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Yeah, it would have been more than twice as long if I hadn’t deleted a lot out. Also, you clearly haven’t been reading my Studio posts, because this one was short by comparison. It’s also short compared to my GBC post from less than a week ago.
It’s true. This year I have, for the first time in the history of the LUG, not read every word of every post in the forums. But I’ve skimmed for the gist of things!
Those of you who subscribe to the Studio thread will be aware by now that last night, after weeks and weeks of design work, I finally started clicking pieces together. I took a progress pic to show Rachel, so I’m gonna post it here. I do not plan to post regular progress pics here, but I’ll make an exception for this one, maybe it will be helpful for BFPA planning if the rest of the group has an idea of what I’m bringing. Normally I don’t like to talk about future plans, because then if you don’t follow through on them, everybody knows it. But I’ve already reserved a whole table at BFPA, so I’m definitely on the hook for this one. And really, 27 baseplates is less than the 32 I did for my park in 2014, so this still feels doable.
Here’s the pic. That’s the only 8-foot banquet table I have in my house. What you’re looking at is clear plates on top of tan plates on top of baseplates. For now, you have to imagine the rest. That includes trans-light blue tiles on top of the clear plates, so that it looks like water. Then green wedge plates to smooth out the boundaries of the water. Then green plates for the rest of the landscaping. As many travis-brick pine trees as I can fit and assemble in the time we have for setup, with a maximum of 132. And then a big mysterious space castle in the middle. That last part, we’ll have to see how it comes out. I’m thinking that because of time constraints, for this iteration it’s gonna look less like a coherent building and more like a group of loosely connected buildings, but we could live with that.
looks great! @pnbrenem and I were just talking about how the lug could benefit from a large scale landscaping mils, rather than just trying to focus on only town buildings and streets. Some 3D topography with rolling hills/farm/paths/streams/forest/etc.
So, I watched the Beyond The Brick full length walk through today over lunch. Unknowingly at the 49 minute mark I see “Steel City LUG” on a GBC module which of course caught my attention! Then I saw your name @bengood921 and was thoroughly impressed! Not by the working nature of the build, but of all those lovely lime green wall panels! I am envious.
Congrats! Looked great and worked great…it seemed. I need to get some GBC pointers. 🙂
all those lovely lime green wall panels! I am envious.
Envious of those green panels? How appropriate. Some of them came from a purchase of 25 cloud cuckoo palace sets. 😀
>> Envious of those green panels? How appropriate. Some of them came from a purchase of 25 cloud cuckoo palace sets.
I think almost all of them did; the Cloud Cuckoo set was $20 and contained two of them. The only set that part came in was a much more expensive (probably $80 or $100) Ninjago set that came out the following year, which contained one of them.
I started buying the part after I built my first GBC for BFVA14, when I realized that despite my large collection of parts at the time, I did not have what I needed in order to build the tall towers I would need to support my various GBC ideas. So I started looking into what would be most cost effective, and it was the solution I came up with. The fact that they can look good if you use them right was a fortunate side benefit, cause I don’t think I was taking it into consideration at the time. In the wake of the Cloud Cuckoo set, that part was plentiful and cheap on BL. Because of the window in the panel, people still think of it as a castle part, but very few castle builders want that color. People have sometimes referred to my GBC modules as green castles, but it’s not deliberate. In fact, if I could wave a magic wand and have the windows disappear, I would. All they really do is literally give the public a window to the often ugly support structures behind them.
These days, a lot of more than 20 of them is unusual, and it’s been that way for years. (For those of you who want to feel old, the Lego Movie is now more than 8.5 years old.) Back then, I bought hundreds at a time. I don’t know how many people reading here have heard this story before – I tell it all the time at conventions when I have the GBC modules with me, but it comes up way less often at LUG stuff: At BFNE16, Powerhouse v1, the first module to incorporate the panels, made its first (and only) appearance. While I was there, one of the guys from Bricks Anywhere, a BL store who were also vendors at the event, came up to me and said “I’m the guy who sold you those green panels.” And I said “How do you know that?” and he said “Cause you’re the only person who bought eight-hundred of them.” I bought from them at BFVA22 and I brought that story up with them, they said it’s always memorable when slow-selling parts suddenly move in large quantities.
>> If I only knew then what I’d want now.
Yeah I know that feeling, I think all AFOL’s do. My projects were very vaguely defined until I joined Steel City LUG and started doing public displays and larger projects. Now all my purchases are pretty much for specific needs, but back in the day I bought stuff I thought was neat or might be useful.
