egosheep

Working on a new Nautilus

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Hi, this is my first post here. I was always obsessed with lego's as a kid, but kind of got out of it after high school. I was forced to sell all my legos for financial reasons, and haven't really thought about them for 10 or so years. But recently I got the bug again, and I've been having fun building things. I don't have a lot of legos yet, so I'm mainly working out ideas in LDD, then ordering on Bricklink.

Lately I've been working on a new version of the Nautilus from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. My main question is, should I post the progress of it in LDD, or should I wait until it's fully built in real life to unveil it? I don't know if there is a MOC etiquette of some kind... The completed model will probably be around 4,000 pieces, so it may take me a while to actually build it! Let me know which way I should go.. if you guys want to see it in LDD, I can start posting some progress photos.

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Hi, this is my first post here. I was always obsessed with lego's as a kid, but kind of got out of it after high school. I was forced to sell all my legos for financial reasons, and haven't really thought about them for 10 or so years. But recently I got the bug again, and I've been having fun building things. I don't have a lot of legos yet, so I'm mainly working out ideas in LDD, then ordering on Bricklink.

Lately I've been working on a new version of the Nautilus from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. My main question is, should I post the progress of it in LDD, or should I wait until it's fully built in real life to unveil it? I don't know if there is a MOC etiquette of some kind... The completed model will probably be around 4,000 pieces, so it may take me a while to actually build it! Let me know which way I should go.. if you guys want to see it in LDD, I can start posting some progress photos.

Welcome to EB, egosheep!

I for one am very excited about seeing a large scale LEGO Nautilus come together, so I'd say post as you go. Then we can share the excitement of the WIP (work-in-progress) and you can get feedback along the way.

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Welcome to EB, egosheep!

I for one am very excited about seeing a large scale LEGO Nautilus come together, so I'd say post as you go. Then we can share the excitement of the WIP (work-in-progress) and you can get feedback along the way.

Ok, I'll get started then! Here are some hi-res photos of a Nautilus model:

nautilus02.jpg

nautilus03.jpg

nautilus04.jpg

nautilus05.jpg

The first part that I built was the wheelhouse. In reality it is a combination of panels at weird angles, so I tried to approximate this in lego. Like many other aspects of the build, it's something that's probably easier done in real life than in LDD, but it worked OK.

nautilus4.jpg

Here I have hidden one window to show the opening behind it.

nautilus5.jpg

I'll be back soon with some more photos...

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Ok, here's where I currently am on the build. This is just over 3000 pieces so far.

nautilus8.jpg

nautilus7.jpg

nautilus6.jpg

The large salon windows are just placeholders, I will put in TIE fighter windows, but they don't have them in LDD.

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Holey mother of pearl! Thats wicked awesome and I'm really looking forward to seeing this model in real life too. The Nautilus is one of my favorite ships. Keep up the great work! :thumbup:

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Looks like you're off to a great start here! :thumbup:

I really loved the adventures of captain Nemo as a child, the Nautilus has a nice mysterious feel too it.

I was just about to mention the TIE fighter windows, but you already thought of those.

I can't wait to see this in real bricks!

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I'm finished with the outer hull. Not very happy with the lower fin along the bottom tail, but I will fix a lot of issues in the physical build. This has been more of an experiment to see if it was doable before I spend $600 on brown, dark brown, dark red and reddish brown pieces. ;)

Here are some photos:

Image10.jpg

Image3-1.jpg

Image1.jpg

Image2.jpg

Image11.jpg

Image9.jpg

Here are a few waterline shots using LDD's crappy water background image. I also took out the skiff for a little demo.

Image6.jpg

Image7.jpg

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Thanks for the comments! I do plan to build it in real life, I have started my bricklink orders. It may be a while, due to the cost(I'd figure $500-600 at least), and me being broke :hmpf_bad: . It's going to be reddish brown primarily with accents of brown and dark brown that can't be helped due to color limitations(4x1 slopes only come in dark brown, not reddish).

