Nathanaël Kuipers's Concept Car

[davidmull]

Hi, FYI this is my site and I was mere days away from announcing it myself

Also I am about to upload some changes which allow user signon (optional) where you can save your set lists instead of having to enter them all the time.

Any suggestions are welcome!

This is a very cool site thank u

[Jim]

As did someone last night who decided to download thousands of images via some robot. Why make your own when you can copy someone else's

That's a shame. Although I must admit, seeing your awesome images, I can imagine someone would do that (especially when they don't know you). They are much better than the images on Bricklink.

It's not really a biggie, as long as they don't use it in another public product.

Wasn't me, I swear

Edited August 19, 2011 by Gekke Ted

[technicmad]

That's a shame. Although I must admit, seeing your awesome images, I can imagine someone would do that (especially when they don't know you). They are much better than the images on Bricklink.

It's not really a biggie, as long as they don't use it in another public product.

Wasn't me, I swear

I rendered all the part images via POVRay, but the problem is that some of them don't have LDraw equivalents so I have no CAD files to use for rendering. Or I just haven't found the equivalents yet ;)

[skyliner]

love this exploded picture!

The modular nature of this MOC for me is the most appealing part, i always liked the 8448 approach.

Well worth $15 for instructions, which will in turn bring new people to the hobby, which will most importantly may well encourage lego to release more new interesting parts and parts in new colours for all our MOC's.

The full car with instructions is now on Auction:

ebay auction

Edited August 19, 2011 by skyliner

[DaddyWhale]

I too love Rebrickable. Are there any plans to upload Nathanael's Concept Car to the site? I would like to economize on parts buying by finding out what official kits give me the most bang for the buck in building this.

[Meatman]

The full car with instructions is now on Auction:

ebay auction

Man would I love to get that kit. Sure would save a lot of time hunting for the right parts.

[technicmad]

I too love Rebrickable. Are there any plans to upload Nathanael's Concept Car to the site? I would like to economize on parts buying by finding out what official kits give me the most bang for the buck in building this.

Not unless there are instructions everyone can access... I'm not saying I have a problem with him charging for them, just that it's not a fit for my site Maybe in the future I will add MOCs like this.

[JunkstyleGio]

The Concept Car is now available as a complete set.

Check This

The price is going up fast; so who's complaining about the small amount of money you need to pay for the building-instruction...

[Meatman]

The Concept Car is now available as a complete set.

Check This

The price is going up fast; so who's complaining about the small amount of money you need to pay for the building-instruction...

Over $500 with 8 days left?

[TechnicFan68]

I've had the joy of finishing building the concept car today, and it's beauty.

Just wanted to say that if you haven't got the correct tires, the tires from the supercar (8070) are a possible replacement. The ground clearance will be low, and it isn't as pretty as the specified tires, but it's doable.

Here's a picture of the car with the 8070 tires.

(Never mind the orange parts, I didn't have the patience to wait for the BrinkLink orders)

Oh, and there's a minor error in the partslist. It specifies 7 pcs of 9L red liftarms (4192225), but only 5 are used.

[Arfman]

Rebrickable is awesome! 1 feature request though: how can I see which sets I need to break down? It says I own like 98% of the parts needed for Nico71's Trial Jeep, but how to know which sets have the correct parts?

[technicmad]

Rebrickable is awesome! 1 feature request though: how can I see which sets I need to break down? It says I own like 98% of the parts needed for Nico71's Trial Jeep, but how to know which sets have the correct parts?

You can't. Are you saying you want to be able to see eg these 500 parts come from set A and these 400 parts come from set B? Is that useful information?

[DaddyWhale]

A related question: would it be possible to see if having two copies of a set would give you better coverage in building a set you are interested in? For example, when I input two 8070s for building Jurgen Krooshoop's Little Devil, the coverage percentage is the same as when I input just one 8070.

Thanks!

DW

You can't. Are you saying you want to be able to see eg these 500 parts come from set A and these 400 parts come from set B? Is that useful information?

[technicmad]

A related question: would it be possible to see if having two copies of a set would give you better coverage in building a set you are interested in? For example, when I input two 8070s for building Jurgen Krooshoop's Little Devil, the coverage percentage is the same as when I input just one 8070.

Thanks!

DW

This is actually a design oversight! I didn't consider people might have two or more of the same set... that would be crazy

I will definitely fix this problem.

[DaddyWhale]

Great!

This is actually a design oversight! I didn't consider people might have two or more of the same set... that would be crazy

I will definitely fix this problem.

[Arfman]

You can't. Are you saying you want to be able to see eg these 500 parts come from set A and these 400 parts come from set B? Is that useful information?

Very useful! I have all the sets I own on display. It would be a shame to tear down the 8294 (for example) if I only need 2 parts from that set. Or maybe my coverage is 99.4% but I need to break down all the sets I have, that would be silly too.

Pretty please? :)

[technicmad]

Very useful! I have all the sets I own on display. It would be a shame to tear down the 8294 (for example) if I only need 2 parts from that set. Or maybe my coverage is 99.4% but I need to break down all the sets I have, that would be silly too.

Pretty please? :)

Hmmm tricky. I'll have to think about it :)

[Jim]

Just received the tires for the Concept Car (Black Tire 81.6 x 36 R Technic Straight Tread)!

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=x1825

Luckily I had the opportunity to order 4 of them for a reasonable price.

Haven't studied the partlist closely, but I probably have all the parts needed......so game on!

[nico71]

I have created many building instructions for my models, sometimes with a real good visual with Lpub (maybe 20% of my moc, half have instructions). I know the time spent in so I understand the fee even if my work is free (I have also considered the other way). So very good building Nathanael and good job joshua, you have done an impressive work !

