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Hey Brett!
I'l tackle what questions I can and see what I can do!
In lugnet.castle, Brett Kingery writes:
> 1) Anyone know if S@H sets available in other countries will eventually be
> available (or again available if they were at one time) in the US?
We-ell, you never really can tell. Sometimes they appear, other times they
don't. The BV accessories, e.g., were Europe-only for a long time and then
became available for awhile. Are they not available anymore? That's a shame
(they're awesome). Did you actually call them and check? Just because
they're not in the catalog doesn't automatically mean that they're
discontinued... I've had that happen. (I once found a 5571 at S@H in fall
1999, when it was long out of catalogs...)
> 2) What is the best way, from experience, to get gads of good building
> pieces? I would like to get a bunch of white, and wonder if S@H is the way
> to go, or if there are sets or buckets that would provide good pieces like
> that, as well as good accessories.
You're right, it is the eternal question for everyone. ;-) The answer is
not single, nor is there one "right" answer...
For down-and-out bricks, I'd recommend grabbing as many 1200-pc. blue
buckets as you can before they disappear. For accesories, well... desert
adventurer sets if you can still find them are *great*, but they've been
mostly gone for a few years now. It depends on where you live - some of the
imagination stores or, rather, the outlet stores might still stock them.
> 3) Where are good places to read up on/research good building techniques? • <snip>
> I think I'll be the Borg of design,
> I'll steal what I can from everything I see :) Particular building tips I'm
> wondering about right now include...
That would be my exact answer. A lot of people *do* put in little "how-to"
tidbits, so just be on a constant lookout. If you see something amazing
that's not explained, ask! It's that simple. The best building techniques
come with experience, trial and error, or from seeing what other people have
done. And anyway, any "imitation" is just plainly the sincerest form of
flattery, IMHO. If I saw people using my tricks I'd be thrilled, not mad.
> 3a) Modulization without Juniorization. My first building worked well
> enough, with a detachable roof (although it is in 3 pieces), and a removable
> 2nd story to get to the first, but I don't think it is very "optimized".
> Any pointers for making the floor for the 2nd story the most stable with the
> least pieces would be great, as well as other methods of "detachability".
Okay, here goes. Modulization is one of the most important thing for model
builders (model as opposed to sculpture). Especially if you focus on
interior detailing, having your buildings detach is *vital*. So, a few
different methods, and their tips and tricks:
- Have every floor detachable. This case works really well when the
building's area is not too large, and also when there are not *too* many
floors. (I can't imagine a detachable high rise... although with a bit of
good planning that could work well!)... In this method, you just *have* to
tile the top of every floor - there's no escaping that - but you can lessen
the trouble if you also use grille tiles, which are a lot easier to come by.
I recommend always using a double layer of plates for the ceiling/floor. You
can even have them in different colors (although I've never tried that).
Also, a good idea is making a "lip" on the inside of the ceiling, in order
for the floor to stay in place. Either that, or substituting a few small
plates for tiles, will do the trick.
- Separating a building into a few sections, width-wise. That is to say -
have the building split along a vertical line. This can be acheived in a few
ways:
* Technic pins - I'm not too fond of this method, but it works. You can
have either the exterior walls come off (as Andy Lynch had his red church
done), or split the building in two (or more) parts. It's more effective
when building huge and/or actually modular creations. To see an example,
check out Richard Schamus' Modular Castle Wall Sections and/or KK Quah's
Great Wall of China. They work great, because every part stands alone, and
they can be taken apart or reorganized whenever need arises.
* Hinge bricks - this works to an extent, but is not perfect. I'm talking
about these pieces - <part:3830>, <part:3831> as a couple and/or
<part:2429>, <2430> as a couple. Again, you can put them on walls (although
that's not common practice, but Matt Verdier has a great example of that in
his Wizard Tower), or in the middle of the building (there's a good amount
of these examples).
