ASK HERE MOC-stuck? Ask for general building advice here!

[Emperor315]

Hi Pepermint, thanks for the reply.

Do you know ehre I can read up on these techniques?

Thanks

[Phoxtane]

Technic is great for this kind of stuff.

My personal favorite is a design that uses the Hailfire droid wheels, but replaces the wheel hubs with soccer balls and basket balls:

This setup scales better, but requires a lot more parts:

By increasing/decreasing the size of the support circles and the amount of rollers, these can support a lot of weight!

[Gondorian]

I like building houses. I like having the outside appear to be like proper brickwork, in boring colours like white and tan. But I'd like the inside to be more like a normal room, with painted walls or wallpaper. What tricks have people used to achieve this in the past or am I just weird in caring about it?

I thought of using headlamp with vertical 1x8 tile for each strip of wallpaper. Seems special-part-intensive though.

[pinioncorp]

Snotted plate in vertical stripes? Or straight up bricks in stripe patterns? Printed tiles? Cheese mosaics? Your imagination is limited only by your budget. And your patience. And determination, dedication, available resources...

These techniques will of course make your walls at least two bricks thick, you'll need to plan your aesthetics accordingly.

[Aanchir]

SNOT techniques for either the inside or the outside can be effective. For example, if you use snotted red, brown, tan, or dark tan tiles for the brickwork on the outside of your house and use white or tan bricks behind them as mortar, then you'll have a nice, clean white or tan wall on the inside. But since you describe your white and tan exterior walls as "boring" I suppose that's not what you're looking for.

Snotted plates and tiles to decorate the inside of a wall can be done effectively. I've seen some people use this for a rustic wood-panel wall, for instance, and you could likewise make a tiled wall in various colors with common sizes of tiles. This requires a lot of planning, though, since you need to make sure your SNOT bricks are spaced appropriately. If you use a SNOT brick with studs on both sides, you can have snotted wallpaper AND snotted exterior brickwork. But at that point there's not much advantage in terms of thickness over just building your wall two modules thick.

Building walls two modules thick has been done in some sets and MOCs, notably including the Café Corner, but this is not practical for all buildings, particularly if you want a realistically-furnished interior.

Also, don't underestimate the advantages of panels! Using a panel as the wall itself can be somewhat limiting, but a 1x6x5 panel like is used in many City and Friends sets can be used to decorate an inside or outside wall. Structurally, this is the same as having a wall two studs thick and using different colors of bricks on the inside and outside. But in a practical sense, the majority of your walls will effectively be thinner (allowing either more interior or exterior space), only with "support beams" every six studs or so. The effectiveness of this technique really depends on what kind of architecture you want for your building.

These panels lining the interior or exterior of a wall might work even better, since they don't have ribs sticking out as far, but they're not that common, and white, black, and blue are the only solid colors they come in.

[Brickdoctor]

You don't need to make the walls two studs thick, as long as you follow the 5:2 ratio when adding 1x1 bricks with one stud on their sides to the outer walls. (Five plates' height is the same as two studs' width, so if you place two 1x1 plates under a 1x1 brick with one stud on its side, then it'll be the same height as a 1x2 tile standing on its shorter side. Likewise, if you place two 1x1 plates and five 1x1 bricks under a 1x1 brick with one stud on its side, then the stack will be the same height as a 1x8 tile standing on its shorter side.)

And I would avoid the use of panels unless you absolutely have to have a wall thinner than two plates wide. They're larger and appear more <insert that tiresome argument>.

[Hrw-Amen]

I tend to build my building on 32X32 baseplates and have quite often come across wanting a room a different color than on the outside. I have sometimes used SNOT to make the outer surface more brick-like but to be honest I normally just make the wall two studs wide. Don't forget that any internal walls will not need to be two studs wide unless you want a different color scheme in each room.

[Dutchy]

Hello! For my MOC I would like to have a nice city/castle wall. I was looking on EB and I saw the LotR set 'The battle of Helms Deep' (9474). Now I'm asking you if you know if there's a tutorial for a wall similar to the one of the set, or whether you have the part of the set guide that contains the wall. Thanks for your help!

Edited June 29, 2013 by Dutchy

[Dhivael]

Instructions available here:

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6018457.pdf

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6018458.pdf

http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6018459.pdf

Enjoy and good luck!

[Dutchy]

Instructions available here:

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6018457.pdf

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6018458.pdf

http://cache.lego.co...ons/6018459.pdf

Enjoy and good luck!

Thank you very much!

[Fugazi]

This MOCing question does not belong in this forum, but either in General Discussion & News or in Historic Themes. I will be moving the topic shortly.

[Dutchy]

I was sorting out my Lego boxes when I found a lot '30246' bricks. I've got them in dark grey and light grey and I have no idea what do with them. Who has an original idea or a photo of a MOC containing these bricks? I would like to make something I can add to my MOC, a castle, tower or house, something medieval. I've got about 10-15 of them. All ideas are welcome! Thanks. (If placed wrong, please move)

[Brickstarrunner]

I don't know why, but whenever I see those pieces, I keep on thinking about this.

