Assembling Bricksburg

[Xon67]

Thanks, kibosh. I hope it stands up!

Here's the waist. The red bricks are my suggestion of how to attach it to the body. I think that the dark red axle in the back has something else attached to it for more stability, but I can't tell for sure. I also can't tell how it's attached under the turntable, but that should be easy to do, even if we have to make up our own attachment.

mech waist by Xon 67, on Flickr

lxf file: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Xon67/Movie/_movie_emmetsmech_2015-11-07.lxf

Overall, it looks sturdy enough to keep the body from leaning side-to-side, but I'm not sure how stable it is front-to-back. That's why I think there's something else on the axle in back to hold it steady.

Build on!

[Actor Builder]

Wow. I am really impressed that you figured all those technic pieces out. They had me really confounded.

It looks awesome.

[BlackStar]

Very nice addition Xon67! I will definitely use those red bricks and build a strong connection on top of that. From the underneath pictures in the arrival scene you can see there's also a chain thing underneath. I think I know what part it is, but haven't started on that part yet.

So for my progress, I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news, not very much progress on the mech body. The cement mixers are attached now and I started on the head.

A nice setback here was the fact that the inside slopes and the threads were a plate too low and I had to move that up first (which was painful enough even though the threads are connected).

But there's quite a bit of good news.

First of all, I am making sure this thing will stay together. They built in all directions and the lower part isn't connected at all. I can sneak in a few studs, but that's not enough to hold it together.

After a few hours of experimenting I think I found a neat solution with the long lance (anyone who had castle sets in the 90s knows which one I mean :D).

I am creating anchor points with those lances and those will connect to the upper structure and hold it up (hopefully)

Getting the legs and torso as tough as possible will definitely be the key to sorting this thing ready for a real build. (Which is definitely happening, oh yes)

I've also been busy tracking down the partnumbers on bricklink, and most parts are available in yellow.

I also found out that the cement mixers under the sides are not available in yellow, however, I took another look at them and those holes are not present in the movie version.

After searching bricklink a bit, I found this one:

http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=30398#T=C&C=3

Part number 30398, not only does it seem that it's the correct part, it's also available in yellow :D We needed a bit of luck for this :)

Problem with it is that LDD does not support it, so I will have to order 2 to see how they work so I can replicate at least the attachment points. (Which is technically not really a problem ;) )

So next step will be securing the mech body so that it will hold up, then making 3 connectable parts for the main body, create the strongest possible joint to the legs (while attempting to be as true as possible to the movie), finish the head and the rollcage, and finally attempt to snap it all together without too much effort.

As for the LDD file, before I post it, there's a couple of issues with this :P

I am only working on one section, and Xon67 is working on a lot more, so I am foreseeing merging problems :) (Trust me on this one ;))

What I will do is let Xon67 post the 'master' file, and I will merge my changes into each one, until the torso is done and can be merged indefinitely to the master file.

We shouldn't be blocked by each other :)

http://www.tribalrage.nl/zut/_movie_emmetsmech_2015-11-09.lxf

[Miro78]

Truly amazing undertaking. This is a wonderful project.

There was a purple townhouse in the physical set in Finn's basement. I haven't seen one yet in the movie while I've been scouring it for screen grabs to build off of.

I have attended the premiere of the Legoland California The Lego Movie Experience and I took bunch of photos of the actual basement set with creations that was moved. Feel free to browse through the photos on my Flickr album here:

Is this the purple apartment building you guys are talking about?

Let me know if you need clearer photos of any of the buildings and I can go and take additional photos.

cheers,

Miro

[Actor Builder]

After a few hours of experimenting I think I found a neat solution with the long lance (anyone who had castle sets in the 90s knows which one I mean :D).

I am creating anchor points with those lances and those will connect to the upper structure and hold it up (hopefully)

Careful with the lance pieces. From experience I'd say they don't make very good supports. They are weirdly flexible.

Good work!

[BlackStar]

Careful with the lance pieces. From experience I'd say they don't make very good supports. They are weirdly flexible.

Good work!

http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=3849#T=C

This one :)

Don't worry, they are vertical, so they won't flex :)

[Actor Builder]

Yeah I knew which piece you meant. Thanks though. I'll have to try a strength test of sorts for those pieces. Just for fun, that is. Because I'm curious.

[Xon67]

BlackStar -- It's looking great--and nice job on the mixers. I also noticed that there were no holes in the ones on-screen, but didn't go beyond LDD for a (close) match. Great find. Now that I see that part, I remember at least one set it comes from. I'm curious to see if it's used elsewhere in the construction site on-screen. Also--my latest build is the last one I posted above. Feel free to merge files any time I post. :-)

Miro--Thanks for posting something here! I found your photos online a while ago and have actually been using them for reference in my builds. They have been invaluable for several buildings that aren't shown very well on-screen. And, yes, that is the purple building I recall seeing in Finn's basement--the one next to the construction site (again, from your pics). I've wanted to visit the California park for quite some time--more so now that the basement set is on display there. Thanks for helping me see it! Do you get a chance to go to the park often?