* Having your roof come off is *always* good practice. If you keep the
roof simple, it's easy to have it detachable - for example, two
hinge-connected plates resting on some slopes are easy to take off and put
back on again. Dave Eaton has great examples in his peasant houses.
* A totally different approach, which works especially well with
half-timbered houses, is to have every wall built separately and the corners
are 1x1x5s. If they are only loosely fitted to the floor and ceiling (e.g.
part tile, part plate) then each wall can be taken off for easy reach to the
interior. The only building I've sen made this way is Chris Maddison's mayor
house.
> 3b) Landscaping and uneven ground.
That's a toughie. You're right, it makes for *such* realistic settings. The
more plates, the better - don't let it look "blocky", as you said. And use
different colors, mix them a lot - green with tan, tan with grey, green with
grey and brown... but in good taste. If you're building a large setting, use
mega-bricks every so often so that you're not wasting plates on all that
space. It's fine to use bricks - just "hide" them with plates. Chris always
says that if you just start putting things down without really thinking too
much, it comes out the best - organic, not planned, rough and natural. You
just gotta experiment.
As for buildings on inclines - I haven't seen many examples for those. Chris
and I had a really lovely one made for this Brickfest, though, IIDSSM. We
built the building first on plates alone, and only later landscaped and
added the house on it all. We even had a built-in cellar, which was totally
cool! (My idea, of course! ;-) ). There aren't many pictures of it up, but
I'm hoping to get some taken soon... it's my favorite creation out of my
own. Unfortunately half the landscape had to be torn apart (it used *all* of
Chris's landscaping bricks!!), but the other half is still built and at my
house. It eveen survived the travel here!
Sorry, I'm drifting o-t. In order to build on uneven ground, the secret is
to use one of two methods... either, a) have the building "sink" into the
slope, so that part of the building is underground, like a cellar or
basement, or b) have the building be a bit above ground and build a (same or
different colored) base that rises up to "meet" the building. Or you can
combine both, if the building is really long - one side of the building, on
the lower side of the "hill", will be above ground, (b), while the other
side will be a bit below it, (a).
> 4) Ooh, I just thought of one. Is there a nice place with pictures (not
> .DAT files, I haven't gotten into LDraw yet!) for simple things like Doors
> and Furniture? I saw a few searching on Brickshelf for "Furniture" and
> "Chair", etc etc, but not all that many :( Any place that's full of ideas
> like that would be great! I suppose I could try surfing every link
> available on Lugnet, but I figure you guys have already done that :) I
> built a few doors for one of my buildings, but I think it'd be excellent if
> there was a place that had a compilation of doors, doorways, beds, desks,
> etc etc.
You're right, that *would* be a great idea. I don't think anyone's done it
before, *but* I would recommend browsing Heather Patey's brickshelf gallery
for ideas. She's got some awesome stuff. Bram Lambrecht does too, but he's
more town-and-space. Maybe *you* should compile a page with all those links,
whaddaya say? ;-) Ahh, if only one had the time...
> I think I've hit all the questions I had at this time, and I've spent long
> enough looking at Lego for one night, I have homework to get to!
Heh, likewise here! Take care! Nice talking to you. What a ramble! Thanks
for the excellent questions - I really had to jog my brain for some of those.
-Shiri
XP .build
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: 20 answers (Building, ideas, supplies)
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| (...) Thanks for that, I know I had alot there :) (...) I'll have to do that, I was just using the Lego S@H Web Page. Perhaps I should call to make sure as well! (...) Argh! I haven't seen one of those 1200 piece buckets anywhere here in Rochester (...) (23 years ago, 6-Jan-02, to lugnet.castle, lugnet.build)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | 20 questions (Building, ideas, supplies)
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| Good evening, a few questions and such I'd like to ask, if anyone can answer/discuss any of them, that'd be great! I'll just dive right in... (A bunch of these questions aren't strictly "Castle", but I'm asking them all from the Castle builder point (...) (23 years ago, 5-Jan-02, to lugnet.castle)
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