But the thing about interlocking brick systems that I’m trying to prove here is that you don’t NEED official sets to build whatever you want.
Check the title of this thread. I didn’t choose that GB quote by accident.
With the number of different bricks Lego has made over the years, the possibilites are truly limitless. Let your imagination run wild.
Want a firehouse? Design it, buy the bricks, build it.
Orion Pax did an amazing one. So did Sergio512 of the Swiss Ghostbusters. I’ve seen others. They didn’t buy those, they BUILT them. (Now why does that sound familiar?)
Is creating it a brick at a time going to be expensive? Yes. But no more so than a LICENSED set containing that same number of bricks. In fact, you might just come out cheaper.
New pics today!
You may notice I finally dug my old 48 x 48 baseplates out of storage. You wouldn't believe how many Lego sets I found. I had forgotten even buying most of them.
I even found some stuff among my decades-old collection that I just last night re-ordered off BrickLink, having no recollection of ever owning it.
Should be fun to see what all else I can come up with, armed with this cache.
Alex
I saw this fan-creation shared on Brickin It’s Facebook page a while back, and loved the concept.
A few weeks later, when I decided to duplicate the recipe, I searched but could not find the pic. I messaged Brickin It, who shared the pic with me, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know who had this brilliant idea to give them proper credit.
I had to track down a Lando Calrissian head, that was fairly easy. And I finally stripped the paint off a ‘dark bluish gray’ torso last night, and printed my stickers.
Of course, I consulted the video to get my design just right, and while watching it, decided to throw in an extra jacketless torso for RPJ.
On FB, my friend Ronnie said he’d only be impressed if I made the all-black apartment with neon trimmings.
I said, “Oh no, now I have to make the chick in the mini-skirt” and he and my pal Jud said I had first world problems. “Oh no, I must now buy more toys.”
Replacement part from a glitched order finally arrived, so no more placeholder red/green lights on my containment unit. This is how I wanted them to look.
Alex
I was placing an order for some minifig parts last night, and the seller had the tap part (#4599) in red for a nickel, so I added it to the cart.
I’ll see how it looks in real bricks when it arrives.
The great thing about ‘sketching’ in LDD as opposed to my previous method of doodling on paper, is that if you’ve created a space where an item won’t fit, it will not let the part go there. I forget the 3D term, but they can’t overlap each other’s geometry.
It’s also good for seeing how things look in proper scale. More than once recently when the bricks arrived, they didn’t go together quite like I’d imagined. I found an oversized skull that I thought might go good with some other parts to make a particular ghost… but when they all arrived, from three different sellers, the clawed creature arms dwarfed even that larger size of skull.
Being able to design you models virtually sure has it’s advantages. Personally, I use the much older MLCAD rather than LDD, but the end results are the same. It’s a not very user friendly and has a steep learning curve, but in the long run you can do a lot more with it.
I’m not sure if you can do this with LDD or not, but I found a website that can import a parts list from MLCAD directly to a Bricklink wanted list, saving hours of work, especially with larger models (my largest CAD project to date is a theatre containing over 28,000 bricks and counting… I plan to build it for real one day).
I find that I have an ever increasing back log of models that only exist in digits, rather than real ABS. I need a lottery win to support all my interests!
I might have to check out MLCAD. I find the controls of LDD to be counter-intuitive. Nearly all of them are laid out exactly the opposite of where I want to naturally reach for them.
And that way of going directly to a want list sounds like an awesome time-saver.
Brickin It posted on their FB to gauge interest in a possible custom 'The Crow' minifig.
I snapped this pic to say "Lego Ernie Hudson approves."
They replied, "You never disappoint!"
For those of you less familiar with The Crow, here's a reference pic. But as my buddy Chris said, "What is seen cannot be unseen!" so I am hiding it in a spoiler box.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Alex
I added some epaulettes to my Vigo minifig. This has the double benefit of looking slightly more like the ‘big-shoulder look’ and giving him increased height, since it raises his head up a notch.
