My LEGO®-related Rambles
What happens when you give a load of London AFOLs 400 Brick Separators (630) to play with?
This was my pretty feeble attempt – a Romulan Death Fish.
However, there were some amazingly creative builds from other people – here’s a little selection:
And here’s the Spinning Death Wheel in action!
All in all it was a pretty fun evening.
As a complete novice, I have been doing some research to find a fairly simple GBC module to build. I found plans for a Classic Marble Pump on Planet-GBC, then went rummaging in my parts drawers to see if I had enough bits to put it together. This is what I came up with!
The plans built me the input side, which I dubbed Big Bird. Then of course I had to add some wings and eyes! It is built from mainly System bricks apart from some gearing and the motor hidden behind. I didn’t have enough of the same coloured bricks to build it out of one colour, but who cares – multicoloured is more fun!
Then I had to get the balls back down again to the right height for the next module’s input. I decided on a pinball type board, built from Technic beams, with pins stuck in them in a triangular pattern, built to my own design. I think it works quite well. Tomorrow we are taking it to Caterham for a test run with other GBC modules made by the London AFOLs.
Shortly after completing the design for Alexa Apartments, I set about planning another luxury accommodation block for my virtual Micropolis. I came up with this creation, Crystal Condo.
It features an enormous glass penthouse suite and helipad on the roof. The poor old ‘copter’s rotor blades have fallen off, as I was going mad in LDD trying to work out how to attach them to the top of the craft. Oh well, never mind!
I’m not convinced I will bother to build this one, but it can go into the Virtual Micropolis gallery and we will see what happens.
Having had a little success in building my first Micropolis module out of real bricks, I turned to virtual reality to see where my imagination could take me. I’ve only just started using Lego Digital Designer. I know there are other tools out there which can do more, but the learning curve for LDD was steep enough! And for the moment, it does all that it needs to for me, so I shall be sticking with it. Here are a couple of overview shots of the “front” and “side” views.
It has a fully-furnished lobby with reception desk, seats for visitors waiting for friends and a couple of elevators.
And of course, being an exclusive development, there is a private rooftop pool area where the residents can relax away from the noise and hubbub below.
I quite enjoyed virtually putting this one together. Whether it will ever get built remains to be seen.
I had a consignment of assorted coloured bricks arrive from eBay today. The lot was mainly from the Friends range and contained all sorts of bits and pieces in various bright colours with neon transparent bricks too. Included was the bonnet from a candy-pink car and a huge transparent raspberry pink umbrella. It was a bit of a motley pile, to be honest.
From my previous attempt at a MOC (St. Bridget’s Cathedral in Microscale), I wasn’t too optimistic that I would get anything decent out of it, but I have recently discovered the Micropolis Standard and instantly fell in love with the concept. Could I make a decent Micropolis module out of these apparent table scraps?
Actually, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Yes, it’s brash and bright but I like some of the shapes and forms I managed to achieve and give it a reasonable degree of consistency, despite the pot-pourri I had to start with.
I’ve noticed that most Micropolis builders have a little back story to go with each block, and this one is owned by brash Irish businessman Ned O’Neil. Most people think it’s called NE:ON Mall because of all the bright colours, but Ned knows better – it’s the first two letters of each of his names. The last laugh is clearly on him!
I’d be the first to admit this won’t win any prizes, but as it’s my very first Micropolis build, I have a soft spot for it and won’t be taking it apart any time soon.
Having assessed what I had in the way of bricks (mainly from Classic Creative boxes), I decided to have a go at a MOC for the first time in about 30 years! What to build? Well, I had just been looking at some excellent Microscale architecture and though I would give that a shot.
It didn’t work out great – I kept getting frustrated by not having the right sort of bricks that I wanted, but I guess that’s the point in picking up a load of the bricks you have and seeing what can be done with them. I’m not sure I’ll do most of my designing this way, it leads to a lot of compromises in the final result. But here you go – St. Bridget’s Cathedral. She’s the Patron Saint of Failure!
