Lego Cuusoo : The 2 Man Star Raider.

I've had some really positive feedback on my 2 Man Star Raider craft as shown in last weeks post.

2 Man Star Raider Craft.

People particularly seem to like the design of the cockpit.

Getting in.

Back of the Cockpit.

 

 

 

If you'd like to see this two seater patrol craft in production you can vote for it on Lego Cuusoo

It would need a tiny bit of work to make it production quality - mainly the canopy over the cockpit.  I did the best I could with the Lego Design by me pallette, but a there isn't a decent two seater hinged canopy in the Lego Design by me pallette - so I had to improvise.

Despite design by me ending I am still working on Design by me sets, the next project is a large battlecruiser, with pilots seat, co-pilots seat, captains control chair, 3 command stations, 6 berths, a galley and an officers mess.

How will I order it?  With no more Lego Design by me the only way will be through the pick a brick service. 

I'm experimenting with this by buying a second copy of the LCX1 Fighter I designed for my nephew - he's built it now but I still haven't seen it - so I'm getting my own through pick a brick - but with no instructions or box...

Lego Design By Me : My Final Set?

I started designing a huge Lego Design By Me Battlecruiser that was going to have crew quarters and a command centre, mess and galley - but before I'd finished the chassis it was already over £200...

I had to order another set though, so I decided to get my hands on the 2 man Star Raider Craft which I started showcasing the Design By Me process on this blog with.

The Finished Model

I haven't taken any pictures of this Lego Design By Me set in the bricks yet, but as soon as I do I will post them.  It does work well as a model though and is very sturdy - you can hold one wing adn shake it up and down and it stays together.

The only real criticism is the canopy for the cockpit - it works, but a moulded single piece canopy might look better.

Pictures will follow soon!

Please support my Lego Cuusoo Projects:-



http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/5890 (My Space Based MMORPG which implements player designed ships and buildings from Ledo Digital Designer.)

http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/5384 (My Space Patrol Ship)

New Hope For Lego Design by me...

Space Patrol Ship Lego Design by me set - interior shot.

Well, it's not really Lego Design by me... In some respects it's something even cooler!

A chance to get your Lego set made into a full production set which gets full proper production and advertised and sold - and you get 1% commission on the sale of your design?

I'd love for this set to be made, if you want to see 'Space Patrol' in production and show me some support - go to this page:-

http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/5384

sign in with facebook - and click on the support button the like button and tweet it!

Maybe I should offer to buy a copy of the production set and offer it up in a prize draw?  I'll think about that one... I don't know how much the set would be as a production - I'm guessing about £60, I had to pay £90 for it as a Design by me....

Anyway, please, please do me a huge favor and earn eternal gratitude... And help get my Space Patrol set made production!

Thanks!

Some images to tempt you?  Remind you what the set I want made into production looks like?

The Space Patrol model with the Lego Design by me box

 

 

Lego Design by me : A Swan song...

Lego Design by is closing up shop on January 16th 2012.   Why is Lego Design by me closing shop on 16th Jan 2012?  Who knows...

They've cited cost reasons, frustrated children with models that fall apart... With the demise of Lego Universe I can only assume Lego Chief Executives have had a meeting and decided that to maximize profitability withdraw any products or services which aren't as profitable.

Personally I think Lego Universe is a great game - but the wrong game.  Lego Design by me is a great service though - the problem is it is too expensive.  There are better ways Lego Design by me could have addressed this than shutting up shop though! 

First of all, offer several levels of Lego Design by me service.  A basic where you get a bag of bits and print your own instructions and box cover off.  A Lego Design by me 'silver' where you get the bag of bits, the standard box and printed instructions and a gold Lego Design by me service which includes the glossy cover for the box with your custom lettering.

I just hope Lego Design be me is continued in some similar form once they've got their act together. The prices were supposed to come down once more people were buying and auto-picking robots could be used - but Lego Design by me never had enough customers to warrant the cost.  A vicious circle really...