But I have a question : why the instruction looks so like the lego one ? why not be more "exotic" or different ? Because the visual of the instruction are far from what Lpub gives.

And for the business vs hobbys : personaly I earn money with my youtube video so my lego work tends more to business that hobbys but still be a hobby. Before my motto was "fun and building", today it is "innovation and building" because to be atractive, the moc have to be surprising.

For the idiot question about "please instruction!!!!" I have made a special FAQ page of my website :

http://www.nico71.fr/faq/

I will resume the whole sentence by that : "if you are a 11-year old boy and want I build a tank for you : don’t contact me"

:)

[technicmad]

With Nathanael's permission, I have added his concept car to my site: http://rebrickable.com/catalog/nathanael/concept-car

You can now more easily find out which parts you are missing if you are thinking of building this masterpiece

[dulcaoin]

I have created many building instructions for my models, sometimes with a real good visual with Lpub (maybe 20% of my moc, half have instructions). I know the time spent in so I understand the fee even if my work is free (I have also considered the other way). So very good building Nathanael and good job joshua, you have done an impressive work !

But I have a question : why the instruction looks so like the lego one ? why not be more "exotic" or different ? Because the visual of the instruction are far from what Lpub gives.

TLG style instructions are what people know, and what work for people. Part of the motivation for this project was showing that we could create instructions "as good as the real thing" using LCAD style tools (LeoCAD, LDView, etc.) and -- slightly -- enhanced LDRAW parts. Another was that I had the opportunity to learn from an insider the right way to do BI; the TLG way. Now, 3.5 years later, I'm not absolutely CERTAIN I would have done it the same way, but I was in it for the learning experience, to make BI that a 12 year old could follow, as with any official BI.

When I started the project, a BI dev position was open in Billund, but I was never called back on my application. This was a way for me to learn the job without actually hiring into it. This is probably a good thing, I'm a Software Engineer first, and a graphic designer much further down the list ;-).

If one follows the instructions, he'll realize that I took the existing visual language of TLG BI and modified it in subtle ways that I think clarify the process (such as warning you at the head of a sub-assembly that you're building two at once, rather than at the end). I leave the other gems to be found by the observant builder.

In short, TLG has spent years developing a visual language that is known the world over. I saw (and see) no good reason to show up on scene and decide that I want to suddenly create my own, wildly different, language to compete.

[Jim]

With Nathanael's permission, I have added his concept car to my site: http://rebrickable.c...ael/concept-car

You can now more easily find out which parts you are missing if you are thinking of building this masterpiece

Nice! Thank you both.

No problem for me, even in the right color.

What I already love about this model, is that there are no really exotic parts required to build it. The wheels are the hardest to come by, but they can be replaced by other wheels the same size.

[DLuders]

@ dulcaoin: I presume you are Joshua Delahunty, the maker of the Concept Car's building instructions. I bought the PDF file, and can say that they are very well done. Thank you for all the work you and Nathanael Kuipers did to share your work!

[nico71]

Thanks Yoshua for your answer ! It is always a privilege to talk with the designers. :)

[dulcaoin]

Thanks Yoshua for your answer ! It is always a privilege to talk with the designers. :)

You honor me with such talk! I have heard very impressive things about your work as well, I appreciate your interest.

To me, this project is many powerful things at once.

- It represents the best of what a Super Car from TLG should be, in my (perhaps not-so) humble opinion; much better than what we are offered through 8070, for instance.

- It represents some of the first fan-created BI that ranks with what TLG does officially (I did a contract job for the 2010 Ambassador model for LEGOLAND California based on my work here).

- It represents what can be done with the tools that James Jessiman inspired; showing that we can use free tools to perform advanced rendering without needing (all of) the advanced and expensive tools used at TLG (I did use Adobe InDesign for final steps, same as TLG).

So there are many "firsts" here at one. I have been very fascinated by the level of interest in this project, both from supporters and those with questions and even some doubts. I am very pleased to read such passion from TECHNIC fans, which for me in the U.S. seem to be a bit of a dying breed, unfortunately. From that perspective, it represents that interest in the TECHNIC line is still strong, even as the offerings from the LEGO Group, including within our favorite theme, seem to become less and less technical to reach a wider audience.

I noticed tonight the label "NK01" on the video. In case anyone is curious, the "internal" numbering I chose for this work was 88448 :-) I removed that value from the BI just before we submitted a copy to TLG to make sure we would not run afoul of any of their legal requirements. I thought using a number like that would have been asking too much. As it was, we passed with only minimal changes necessary to our disclaimer and some of the "About the model" text that appears on the back page of the BI.

And one last anecdote about the visual language of BI; I remember having the hardest time putting "CLICK" into the instructions. To me, it breaks the rules of the language that has been so carefully built over the years. But it IS the way it's done officially, and enough models have now shown that use that it is now standard (and, indeed, I looked up EVERY instance while I was considering the question :-D). So it can be said that I felt pretty strongly about the approach we were taking. I hope I've been able to make our approach better understood. Many of the questions that have come up over the BI were debated (sometimes quite hotly) between Nathanaël and myself until we could reach an agreement. Please be assured, we considered nearly every aspect of the instructions very carefully. :)

@ dulcaoin: I presume you are Joshua Delahunty, the maker of the Concept Car's building instructions. I bought the PDF file, and can say that they are very well done. Thank you for all the work you and Nathanael Kuipers did to share your work!

I am. I wonder if we have met IRL? I've been to the last two BrickCon's, just in your back yard. :)

I'm happy you are pleased with the work. I had both a lot of fun and a lot of exhaustion doing them.

-- joshua