Bill Ward’s Brickpile

Every once in a while I get a request to share building instructions for my models. I am willing to do so, but haven’t quite figured out the best way. I was wondering if people might want to comment and make some suggestions?

Some possibilities for formats are are:

• LDraw files
• PDF of instructions generated using LDraw and LDpub
• Printed instructions in black & white or color

The ugly side of the equation comes when I contemplate compensation.  Do I sell them or just give them away?  I think it depends on how much work I have to put into them.  I won’t go through the trouble of creating printed instructions for free, but I might be willing to share the LDraw files for free (Creative Commons licensed).  The question is, how much would people be willing to pay, and is that enough to justify the work it would take me to prepare nice looking instructions?

My latest LEGO model, just in time for Christmas, is the Nutcracker, a classic Christmas icon. In fact, it was built on Christmas Eve!

Inspired by the ballet by Alexandre Dumas père (an adaptation of the story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” by E. T. A. Hoffmann), set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and staged by Marius Petipa. My wife and I saw the San Francisco Ballet version of this last week, and I’ve been wanting to make a LEGO nutcracker ever since. I was going to make a big one, about two feet tall, but haven’t got around to it yet… in the meantime I really like the way this little guy came out.

The mechanism functions pretty well; by lifting his coattails his mouth opens, just like real wooden nutcrackers. Of course, being the size that he is, you can’t crack much of a nut with it, which is probably just as well since it would most likely fall apart in your hands if you tried – LEGO studs’ clutch power is no match for your average nut.

Click on any of the images for a bigger view, or go to the Flickr photo set (slideshow)

Merry Christmas!

This amusement park ride, known in various parts of the world as the Scrambler, Twist, Twister, Cyclone, Sizzler, Merry Mixer, Grasscutter, or Cha Cha. In my part of the world (California) I’ve always seen it called the Scrambler. Wikipedia has more information about this ride under its various guises.

I built this model for the 2009 Bay Area Maker Faire where it was a part of BayLUG’s largest ever public exhibit.

The operating mechanism is similar to the real thing – a central axle drives the whole mechanism, and rubber tires attached to each arm’s driveshaft transfer that motion to the ends of each of the three main arms, where a 90 degree gear causes the 4 cars to spin around.

See all the photos and a video on flickr (slide show).

For my birthday I had a small party at my home, and so I cleaned up my LEGO work area and set up several representative models on display there. Before it gets messed up again I took some pictures…

One of my pictures has been used by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on their Web site to illustrate a radio story about the relative merits of buying versus renting a home. You can see it on the ABC News homepage as a small thumbnail on the right hand side, and if you click the “Best of abc.net.au” link it takes you to a “best of” page where that story is featured with a larger version of the image at the top of the page. Here’s the photo they used (from their Web server):

My photos are published with a Creative Commons attribution license, so I’m not mad that they used the photo, but they (as far as I can tell) failed to credit the photo which I think is in pretty poor taste. (If you like the models, I have posted the LDraw instructions online.) Here’s the original photo, linked to its page on Flickr:

You can really see the blurriness created when they cropped it and re-saved the JPEG (probably with a high level of compression). Thanks to Stephen Calder, aka aussiechef67 for pointing it out via a comment on Flickr.

I built some Micropolis buildings according to the TwinLUG standard. I made four modules, which I named for what the residents of Micropolis would use them for: Live, Play, Shop, and Work. Take a look at the pictures on Flickr as a set or as a slideshow.

So, I was scanning through the #lego Twitter search results and came across this one: 48 of the Coolest, Stylish and Creative Lego Creations. About halfway down, they featured my “LEGO, Robert Indiana style” sculpture. How cool is that? There are 47 other great models featured as well, so be sure to check it out…

A few months back I was sorting through bins of LEGO and came across an item that has bugged me since I first bought set 7994, LEGO City Harbor.

The cargo ship hull in that set is just a little too big for any container I own, so it’s been sort of bouncing around my LEGO shelves on its own ever since I took that set apart and sorted the parts into my collection.

So as I was holding this darn hull in my hands yet again trying to figure out where to store it, I was inspired to instead try to build something out of it. As a cargo ship, it’s really way too small for minifig scale. But since it’s about 72 studs long it’s just about perfect for a motor yacht!

I did a quick Google search on 72 foot motor yachts and found the Adagio 72 as a PDF file, complete with floorplans. The hull shape wasn’t quite right, and I couldn’t do anything with the forepeak (the triangular area inside the bow) but I figured I could do a pretty good approximation of the floorplan based on the available space in the LEGO hull and set to work…. the result is my Luxury Motor Yacht (slideshow). Hope you enjoy it.

If you want to see it in person, I plan to bring it to BrickFest in Portland later this month, and will also be showing it at Maker Faire at the end of May as a part of BayLUG’s exhibit there. Stop by and say hi!

Inspired by my LEGO version of Robert Indiana’s "LOVE" sculpture, I made another one that spells "LEGO," incorporating different colors for the interior of each letter.

The only hard part design-wise was coming up with a “G” design that matched the other letters, since “LOVE” already provided me with a design for “L,” “E,” and “O.” But structurally, I found it to be much more of a challenge to build the “LEGO” sculpture, largely because the round letters on the bottom didn’t provide nearly as good support for the top letters as the “VE” in “LOVE” did. However, thanks to some very long bricks (1×16 and 2×10) I was able to make it work.

My wife and I discussed the color scheme extensively before we finally decided on the one you see here. I wanted to keep blue and green apart from each other, and I wanted to keep red on the right hand side in case it is displayed next to the “LOVE” sculpture. (Sadly, I don’t have any good photographs of the two together – I didn’t have any place big enough that didn’t have a horrible background – but hopefully I can update later to add one.)

Heart sculptures I made several years ago for my wife on Valentine’s Day, but never posted pictures of online until now. They are puffed hearts in four sizes.

See slideshow or just view the photoset page on Flickr.