DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
This is what I have been working on to keep myself sane over closed season. Those of you I have on Facebook will no doubt have seen these pictures already, but Sam suggested a while ago that I should share this with the rest of you, so here goes.
A bit of background:
First off, I have been incubating this idea for a lot longer than the current excitment over the film!
I got the idea for this project back in the summer, when I was working a 23 day stint on the Olympics with no break. The song "One Day More" became an internal mantra to keep me sane... "just one more day... just another day" etc.
During my down time, my brain started to ponder if it would be possible to build a revolving stage out of Lego, which then spiraled in to building the whole set of Les mis.
Towards the end of the job, we had a day where we finished early. It occured to me that as I was in the center of London, why not go see a show? The Grumps seemed the obvious choice, as I had not seen it since the mid 90's when it was at The Palace. I wandered down Shaftsbury Avenue to Queen's Theatre and got two tickets for that evening, called Kelpie and told her to meet me at Piccadilly Circus after work.
With the epicness of the show now fresh in my mind, I knew I had to attempt to Legoise it!
The design stage:
Something as massive as this requires planning. You can't just sit down with a pile of bricks and go for it. I am still very much in this planning phase at the moment, but I feel I have enough to show my progress so far. No real bricks have been conected... yet.
I spent a good few months mulling things over in the back of my mind, and scouring the internet for reference pictures. Finally, I made a start on the design at the start of December.
I am using software called MLCAD to design this. It is a very, very old program that uses the LDraw parts library. It is horrible to learn (the book that explains it all is a good inch and a half thick), but is the most versatile Lego design software available.
Once I have finished the design, I can get a parts list, and order them from Bricklink.
I decided to seperate the theatre in to three modules, each taking up two 32 x 32 stud baseplates; one each for the stage, auditorium, and front of house. So far I have completed the stage, and am about halfway through the auditorium.
From the start, I knew there would be two main challenges: The revolve and the barricade. I've managed to solve the revolve, but the barricades are proving tricky. The problem is that MLCAD becomes very awkward to use when you start rotating bricks to odd angles on more than one axis. They will be buildable, but I need to mess around with some real bricks to solve the issue, as it's much easier than trying to CAD them. So for now, I've left the barricades as the only piece of set not finished and moved on to the auditorium.
Myself and Kelpie have been working out what minifig parts would best represent the cast in their various costumes. We have got about half way through this so far... it requires a spreadsheet
Enough waffle, pictures!
(These are all screenshots from MlCAD. It is possible to make highly rendered images with a ray tracing program, but frankly, I've never seen the point. This is a design tool to me, not a graphics fap-fest.)
These are highlights. More work-in-progress shots, and more detailed explanation of each picture can be found in my Facebook gallery. It's the only thing I am willing to make public on there, as I feel this project is epic enough that it deserves sharing
The very first thing I designed was the curtain, with the iconic logo. It required some crafty SNOT (Studs Not On Top) work to get it right. I actually sketched it out on Lego scaled graph paper before CADing it.
That eventually became this:
The stage itself Started with the revolve, and the mechanism to turn it via a crank at the back of the building. Then it was a simple matter to lay down the tracks for scenery and add the proscenium arch. This is all based on images of the real set...
Then add the walls of the set:
And the inner walls of the stage, in black:
A bit of detail over the pros arch (this may well be tweaked in the near future):
The outer walls are added to the stage module:
Along with the scene dock doors:
Some of the scenery items, in their flown position over the stage (at this point I had forgotten to build the backdrop for the wedding scene, which has now been added):
Dimmer racks for the lights:
The grid floor is added:
The hoists for the scenery (there is one more now, for that wedding backdrop):
The fly tower is complete!
The cranks to fly the scenery stick through the roof and are labled:
A few designs for lighting fixtures:
The stalls take shape:
The set overspill in front of the pros arch:
The start of the auditorium walls:
The dress circle:
The upper circle:
For a laugh, I plotted out the sight lines to see how accurate the raking of the seats is. It's not perfect, but it's close enough.
And that's what I have so far. There is still a very long way to go before this is ready. It may take years, but it'll be worth it.
A few statistics:
The theatre will have seating for 167 minifigs. 69 in the stalls, 8 in the boxes, and 45 in each circle.
The overall dimensions will be:
51.16cm wide / 78.58cm deep / 55.01cm tall.
So far, and keep in mind this will probably double by the end of the project, there are 10,919 pieces in this design!
It is without a doubt, the most insane Lego build I have even thought about, never mind actually got this far in to. Rest assured, that when it eventually gets built, the images will be shared.