Actor Builder -- I have to admit--I'm curious about your "strength test of sorts." I have all kinds of visuals floating around in my head with that one. Each one sillier than the last...

Edited November 10, 2015 by Xon67

[Miro78]

Miro--Thanks for posting something here! I found your photos online a while ago and have actually been using them for reference in my builds. They have been invaluable for several buildings that aren't shown very well on-screen. And, yes, that is the purple building I recall seeing in Finn's basement--the one next to the construction site (again, from your pics). I've wanted to visit the California park for quite some time--more so now that the basement set is on display there. Thanks for helping me see it! Do you get a chance to go to the park often?

Glad you found my photos helpful. I go to Legoland quite regularly with my 2 kids, as I live about 10 miles from it and work only about a mile from it. Thanks for posting updates in this thread. It certainly is a very fun read as I am starting to get more into modulars. I have not build any yet. They are all still sealed in their boxes until I move into a bigger house with more space. The Bluerender images sure turned out beautiful. I use a Mac and have not got it to work on my computer yet, so I will have to look into it. If there is a good thread on that you know, feel free to link me to it, as I don't want to hijack your thread.

Miro

[Actor Builder]

xon67, my strength test involves a hot air balloon, six "little persons", a can of green beans, and some Gorilla Glue. It's a tried and true method.

Miro78, great pictures! Thanks for sharing. There wouldn't happen to be a copper-chopper in the exhibit, would there? I live so far away from LEGOLAND that I can't go look for myself. Thanks!

[Xon67]

Actor Builder -- I would expect no less from you! Top notch!

[Xon67]

In keeping with the construction site theme of Emmet's mech, this time I'm posting the heli-crane. As far as I can tell, it is exactly the same as the helicopter in the T-Rex Hunter set, with the exception of the bucket underneath (and of course, no dinosaur...).

#__movie Construction Helicrane by Xon 67, on Flickr

[Actor Builder]

Oh! I noticed that one! I usually haven't noticed most of the things in this thread, but I saw that one. I'm so proud.

Is there a Helicopter landing pad for that and the Copper Choppers and others? Or do they fly forever, like sharks always swim?

If a crane is like a shark, then Bird and Fish are one, and I found the missing link in evolution. Bird-Fish. Crane-Shark.

I'm tired, and am rambling. Good work, Xon67.

[Xon67]

Thanks, Actor Builder. I have to admit, I don't know much about missing links, but I do know "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"...

Edited November 15, 2015 by Xon67

[notaromantic]

Hey Xon - Great thread. Its taken on a life of its own.

The building I'm most taken by, and one I'd perhaps like to mod myself in the future, is the movie garage. Could you post a few more pics of it, alone, and at couple of different angles?

Thanks ~ Edward.

[Xon67]

Hi Edward! Yes, we seem to have a good group of regulars that hang around here. It makes for some entertaining posts.

Happy to oblige on your request. These are higher res than usual:

In this image, you can see some black bricks that I put inside the ground floor window. This gives me cleaner final images without a bunch of interior details.

_movie garage views 2 seams by Xon 67, on Flickr

_movie garage views 1 seams by Xon 67, on Flickr

The back side of this building doesn't have windows in the movie. I realized this only after I had built it--but I liked it, so I left them in.

_movie garage views 3 seams by Xon 67, on Flickr

I experimented with bublible's latest Bluerender build that includes the ability to show gaps between the bricks. I like how it turns out, however it took six times longer to render each image. Maybe there's some other options I should turn off--I'll have to investigate more...

Edited November 16, 2015 by Xon67

[Actor Builder]

Hi Edward! Yes, we seem to have a good group of regulars that hang around here. It makes for some entertaining posts.

That's partly my fault. Possibly mostly. It's hard to tell sometimes.

The Garage looks really good! Somehow I didn't see it very well before, but the detail is really inspiring!

Do you have a list of the rest of the creations you'd like to render? I'm sure there are many more options, but I can't think of them at present.

Post Script: Hi Edward! Nice to meet you!

[notaromantic]

Thanks Xon, I truly appreciate it.