Doing that cuts both ways. I have all kinds of stuff where I think ‘Thank goodness I bought that part when I did, because you can’t get it now, or not in the quantities I have, or not at a price that’s affordable.’ But it can also lead to buyer’s remorse. I also have plenty of stuff where I look at it and wonder what I was thinking when I bought it.
The build I had planned to bring to BrickFairPA is called Journey’s End. Today I packed it up for temporary storage, so that I have room to get out my GBC module so I can see about possibly making a small modification and then repacking it for BFPA – things got a little chaotic in the storage containers at the end of BFVA.
Before I put JE in containers, I took a few pics to show how far I got before I gave up on having it done in time (unfortunately the main pic is backlit and came out really dark, and I could not fix it with my limited Photoshop skills). I got the trans-blue water tiles down and the green wedge plates to contour the water, but little else in terms of landscaping. Even in Studio I didn’t make much progress there.
I also got a two identical towers partially built, and a bunch of side panels for a third (different) tower. The two towers are to be connected by a central structure, which is (almost completely) designed in Studio but not assembled. A big issue that was really slowing me down is how to safely and securely attach those towers to the landscape. The third picture shows that they only have a 2×2 area of anti-studs at the bottom of each one; the towers have significant height and are heavy. They are sturdy though, so no worries about them breaking apart.
There’s additional progress made in the form of Studio files, there’s quite a few towers and facades in various stages of completion, but no real master plan yet.
That’s cool! You could reuse that landscape for a variety of projects. That might include any storyline that includes a physical journey: the Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings or even Elf.
“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.” – Buddy
@bengood921, I was able to play around with overall pic up to tone down the backlighting and lighten up the foreground. Looks like it’s going to be pretty impressive once you get the whole thing built!!
>> I was able to play around with overall pic up to tone down the backlighting and lighten up the foreground.
Sweet, thanks! That looks way better.
Rachel also took a few pictures, so I had her send them to me last night, since I didn’t know that Bob was gonna fix my photo, so I’m still posting a few here. One is a side view of the whole thing. For the other one, Rachel stood on a chair and did the thing where the camera (phone) takes a bunch of photos in succession as you pan across, and then automatically digitally stitches them together. It did not work, unless you are interested in seeing what my landscape would look like if it had been done by Salvador Dali.
I’m tempted to go into the thinking behind how I designed the landscape, but I think that’s a conversation for another day. The short short version is: the water was laid out so that the baseplates could break into sections for transport, but there wouldn’t be any noticeable seam lines in the water. I also wanted to get a read on how many parts it would use up, since this is the small version of the build, and the answer is ‘way way way more than I’d expected, unfortunately.’ I also wanted to test how many travis-brick pine trees I can fit on it, that question won’t be answered this weekend like I’d hoped.
>> You could reuse that landscape for a variety of projects. That might include any storyline that includes a physical journey: the Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings or even Elf.
I did enjoy your Elf quotes. “Candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup.” The reply to that of course is “They forgot Mountain Dew” – Micah, probably. We’ll have to see if the landscape can be repurposed for other stuff. Since the plan is to keep it very flat, it stores easily. The middle might be built up with support for the space castle though, in which case we’d need alternate baseplates for another project. Also, if somebody has ideas for what to put there for another project for some sort of event around town, that’s fine, but I have so many large projects in the works right now that I can’t even begin to think about planning anything new. (And by ‘so many’, I mean ten. It’s ten large projects in various stages of planning and being worked on. Most are essentially on hold right now, although we’re always looking out for parts for them when we’re on BrickLink.)
At conventions, the GBCers bring 10x10x10 cups to catch the balls. They’re useful for a variety of reasons: collecting the balls when testing modules at home, clearing the display at the end of public hours, and most commonly, temporarily filling a gap while a module is pulled to be repaired or replaced.
I built my Steel City LUG cup in 2017. The primary benefit of it is that it lets everybody know that I have the best cup there and theirs are all inferior. At the most recent event, my cup got used a lot when stuff needed repairing, and I discovered that it helps to have a second cup. If the cup is filled before repairs are done, you need to dump it quickly and put it back in place before the next balls arrives, which may not be possible. If you have a second cup, you just switch one for the other real fast, like Indy does with the bag of sand for the idol, and then dump the first cup at your leisure. The problem with this arrangement is that it requires a second cup, which I didn’t have. After the last event, I decided to change that.
My first thought was to make my second cup identical to the first. But then I had a better idea. I asked Josh for the bricks and he said yes. I told him I wouldn’t need them until next June, so I could pick them up at Q4, but at some point he passed them on to Krista, presumably with the idea that she would see me at BFPA. At the most recent AFOL Day, however, she brought them with her, because she correctly predicted that she would run into me there. Once I ruined BrickFair PA by not finishing my planned build and switched back to GBC, I realized I had time to build the cup ahead of the event, and it would be beneficial to do so. I did it today.
