Azure vs. Black – Round Two

Note: Instruction downloads at the end of the article. / Hinweis: Download der Anleitung am Ende des Artikels.

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I must admit that I had ulterior motives when I sneaked in my recent review of the Speed Champions set 76898 with the Jaguar i-Pace and the Formula E car, because at the time I had almost already finished an alternative build for this set. Some people like to call these the C and D models, but since the Speed Champions sets typically don’t even have a B model that seems a bit of a stretch to me.

I don’t usually do this sort of thing, but of course there has to be a reason and what else can it be than possibly winning more LEGO in a building competition? Yupp, this is part of the official #buildtogether / #baumituns challenge whereby official LEGO user groups and associated media outlets run these contests to provide people sitting at home during the ongoing pandemic with more fodder for their addiction. Each can have their own rules and for the particular one I opted to participate in those stipulated that you use an existing set and turn it into something else. An additional provision was that ideally the sets in question should be in an affordable range and not contain excessive large numbers of parts, so as many people as possible could re-create the models.

Having assembled that other set not too long ago and thus being aware of its content things then somehow gelled just like that. Unusually and against my habits I hadn’t disassembled the models yet and sorted the pieces into my collection, so everything was at hand and in a clean state without mixing the parts up with other sets. All it took then was finding a good idea and after a few nights of sleeplessly staring at the ceiling I came up with my “Classic Car”.

The car itself is modeled after classic Rolls Royce or Duesenberg cars from the 1920s and 1930s, but ultimately turned out to be a wild cross breed of a Hot Rod, a Batmobile and said cars due to how i had to find compromises and make do with the parts I had.

One of the biggest challenges therefore also was getting some “volume”, as the original set for instance does not even contain a single regular 2 x 1 brick and only a few other bricks, most of which weren’t even that useful for the project. As a result a lot of elements had to be stacked together from plates or created as hollow walls. That means that due to layers and layers of plates on top of each other the model is extremely stable for the most part, but of course there also are a few regions where the shortage of pieces resulted in a bit flimsy construction that could be improved.

Because of this the model pretty much uses every plate in the set with only a handful left after completion. The same applies to the slopes and tiles. When I was done, I only had the surplus wheels, mudgards, some surplus small tiles and a few other pieces left in my box. I’d say about two thirds of the original pieces are used here.

Naturally, the same limitations as mentioned in my review of the source set still apply. This is a very dark model due to the many black pieces despite my best efforts to produce a nice, consistent color scheme. That being the case there are also no “real” lights  and a few other things which you may want to rectify or add based on your own parts collection. Still, I guess it’s okay, after all.

Because I knew that the dark model in combination with my limited photographic equipment would make it difficult to recognize details and I didn’t feel like shooting hundreds of photos for people to follow along in the build, I decided early on to create a proper digital instruction. This was another bit of hard work, but ultimately I couldn’t really avoid it.

 

 

You can find the instructions below in a few different flavors. Since I’m still one of the last few holdouts still using LPub I started there, but unfortunately it doesn’t render some pieces correctly and it’s generally not easy to get things working in a manner that is foolproof, so despite my reservations towards Stud.io I whipped up a second version that may work better for a lot of people. Simply choose your favorite version.

Classic Car MOC, Instructions English, LPub

Classic Car MOC, Instructions English, Stud.io

Classic Car MOC, Anleitung Deutsch, LPub

Classic Car MOC, Anleitung Deutsch, Stud.io

You can also find the model on Rebrickable:

Classic Car

Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments, in particular if you detect flaws in the instructions or bump into unclear steps during the build. Enjoy!

Getting Hexi

While I’m admittedly a slow builder who likes to take his time and doesn’t too often jump in with immediate solutions to specific problems when people ask on forums, occasionally it still happens when something is pretty obvious and I can exploit my limited experience in these matters.

Such was the case a while ago when someone had bought commercial MOC instructions that just didn’t live up to the expected standard. I believe it was some sort of Star Wars TIE Fighter and as some those vehicles so often do, it used a triangular/ hexagonal arrangement of the wings/ cooling panels. This was done very flimsily (which to me proves that the original creator never actually had built a physical copy and only relied on digital creation or else he’d have noticed this easily) and needed some serious changes. The person asking had come up with an own solution that didn’t work that well either, so I spent an evening figuring things out using a mix of Technic pieces and conventional stud-based construction.

I’m not claiming it’s perfect and by all means it’s more an exploration of specific construction techniques, but it should meet the following criteria:

• It’s perhaps as narrow in diameter as it can get under these circumstances.
• It’s relatively stable compared to stud-only methods.
• It’s expandable by inserting more elements and swapping out the axles, so you can in theory create some pretty long segments just by repeating bits.

There are some downsides, too, of course, with the biggest likely being the extensive use of the half-width Technic liftarms. They tend to be more expensive on Bricklink as they are simply not found in as large numbers in commercial sets. I was just lucky to have them in my repository. Anyway, check out the small instruction booklet and make up your own mind. This will also be linked via my Rebrickable page, so you should be able to conveniently access the inventory. The crazy colors are just for distinction. Use whatever fits your type of model or whatever you have at hand on your own projects.

Hexa Core MOC, Instructions

Revisionist Krakken

As happens so often when working on a project for too long you can’t see the forest for the trees, as they say, so a few minor issues crept into my octopus MOC instructions. Nothing major and by no means a deal breaker, just small oversights. I’m pretty sure I had all the best intentions of fixing them way back when, but then somehow forgot about them. Therefore I’ve now sat down again and got to it. I’ve edited the original post and updated all the links. The specific changes are as follows:

• Fixed a bunch of spelling errors/ typos in the German version.
• Changed the color of the 3L bar in the eyes to Black to correctly reflect availability (it doesn’t exist in Trans Neon Green and the one included in set 31088 is actually a 4L one)
• Split up the 4 x 1 brick with sideways studs used at the top of the mantle into two 1 x 2 bricks because again it only exists in this form in Dark Blue. If you use other colors this will be irrelevant.
• Fixed a DPI mismatch on the BOM pages that would make them appear larger than the other pages in non-DPI-aware PDF applications, e.g. in browsers.

For your convenience I’ve also created a MOC page on Rebrickable. This should make it simpler to sift through the parts inventory, compare it to parts you may already have (if you maintain your list on there) and provides a convenient way to order the missing pieces easily if necessary by pre-selecting them in Bricklink shops.

The Krakken has risen!

Important Note: Download at the end of the article! / Wichtiger Hinweis: Download am Ende des Artikels!

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At long last I managed to finish my free instructions for my octopus MOC. Yay! I’ve been a bit under the weather last week so it still took me one week longer than promised, but I hope now that it’s here everything is fine.

I’ve written about some of the challenges in my last article on the matter already and despite all the bugs, quirks and flaws of the programs I used I hope I managed to cobble together something decent and tasteful. The preview of some random pages should give you an idea what to expect inside the PDFs without actually having to download the whole 16.4 megabytes. That should make it easier to make up your mind before burning valuable bandwidth and download quotas on mobile devices. On that note I also kept things as barebones as I possibly could within the limitations to keep file size down, so you may have to wait a bit e.g. for page thumbnails to be generated.

 

 

 

As I have hinted at multiple times, this set of instructions contains some alternate build variants. This is meant to help you save a bit of money if you are not able or willing to procure a shed load of extra parts e.g. from Bricklink. Still, with the mantle and upper “cloak” section of the tentacles being integral to the whole construction and always using the same pieces, at the end of the day you may not be seeing that much of a difference. Of course you can do your own re-engineering to optimize this further and perhaps if you come up with more efficient alternate designs might be willing to share it. I’d sure be interested to learn how other people might approach this. For your convenience I have also created a Rebrickable page to check the parts for the main most complex build and order missing parts from there if you feel like it.

 

 

 

The instructions are 100 percent free, but if you like them and think I should get something in return I’d sure appreciate being able to tick off some items from my wishlist. Just get in touch! 🙂 Feel free to post links to this article on forums, blogs and wherever you may be roaming the Internet to drum up interest, but please keep the copyright intact and don’t mess with the PDF files themselves by doing things like repackaging the pages with your own branding and redistributing them under your own name.

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To download the instructions click on the image or the link below it. On mobile devices it may be necessary to keep your finger pressed down a bit longer in order for a menu to appear that may offer options on where to store or open the files. On desktop computers you typically should also be able to use a right mouse click and selecting “Save link/ target as…” to pick a specific folder for saving. If necessary check your browser configuration’s default download options to avoid confusion and having to download over and over again.

Octopus MOC, Instructions, English

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Zum Download der deutschen Version auf das Bild unten oder den Link darunter klicken. Auf Mobilgeräten kann es notwendig sein, den Finger länger gedrückt zu halten und entsprechende Option zum Speichern oder die Übergabe an eine bestimmte App auszuwählen. Auf Desktopcomputern kann die Datei in der Regel auch mit Rechtsklick auf den Link und „Link/ Ziel speichern unter…“ direkt in einen bestimmten Ordner runtergeladen werden. um Verwirrung zu vermeiden und die Datei nicht immer wieder neu herunterzuladen, überprüft die Browsereinstellungen für Downloads wenn nötig.