Having built this in LDD, and FYI, I'm not an LDD user (yet.), so I'm not familiar with its parameters, but - could you clue me on that front trim that hugs against the center pillar and extends to below the roof. It seems to be a one-brick wide pillar that is centered in front of a two-brick wide pillar, so I'm assuming beneath it, and part of the pavement, is a lbg 1x2 jumper to anchor and center it. And yet, it seems nothing else is able to anchor it on the way up, as it is centered and therefore aligned different to the rest of the build. Is it anchored again, up top, beneath the roof using a mixture of tiles, to separate it from the plate above it, and then another jumper somewhere, in order to snap back in to the plate above it that makes the bottom of the roof....

I hope that made sense. You know, I'm not a novice builder, and I've solved many of these riddles on my own, but this is stumping me for whatever reason - I guess I'm thinking there is a more stable way to have accomplished this, but perhaps there isn't. But it was a long and taxing day, maybe I'm not seeing, or thinking of, something obvious.

^ Hey Actor, nice to meet you as well. It seems what I enjoy doing the most, in terms of LEGO, is modifying existing sets, and I have a few more I've done in my own way - both as a means to try building things I've seen, and as a way to practice techniques, solve a puzzle, whatever. The grocer, I BL'd and did in Dark Blue w/ a Dark Red/ White awning, and it just took off from there - my foray into building versus collecting. I'll post some pics soon enough. I've been meaning to for awhile, but alas, I get myself into something else altogether and away I go.

You know... I do enjoy your avatar. The Bard is one of my favorite CMF's, and Hamlet occupies a very prominent space in both my being and my bookshelf.

[Xon67]

Wow. LEGO and literature. We're becoming quite the respectable topic around here!

"But, soft! what render through yonder display screen breaks? It is the LEGO Movie, and pixels are its ABS."

Ouch, I think I just hurt myself. I won't try that again anytime soon... (And, yes, I'll keep my day job…)

Edward--Yes, it makes perfect sense. You got it--a 1x2 jumper at pavement level. I wasn't able to anchor it anywhere else along the column except for the very top under the roofline. For that I used another 1x2 jumper (turned 90 degrees to the one at the bottom of the column) along with a 1x1 flat plate to fill in the remaining gap. Here's a pic of what I did:

LEGO Movie -- half-stud offset column mount by Xon 67, on Flickr

The other two columns on the corners of the building are aligned stud-wise and didn't need this trick.

When I started recreating the builds from the movie, I began with the same mindset of "real world" construction, since I thought it might be cool to actually build these someday. I soon realized that I had to set that aside, since nothing we see on the screen is really there and at times follows the "Wile E. Coyote" school of gravity. I have also seen a few instances in the movie where two objects occupy the same space at the same time. It seems that once objects were built in LDD and got imported into SoftImage, a few liberties were understandably taken in the name of space-saving and/or deadlines. I ended up taking the approach of recreating what I saw on-screen and setting real world physics aside. Nevertheless, for the most part these are all very buildable and would require only very minor tweaks to physically build.

Actor Builder--I have a several builds lined up, including two buildings that I'm calling warehouses, the elevated monorail stop, and some buildings from the downtown area. There's also a building that gets demolished on the construction site that looks like it might be the haunted house from Monster Fighters. I still have to look into that one a little more to decide if I'm going to build that one as well. There's definitely more to do at the construction site. If anyone has something else from Bricksburg that I haven't tackled yet, lemmie know--I'll look into it!

After Bricksburg, I'll move on to either Cloud Cukoo Land or Flatbush Gulch in the Old West.

...or maybe both...(?)

Edited November 17, 2015 by Xon67

[Xon67]

... or maybe the Octan Tower?

For now, here's a warehouse that's across from Emmet's construction site.

_movie warehouse tan by Xon 67, on Flickr

[Actor Builder]

Xon67, any of those options sound awesome to me! I'd personally like to see the Western World, but whatever floats your boat. Which could mean Metalbeard's Boat...No, you'd have to be Metalbeard for that to be the case.

Nice warehouse! I wonder what's inside...

[Xon67]

For it is MetalBeard's boat to float...

Maybe that warehouse is where LEGO keeps all of the new sets before they release them. Or maybe it's where Lord Business keeps the spare parts for all of the Micro Managers.

[Actor Builder]

Or maybe where all the Tacos are stored until Tuesday.

I know you mentioned you made the Batwing, could you post the LDD file for that on this thread? Thanks.

I just realized, that's where President Business stores his legs! All his different sized legs go in that warehouse. It must be so.

[Xon67]

Actor Builder -- I haven't finished my Batwing yet, but there is one posted out there by TheFangel that is well done:

http://rebrickable.com/mocs/thefangel/the-batwing

If I do get back to work on mine, I'll make sure I post it when it's finished. Of course, then I'd also have to do the Batmobile...

[Xon67]

The hotel was one of the first builds and renders that I did of the LEGO Movie. I have since added a few details that were missing and decided to do a better render: