Back, Ready For Action

I realize I’ve been away, that I’ve strayed from the Mission.  Funerals, birthdays, work, Mass Effect.  Probably mostly the latter.

I spent the evening sorting through boxes of old bricks and I came across my old Japanese bricks.  I’m not sure of the name, and googling variations of “Japanese fake Lego” didn’t help.  The bricks are only semi-compatible with Lego; they’re roughly the same size but the pegs are longer and ever so slightly wider.  You can stuff the Japanese pegs into the bottom of a Lego with a little force, but the Lego pegs won’t fit into the Japanese ones.  I would love someone to design Lego versions of some of those more unique parts for me to print.

Interestingly, the hand sockets are a perfect fit, but the Japanese hand is slightly, very slightly, smaller in grip than the Lego one.

I also found some classic space figures, though original assemblage may not apply.  I remember when I was three or four, the ink used on Minifigs was pretty cheap, especially for the faces.  I had tons of half-rubbed off faces.  So glad they fixed that.

Gah (part 2)

After saying yesterday I hadn’t seen anyone do a large scale Lego Mario build, this pops up on my Twitter feed, putting my pathetic rendering to further shame.

Mario Bros!

I had a hell of a time getting the image to render the way I wanted it on this one and I’m completely dissatisfied with the final product.  It’s my fault for once again straying from the mission, as no bricks were made custom in this production.  The “mortar” joints on the brick block don’t show up at all so I’m not sure how do make it look right without putting it on an even larger scale, and meanwhile the joints on the pipes are all I notice.  UGH.

I’m also surprised at the complete lack of anyone attempting to made Mario World in Lego before now.  I’ve found cast members and a Donkey Kong level, but nothing with pipes and hills and Bullet Bills.

Tail Fins With Jets…

…and dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they fire bees at you!

I’ve realized that my attempts to change my design programs to render large builds is sort of a pointless exercise for my project.  I’m not doing this to show off big builds, I’m here for custom parts.  Here are some airplane fins that I’ve added jets to.  Because adding jets to things are fun; just ask Buckaroo Banzai, inventor of the Jet Car.  The gray blocks below the jets are printing supports; they are printed at the same time as the brick using the dissoluble plastic, and then disappear with the addition of water.

Tomorrow I plan on screwing with arches.

Proprietary

Spent the entire evening trying to convert a file from Lego Digital Designer into virtual any other format without losing half my pieces.  My head shines smoothly, and clumps of my hair cover the couch.

Now it also appears that the photo upload on WordPress isn’t working for me.  Enjoy the dead link!

Structure

Spent the evening in a friends writing group, put this together on the coffee table. Spatial puzzles are fun!

Long and Winding

My current builders don’t recognize many of the newer bricks I used in my last build, so I had to download yet another program to add in the various bricks.  Meanwhile, the new program isn’t directly compatible with Blender so I have to run it through two different programs to get it there, one of which has a chance of eating various bricks.  Fun!

So my new render isn’t done, so here’s a fun article about a working Lego camera.

 

Space Corp Gunship

All the different angles of the ship I built last night.  Gonna take a lot of work to put this into LeoCAD compared to the last one.

GI Joe Bricks

Found this GI Joe figure that had been included in a third-party building set.  I forget the brand; I don’t think it was Mega Blok.  It came with this terrible hover boat or plane or something, dont’ even remember.  It’s standard Joe height, can stand on standard brick pegs and has eight pegs total on it’s arms and legs.

Below is a thumb of what I was working on tonight.  I’ll post a few different pics tomorrow before I rebuild it in LeoCAD and mutate it in Blender.

Edit: For some reason this didn’t post last night.  Oops.

Mega Blok Minifigs

I found the Mega Block Catwoman, and most of Batman while sorting through old bricks tonight.  So much articulation!  Aside from their elbow and knee joints, they twist at the feet and waist.  The Legs can kick out to the side almost 45 degrees.  Catwoman is also wearing a removable belt.  These stand about a head higher than the Lego minifigs, can you imagine reworking all of your Lego designs to accommodate the larger figures?  Tedious.

Here’s the pile of bricks I was sorting, just a small part of my collection.