order to stablise things as much as possible.

I got all eight walls up and the roof plate attached. So far so good. But then I put just a little bit too much pressure on one side when I was picking it up and – boom! – it was in pieces again.

Annoyed with myself, I gave up and went to bed.

Octagonal Technique - Walls Up But Fragile — Octagonal Technique – Walls Up But Fragile

Octagonal Technique - Revised Bracketing — Octagonal Technique – Revised Bracketing

As is the way with these things, a good night’s sleep brings fresh ideas. I kept the orthogonal pillars the same and reworked the angled versions. These are all held onto the plates via a stepped-off jumper (lime green in the picture) pushed into the hole of a 1×2 Technic brick (blue and bley).

The originals (with yellow bricks) had a decent gap between fixing points at each end of the big red plates. But the stud geometry, and the need to have a jumper plate on top of the diagnonally mounted walls meant they were a little closer together for those (see pillar with pink bricks). However, both versions were still much more stable and less prone to collapse than the first right angle bracket bodge had been. So I pressed on and reworked all four of the pillars for the 45° walls.

Right angled walls were held in place on the floor by being 1 plate lower than the tiles the remaining structure rests on. Diagnonal walls are mounted on an open stud at the bottom. The lowest plate’s middle tube underneath rests snugly in the hole in the round stud.

Octagonal Technique - Floor Tiling & Pillars — Octagonal Technique – Floor Tiling & Pillars

At the top under the roof, each of the yellow jumpers’ studs key into the single square extra pieces of the octagonal plate – marked in red here.

Octagonal Technique - Under Roof Attachment — Octagonal Technique – Under Roof Attachment

It’s much easier to see what’s going on from this low angle picture of a half-built structure.

Octagonal Technique - Try It For Size — Octagonal Technique – Try It For Size

As the roof wasn’t one continuous plate, I decided to put a pillar in the middle too, so it could rest on that if too much pressure was exerted in the wrong place on the roof. Once all the pillars were in place, it required a little bit of jiggling to get them all to line up with the underside of the roof plate, but when they do, it’s all rock solid!

Octagonal Technique - Walls And Central Pillar In — Octagonal Technique – Walls And Central Pillar In

I had proved the structure, but I didn’t want my building having red walls. Also, I didn’t have enough boat studs to cover them all, and what would it be?

In the course of ordering boat studs from Bricklink, I chose four different colours and thought they would look like stained glass windows. With some white versions around the base, I decided this would be a modern place of worship, St. Octavius’ Church. A few days later all the bits arrived and I am pleased with the way it has all come together.

MOC - St. Octavius' Church Front — MOC – St. Octavius’ Church Front

The main entrance is on the corner of the intersection, with a statue outside. Landscaping and flowers around the sides give another splash of colour. I wanted the structure to have a bit of stature too, so I left it on the 12×12 plate it had been designed on, and added white tiles to give a little step up all around the building.

MOC - St. Octavius' Church Rear — MOC – St. Octavius’ Church Rear

Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:

MOC: Green Energy Plant

Monday, 15th January 2018 By Caz

I gathered lots of the 4×4 light bluish grey plates together today (which I had picked up at Leicester Square in December) to see what I could do with them. I also found quite a few of the dark green 1×2 curved slopes with no studs (11477) which I thought would be good for accent colours. I made four cubes from the plates like this:

Then I added various control panels, the smooth slopes and other greebles to give this industrial plant which I have dubbed the Green Energy Plant.

MOC: Green Energy Plant - Front — MOC: Green Energy Plant – Front

Another significant piece was the (old) dark grey chunk on top of what I like to think of as the biomass reactor. It took some searching in the catalogue but apparently it’s an Engine, 2 x 4 x 4 (Life on Mars) 30535 from 2001, which only appeared in 2 sets in this colour. Each side is flanked by another old part, Bar 1 x 8 with Brick 1 x 2 Curved Top End (30359a) which adds more interesting greebles. Stick on a handful of 1×1 round bley tiles and a couple of hoses from a partial Benny’s Spaceship lot I got before Christmas, and there you have it.

MOC: Green Energy Plant - Rear — MOC: Green Energy Plant – Rear

Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:

MOC: The Rotunda Concert Hall

Saturday, 23rd December 2017 By Caz

I’ve been wanting to build a round structure for a while and looked around online for various tutorials on how best to do so. One method involves stacking 1×2 bricks and 1×1 cylinders alternately, with a little twist at each placement. I made this rough 3D sketch a few weeks ago, from random bricks in my collection, just to prove the concept.

I was really wondering how best to put a roof on, and this was an early attempt to cover the top, but I was far from happy with it. Then I broke it all up and put the bits back into my parts bins.

However, today I was noodling around with the bits I got from the PAB wall at Leicester Square the other day. I remembered my sketch and thought I could use all those 1×1 trans red round plates and pink 1×2 plates to make something for my Micropolis city. Sure enough, it works just as well with plates as bricks – and by having a double stack of 1×2 bricks and 1×1 cylinders on the bottom, that gave the structure a nice lobby type area. I imagine the auditorium is in the round with seating raked up the sides of the curved walls.

MOC: Rotunda Concert Hall - Front — MOC: Rotunda Concert Hall – Front

The roof was still an issue until I found the bag of 1×2 curved slopes (11477) which I had picked up in November’s haul. A little bit of fiddling and I had an intricate retractable roof which we have to imagine fully covers the cylinder when closed.

I christened this MOC the Rotunda Concert Hall, and with a little bit of landscaping around the sides, it makes a lovely little 1/4 block module.