For those who don't know, it's from the American children's anime Avatar: The Last Airbender from the two parter episode 'The Boiling Rock'. The Boiling Rock is a prison located in the middle of a thermal lake. As a form of punishment on the prison, there are these pods called 'The Cooler' which are basically insulated freezers to freeze-torture inmates. This small gang of prisoners detach the Cooler and use it to drift across the hot water. So my idea? While a bit unorthodox and maybe a little silly looking, but maybe with those 10 - 15 bricks you could create a fleet of boats. Crazy, but it's just an idea I wanna put out there.

[Dutchy]

I don't know why, but whenever I see those pieces, I keep on thinking about this.

For those who don't know, it's from the American children's anime Avatar: The Last Airbender from the two parter episode 'The Boiling Rock'. The Boiling Rock is a prison located in the middle of a thermal lake. As a form of punishment on the prison, there are these pods called 'The Cooler' which are basically insulated freezers to freeze-torture inmates. This small gang of prisoners detach the Cooler and use it to drift across the hot water. So my idea? While a bit unorthodox and maybe a little silly looking, but maybe with those 10 - 15 bricks you could create a fleet of boats. Crazy, but it's just an idea I wanna put out there.

Haha, I know this scene. I've watched these episodes a hundred times, I love them.

But on-topic: I appreciate your effort but I don't think I can use your idea Maybe I'll make an Avatar MOC in the future?

Edited July 1, 2013 by Dutchy

[Saberwing40k]

Now, this suggestion may be weirder, but if you have any technic/bionicle tanks, those would make some spiffy targets. Other than that, they're kind of single purpose parts, at least as far as that term works.

[Dutchy]

Now, this suggestion may be weirder, but if you have any technic/bionicle tanks, those would make some spiffy targets. Other than that, they're kind of single purpose parts, at least as far as that term works.

Thanks, but I'm not into technic/bionicle :P

[kermit]

You can use it to build more walls to your existing castle or watch towers or even a tall medieval clock tower for the middle of your medieval village. If you look around the historic forum and the castle topics you will find loads of mocs that you can use as examples and reference.

[Dutchy]

You can use it to build more walls to your existing castle or watch towers or even a tall medieval clock tower for the middle of your medieval village. If you look around the historic forum and the castle topics you will find loads of mocs that you can use as examples and reference.

Wow. A clock tower sounds awesome! Do you know if there's some kind of a brick or sticker for the clock or do I have to make a sticker myself?

[TheStrategist]

I've got a bunch of these too! If you put two together they make a pretty good base for any kind of tower, and then you can add what you want on top of it.

[jimmynick]

I have a handful of these from King Leo's Castle and other KK1 sets - the idea of making a clock tower is very good! You could also make a gate, or a wall, or something else castle-y. Stretching the imagination, you could try to use it as an engine in a spaceship - just turn it on its side and fill in the hole with some greebles.

If that fails, just try messing about with them and some of your other bricks and see what comes to mind.

[obsidianheart]

EAT THEM.

Sorry, I dunno why I do that whenever someone asks what to do with stuff.

Anyway, on the topic of clocks, there are 2x2 round tiles with clockfaces (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=4150px1), but they might be a bit small.

[Legogal]

Ha! I have a bunch of these sitting on the shelf, too, just waiting to become part of something!

How about building several towers of 4-6 pieces each and stringing a rope bridge between your castles with them? That way you would be high enough to be out of enemy range but could go from castle to castle.

It could also be fun to build a huge treehouse in a huge tree so the little people could sword fight and pretend they were big, bad, mean knights. My husband and one son seemed to be into sword fighting for over a decade, so knights or pirates...take your choice. They staged battles in a large pile of sand out our back door using LEGO, transformers and whatever else they could get their dirty hands on. We ended up finding those figures for years all over our back yard under the mulch. Enjoy yours!

[kermit]

Wow. A clock tower sounds awesome! Do you know if there's some kind of a brick or sticker for the clock or do I have to make a sticker myself?

I would use those robot droid arms as the clock hands as they give it that medieval look and and a large circular plate or turntable for the clock face. You should also use some tree leaves or vines for the walls of the tower to cover up some of the plain grey sides.

[Dutchy]

I would use those robot droid arms as the clock hands as they give it that medieval look and and a large circular plate or turntable for the clock face. You should also use some tree leaves or vines for the walls of the tower to cover up some of the plain grey sides.

I was thinking of using the technique for the walls that has been applied in this MOC: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=84221, but with black bricks. This would give it a ruined feeling and I'll make it overgrown and place it in a dark forest for a spooky feeling. This fits in with my other WIP.

[kermit]

Thats a good idea but it may look strange with that tower wall element.