Oktopus MOC, Anleitung, Deutsch

An Octopus will surface near you soon-ish – finally!

I know I have been promising this for way too long to have much credibility left, but trust me, it’s really going to happen. Yes, at long last the finish line on my free instructions for my Octopus MOC is in sight. After my last update in July I had hoped to finish it sooner (and I mean a lot sooner), but after it got off to a rocky start and what was supposed to be a quick two-month project already had turned into something else, there were some further setbacks, in light of which I then decided to take my time and figure things out and be as thorough as I can. Feel free to skip this boring part, but here are some reasons:

• As I already wrote back then, I’m not a healthy man, so this summer’s extreme heat coupled with some temporarily escalating generic health issues turned me into a lazy slob. Yes, a pitiful excuse, but that’s just how things are.
• My own drive for perfection got in the way. Being a graphics designer has the unwanted side-effect that one tends to think in very specific terms, meaning that page layouts have to be almost pixel-perfect and just look nice. That meant that I spent way too much time doodling around and trying to figure out how I could get LPub to do something at which it is notoriously bad. Speaking of which…
• The aforementioned program is pretty obnoxious and just bug-ridden. I also filed a bunch of bug reports and improvement suggestions, but suffice it to say that the developers behind it appear not particularly focused on making it actually user-friendly or at least best in its class in the sense that as a minor it could possibly be the best of many pretty terrible options. Trust me, doing instructions can indeed be a long exercise in frustration in pretty much any of the programs available currently. Let’s leave it at that.
• To somewhat mitigate those shortcomings, I had to spend lots of time developing workarounds. This means that my published file will be based on having multiple models in different states in the LPub file and on top of it it will be chopped together from multiple sources. I even spent good amounts of time copy & pasting things together in external text editors. At least that’s one of the few benefits of the text-based file format.
• As if I wasn’t in enough trouble already, I also decided to design a set of custom icons to use in the instructions because – let’s face it – the default icons e.g. for model rotation look less than exciting. You will see and hopefully like my interpretations and additions.
• Finally, amidst all of this I participated in a bunch of building contests in the hopes of winning some cool stuff. This naturally also consumed some time on my end because I literally spent entire evenings brooding over some minutia and conceptualizing the models in my head before actually assembling them. I might do a round-up post once the dust has settled on all that and I know in which places I qualified (or not).

On the bright side, all of this trouble has made me much more resilient and I learned a good share of new tricks along the way that may make things easier in the future. I also can say with confidence that now that I know what to do and which pitfalls to avoid there is a definitive ETA on the instructions so you can at least make the model and stocking parts for it part of your Christmas shopping list. Just give me another two weeks and I’m hopefully able to pull this together at last. Funny enough I just had another little setback with one of my hard drives crashing, but thankfully the files were not affected and thank the good lord I also do regular backups, so I can at least present a preview of the cover with my skin intact:

I need to fix the broken drive, naturally, but should be able to resume work quickly after that. Stay tuned for the pertinent announcement…

Update x2

The heatwave in the last few weeks and a few other things haven’t made it easy to actually get any work done, but now I’m actually a bit closer to getting the instructions for my Octopus MOC done.

It seems a funny coincidence that as I was dabbling around in the likes of LPub3D, putting up with its quirks and trying to figure out a few specifics for structuring the instructions, a new parts update was released. The octopus doesn’t use any of them, but I’m more than happy to finally have the new bracket types available. As you well know, I’m obsessing about this stuff all the time. Just to prove it and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about here’s a little Stud.io render for you:

While it may take me still a while to get the instructions actually finished, which mostly is to blame on my desire to make them look nice and professional and thus requiring lots of manual intervention in the formatting, here’s a preliminary listing of the parts used in the build (a.k.a. BOM – Bill of Materials) to get you started on stocking up and giving you a chance to order additional parts on Bricklink if needed.

Remember that this project originated based on four sets of the Deep Sea Creatures (31088). It will not be necessary to buy four sets as well, but it sure helps if you get at least one to obtain some of the parts, in particular some of the Dark Blue pieces. Also keep in mind that you can do color swaps and e.g. the Red parts will be invisible. So feel free to use whatever you have at hand.

This BOM represents the maximum variant as shown in my photos, but the final instructions will also contain some alternate building using a few different parts. Of course you can also save greatly by using shorter tentacles and thus reducing the number of slopes and ball joints. More on that as things progress on my end…