My nephew was very impressed with my Space Patrol Set when he saw me building it a few weeks ago.  So because Lego Design by me is ending I decided to design and build him a Lego Design by me custom Lego Set for Christmas.  An expensive present - but it's my last chance to order a set and his last chance to own one.

I don't think he'll read this blog - so I think it's safe to show you an image of the model.  I called it the LCX1 Fighter (His initials are L.C.) and I just had room to make the box say Designed by MS for Luke.

Lego Design by me Custom Lego Set : LCX1 Fighter

All in all I'm very sad that Lego Design by me is ending, Lego Design by me was probably the best service or product that Lego was offering.  I can see the issue - designing models looks easy - but to make sure your Lego Design by me model will be solid and not fall apart needs an eye for detail, a lot of patience and a great deal of thought.

It's not easy - but it's enjoyable, whether I shall enjoy Lego Digital Designer as much now that you can't purchase your Lego Design by me model - I really don't know...

Lego Design by me : Plagiarism, in the gallery?

I've found increasingly a number of people have been copying and re-branding my Space Patrol set in the Lego Design by me Gallery!

They say imitation is the purest form of flattery, but taking my Lego Design by me set and renaming it - then implying it's YOUR Lego Design by me set isn't cool!  I may be over reacting to this - I'm not sure how it works - maybe people are downloading it and calling it something else because they want to name it something different or add a different crew... I don't know... It does annoy me!

If you want to help and vote for my model then you need to create a Lego Design by me account to access Lego Design by me, then go to the Lego Design by me Gallery Then do a search for :-

Space Patrol

Click on the one that looks like my model and the username should read martynstanley, I'd appreciate any votes incredibly!  Even if just to rank it higher than the copies!

Incidentally, if anyone likes Lego and would like to own my Lego Design by me Space Patrol set - then go ahead and buy it! - I would be really flattered, and would love to think there's a small fleet of 'Space Patrol' Lego Design by me ships around the world.

I don't promote myself to be the greatest Lego Design by me designer ever - I just like doing Lego Design by me and wanted to share.  It is a good Lego Design by me set - the guns fall off too easily - but apart from that it's great, and your 8 - 12 year old Lego Space fan will love it, even though it is a Lego Design by me set.

The Finished Model!

Well I finished the model, and I really love the complete model. It's a really solid Lego Set the only real weak points are the guns which do break off really easily - but are easily fixed.

The roof section comes off really easily - it's great for accessing the interior and I really love the functional looking interior - it looks like it could work as a multi crew spacecraft.

Images below:-

My Space Patrol set with the vintage Lego Space Transporter craft shown for scale. (Set 918)

My Space Patrol set with a vintage space pilot shown for scale.

Rear view of the craft, the engines and the gunners viewscreen are shown.

This is how the roof section is removed, the large window at the front is easily removed too for better access to the pilot.

The interior of the craft, shown top to bottom are the gunner, captain and navigator.

Close up of the pilots cockpit, not the large amount of computers and controls compared to traditional Lego Space sets - realistic for a large space ship, at least in comparison to the vintage four dials and a steering wheel setup!

Another view of the interior of the ship, showing the pilot mainly, with the navigator in the foreground.

View of the gunners rear facing window and his two joy sticks.

Main interior shot, showing gunner, captain navigator and pilot, along with some of teh computer consoles.

View of the interior - not the fire extinguisher on the captains side of the ship.

Full interior view - not the ladder for the gunner to get into his seat.

Comparitive shot of the Set 918 Transporter and my 'Space Patrol' Lego Design by Me Set.

Front on view, here you can see the pilot, the navigator and the captain, their seats can be swivelled to face forwards.

Close up view of the gunners seat.

Side on view of the whole craft, there is a small window, going across for the captain and navigator and a large window on either side of the gunner so he can better orientate himself.

Rear 3/4 view, not the large amount of small booster rockets and similar in addition to the main engines.