Pic attached. I’d like to be double-fisted on GBC cups, but I don’t have enough balls to fill both cups high enough that they can be seen in a photo. In fact, the one cup has all the balls I own, which is just over a hundred.
At BFVA, my GBC module worked well, but I lost about a ball an hour. I never saw it happen completely, so I’m not sure what the cause was, other than maybe random vibration, but I saw some balls fall, and they were always coming from the top of the tread elevator.
I came up with a plan to extend the side rails out and then in to create an additional barrier to prevent this from happening. Ralph pointed out that it would work if I only did the rail on one side – the one away from the public – which would make the balls more visible as they’re going up. I was able to install the additional rail today. It worked at home, but I only ran a few hundred balls through, so I won’t really know until public hours this weekend if it’s actually eliminating the leak. We’ll find out. Pic attached.
It does mean my MOC card at the event will be wrong: it will say Powerhouse v4.1 but the new rail means it’s version 4.2. I told Rachel about that and I got a giant eye roll. I might be able to print a new one on site, although I had problems with the printer at Chantilly.
I like your catch basin! Are those stickers on those bricks?
I think Josh bought like 1 Million GBC balks at LUG Bulk so maybe he can spare 1 or 2 to fill the cups! 😂
>> Are those stickers on those bricks?
Nope, they’re the same engraved bricks we use for our badges.
My first thought was to make my second cup identical to the first. But then I had a better idea.
But what if both cups said both things…? Right now, the public will only learn either who we are or where we are, not both, unless they wait around for a cup-switch.
I think Josh bought like 1 Million GBC balks at LUG Bulk
500. I have none to spare.
either who we are or where we are, not both
If people cannot determine that Steel City LUG is from Pittsburgh then maybe it is no loss. (Of course I had to ask the Charm City LUG where they were from.)
>> If people cannot determine that Steel City LUG is from Pittsburgh then maybe it is no loss.
It was less about informing people and more about looking cool. Of course, most of the time the two cups will be sitting unused next to each other behind my module. People can probably figure it out from that. Or from my shirt, my badge, my business card, my brick-built sign, or my general vibe of awesomeness.
>> 500. I have none to spare.
Well, since I ruin everything, why not ruin Josh’s LUGBulk order? You can’t spare 20 percent of what ordered? What’s wrong with you? Actually, that’s really a lot. What are you going to do with them all?
I have just over 100. It has been plenty for testing. The standard for GBC is to take at most 30 balls at a time, although I’ve been trying to design an intake container that will take 100 or more at once, because sometimes people just dump full cups in when redistributing balls when it becomes necessary. At some point I might have a GBC large enough that 100 balls is not adequate, but I think I am years away from that, so I will cross the bridge when I come to it. I did not order any balls on this year’s LUGBulk.
In the BtB video, there’s that giant clear bridge with all the big wheels, I think he discusses it in the video: at some point there were issues with no balls getting through, it was something to do with the weight of all the balls causing the bridge to sag or something like that. The builder admitted that he had not tested for that because he only has 30 balls at his house.
What are you going to do with them all?
They are the wheel bearings for the life-size LEGO Delorean Josh is building. (oops! maybe I was not supposed to tell anyone)
switch one for the other real fast, like Indy does with the bag of sand for the idol
And we known how well that worked out for him. 😀
Hm, so this thread went dormant again. Apparently when I was doing lots of building from January to March, I was too busy actually building to post here.
When I made the thread name, I copied Greg’s, and then when Rich made his and used ‘building’ instead of ‘doing’ in the thread name, I thought ‘Aw man, I should’ve thought of that.’ But it turns out I can be doing Lego stuff without building anything.
As mentioned recently on the Discord Build Nights thread, I had five years’ worth of containers of unsorted Lego parts that no doubt represented the largest single Lego sort I will ever do in my life, and by a wide margin (by volume, it was about triple the previous largest sort). For the Discord Build and Chill on the evening of Saturday, March 27, Frost and Jonah came over, brought brownies, helped dump the parts into a giant pile, and helped me get started on sorting. The initial sort was by color.
More than eight days later, I finished sorting. Pics attached. We’re now working on putting them away. The next step is to sub-sort each color by category (which I find a lot more tedious than sorting by color) and then by part, but this will not be relentlessly pursued the way the color sort was, and if it’s done a year from now, that would be a major win (I still have bags of parts from older sorts that were never sub-sorted). The colors will be sorted in order by urgency based on need, with LBG being the highest priority and bright pink being the lowest.
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