A bit of background:
First off, I have been incubating this idea for a lot longer than the current excitment over the film!
I got the idea for this project back in the summer, when I was working a 23 day stint on the Olympics with no break. The song "One Day More" became an internal mantra to keep me sane... "just one more day... just another day" etc.
During my down time, my brain started to ponder if it would be possible to build a revolving stage out of Lego, which then spiraled in to building the whole set of Les mis.
Towards the end of the job, we had a day where we finished early. It occured to me that as I was in the center of London, why not go see a show? The Grumps seemed the obvious choice, as I had not seen it since the mid 90's when it was at The Palace. I wandered down Shaftsbury Avenue to Queen's Theatre and got two tickets for that evening, called Kelpie and told her to meet me at Piccadilly Circus after work.
With the epicness of the show now fresh in my mind, I knew I had to attempt to Legoise it!
The design stage:
Something as massive as this requires planning. You can't just sit down with a pile of bricks and go for it. I am still very much in this planning phase at the moment, but I feel I have enough to show my progress so far. No real bricks have been conected... yet.
I spent a good few months mulling things over in the back of my mind, and scouring the internet for reference pictures. Finally, I made a start on the design at the start of December.
I am using software called MLCAD to design this. It is a very, very old program that uses the LDraw parts library. It is horrible to learn (the book that explains it all is a good inch and a half thick), but is the most versatile Lego design software available.
Once I have finished the design, I can get a parts list, and order them from Bricklink.
I decided to seperate the theatre in to three modules, each taking up two 32 x 32 stud baseplates; one each for the stage, auditorium, and front of house. So far I have completed the stage, and am about halfway through the auditorium.
From the start, I knew there would be two main challenges: The revolve and the barricade. I've managed to solve the revolve, but the barricades are proving tricky. The problem is that MLCAD becomes very awkward to use when you start rotating bricks to odd angles on more than one axis. They will be buildable, but I need to mess around with some real bricks to solve the issue, as it's much easier than trying to CAD them. So for now, I've left the barricades as the only piece of set not finished and moved on to the auditorium.
Myself and Kelpie have been working out what minifig parts would best represent the cast in their various costumes. We have got about half way through this so far... it requires a spreadsheet
Enough waffle, pictures!
(These are all screenshots from MlCAD. It is possible to make highly rendered images with a ray tracing program, but frankly, I've never seen the point. This is a design tool to me, not a graphics fap-fest.)
These are highlights. More work-in-progress shots, and more detailed explanation of each picture can be found in my Facebook gallery. It's the only thing I am willing to make public on there, as I feel this project is epic enough that it deserves sharing
The very first thing I designed was the curtain, with the iconic logo. It required some crafty SNOT (Studs Not On Top) work to get it right. I actually sketched it out on Lego scaled graph paper before CADing it.
That eventually became this:
The stage itself Started with the revolve, and the mechanism to turn it via a crank at the back of the building. Then it was a simple matter to lay down the tracks for scenery and add the proscenium arch. This is all based on images of the real set...
Then add the walls of the set:
And the inner walls of the stage, in black:
A bit of detail over the pros arch (this may well be tweaked in the near future):
The outer walls are added to the stage module:
Along with the scene dock doors:
Some of the scenery items, in their flown position over the stage (at this point I had forgotten to build the backdrop for the wedding scene, which has now been added):
Dimmer racks for the lights:
The grid floor is added:
The hoists for the scenery (there is one more now, for that wedding backdrop):
The fly tower is complete!
The cranks to fly the scenery stick through the roof and are labled:
A few designs for lighting fixtures:
An ETC Source 4:
A non-specific moving head wash:
A non-specific moving head beam:
A Digital Light Curtain:
A non-specific moving head wash:
A non-specific moving head beam:
A Digital Light Curtain:
The stalls take shape:
The set overspill in front of the pros arch:
The start of the auditorium walls:
The dress circle:
The upper circle:
For a laugh, I plotted out the sight lines to see how accurate the raking of the seats is. It's not perfect, but it's close enough.
And that's what I have so far. There is still a very long way to go before this is ready. It may take years, but it'll be worth it.
A few statistics:
The theatre will have seating for 167 minifigs. 69 in the stalls, 8 in the boxes, and 45 in each circle.
The overall dimensions will be:
51.16cm wide / 78.58cm deep / 55.01cm tall.
So far, and keep in mind this will probably double by the end of the project, there are 10,919 pieces in this design!
It is without a doubt, the most insane Lego build I have even thought about, never mind actually got this far in to. Rest assured, that when it eventually gets built, the images will be shared.