The top mounted rear gun rotates through 360 and tilts up to 45 degrees.

Front 3/4 view - all guns forward facing, the ones at the front will tilt outwards by 45 degrees.

Main side on view - note the large window for the pilot and the impressive array guns.

Building the set.

Well I had some great fun with my 4 year old little girl at the static caravan building my 'Space Patrol' Lego Design by me set...

These images are actually pretty good quality, you can zoom in on any image by clicking on it - then again a second time for full size.

I thought it would be fun to make it look like the crew were building the ship - it was nearly finished at this stage, most of 530 pieces in place.

Here we see the incomplete cockpit - with the Captain and Gunner in their seats.

Here are the navigator and pilot finishing off the ship - fitting a wing section no less!

At the start of this build, the glass baking dish was 100% full to the brim - one problem with large design by me sets is the fact you don't get little numbered bags - you just get a massive bag and a packing list...

The instructions actually came in two books - there were so steps!  The instructions also - being automatically generated are not up to the standards of commercial Lego Sets - they were useful, helpful and generally pretty good - however, there were a few steps which weren't entirely easy to follow.  Of course you can always refer to the LD4 program to see exactly what goes where.

I'll be sharing the wonderful printed box next time and some more images of the complete ship - perhaps with some images of a vintage Lego Spaceship for comparison.

Lego Design by Me

So what is this blog about?  It's post number 1 so I should explain it.  I have nothing to do with Lego and I'm not promoting their products or services in anyway.  What I am involved in is the design and sale of portable air conditioners.

The Lego part comes in because I recently got given a huge box of Lego brom my childhood - to clean up and give to my four year old daughter to play with.  Whilst sifting through the pieces it struck me there was probably not a great deal missing, and I could probably rebuild some of my old classic Lego space ships for my daughter to play with.

So, after scouring the net for a while, I found lots of instructions and inventry lists for building these classic sets and I managed to build two spaceships, including the transporter set 918 with only minor substitutions.  I found this process to be very satisfying and started looking at modern Lego sets that are aimed more at adults.  This lead me to the Star Wars Lego UCS series, which are all impressive and I'd love to have the space and money to build some of them - but I don't really.  The Super Star Destroyer is over 1.2 Metres long and costs £300... And it's way off being minifigure scale, if it was minifigure scale and we assume minifigures are scaled 100 - 1 (Assume person is usually about 2 Metres, a minifigure is around 2 cm) so the SSD was 17 km in the film, 17,000 Metres, or 1,700,000 cm knock this down to 1% the size, and it's 17,000 cm converted into metres gives you 170 Metres.  That would be an incredibly expensive Lego set and I don't think I know anyone who would have space to store it.... Thought I'd love to see it built!

This lead me to look at Lego's 'Design by Me' service - which looks really cool.  The principle is simple, you down load their software, design your set, then they print a box and instructions for you and assemble the pieces by hand before shipping it out to you.

So I decided to have a look at what I could design in the spirit of the classic Lego Space sets.  I even had a look at Lego Cad, which gives you more freedom than Lego's software - but it's clunkier to use and you can't have that magic of holding the pieces in your hand and putting it together physically to test your design.

Obviously the aesthetics aren't the only part of designing a Lego set.  When a set is being prepared for release, hours of play test are done on the completed model.  The criteria for UCS sets is more focused on aesthetics than normal Lego - but they still have to be something which doesn't fall apart in your hand!

In this blog I'm going to cover the experience of designing and hopefully eventually building a Lego Design by me set.  I've decided on a theme, having looked at the available pieces the best selection of wings and space themed parts are coloured black - so I'm going to them it around 'Space Pirates' and try to design craft which appear to be functional working craft... Let's see how it goes...

This is going to be the landing gear and bottom of one of the engines.  I'm going to start by building a small fighter-like craft, but to make it interesting and different, it's going to be designed to have a pilot and co-pilot like modern light planes.