I'm also planning on doing as many interiors as I can fit; this is something I'm really looking forward to. The salon with Nemo's organ, the divehouse, the wheelhouse interior with the spiral staircase down to the map room, Nemo's quarters, and the power room are all on my list. One interesting thing about fitting things in the Nautilus, is that there were too many sets in the movie than could fit in the sub, as it was designed. See here for a detailed explanation. So it will be a challenge no matter what...

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Looking very impressive. :thumbup:

I hope to see this in real bricks one day. Good looking saving up on the brown. :laugh:

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Does anyone know the part name/#'s of the TIE fighter windows? I can't find them on bricklink. I also can't find the round, half sphere wheelhouse windows.

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This is an amazing build, I always picture the Nautilus as being smaller, but how you did it just makes it even more impressive! Great work. :classic:

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Looking great so far. I love how you've shaped the whole thing, and can't wait to see in in physical bricks. :classic: The spiky edges look especially good.

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Thanks for the feedback, guys!

One possible snag.. this piece:

Reddish Brown Hinge Plate 1 x 2 Locking with 1 Finger On End

Appears to be quite rare, only appearing in 3 sets. There are only 9 of them total on BL.:sceptic: The counterpart with 2 fingers is common.

If anyone can help source any of these, please let me know. The whole build is centered around hinges, and the closest color, brown, is also scarce. Dark red is common, so maybe that will work... don't have any DR and RB to compare at the moment.

LDD manager is not working for me now, so I'm doing a manual parts count. Fun... :wub::cry_sad:

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This is excellent. I'd been toying with ideas and sketches for a minifig-scale Nautilus, but you're clearly well on the way to getting this thing together. Great work.

I'd thought of building half the ship, with one side showing a cutaway interior of the various rooms etc. Then if you wanted to show the exterior in full you could display it against a mirror. Might be a cheaper way of getting your creation built?

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This is excellent. I'd been toying with ideas and sketches for a minifig-scale Nautilus, but you're clearly well on the way to getting this thing together. Great work.

I'd thought of building half the ship, with one side showing a cutaway interior of the various rooms etc. Then if you wanted to show the exterior in full you could display it against a mirror. Might be a cheaper way of getting your creation built?

Thanks, TooMuchCaffeine! I would like to have some way to access the interiors, but I definitely want to build the entire ship. The problem is that the structure in many ways depends on the whole thing being together. I will try to figure something out, but at the same time, I may just have a fully realized salon, with maybe some lighting so you can look in through the salon windows. Not a lot of playability, but there's some charm in the "ship in the bottle" approach. This is how almost all Nautilus models are, as well... those that have interiors at all.

The LDD ship is just a proof of concept. The physical build will be much better, I'm sure, as I will lay out it's support structures on a physical, scaled Nautilus blueprint. I'm using a 1 stud= 1' scale, so the finished model should be around 170 studs or 53.5". I'm also working now on some techniques of offsetting hull sections in very, very slight increments... this may help me to make the hull more realistic.

I've started the first of many BL orders. In the meantime I'll be studying the Nautilus interiors and trying to figure out how to do them/scale them in lego. Nemo's pipe organ with all the crazy brass pipes will be an interesting challenge! :devil:

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Wow, that looks magnificent! :thumbup:

My only suggestion would be to add more colour variation and even more greebles/details, as I think the sides look a bit bare at the moment.

TIE fighter window: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=30366px2

Half sphere wheelhouse window: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=86500

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Wow, that looks magnificent! :thumbup:

My only suggestion would be to add more colour variation and even more greebles/details, as I think the sides look a bit bare at the moment.

TIE fighter window: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=30366px2

Half sphere wheelhouse window: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=86500

Thanks, and thanks for those part #'s! I agree about the greebling. Hard to add greebles to the sides when it's all slopes! I will try to add in some of the vents/ports/etc in the real build. I also added the two anchors in LDD but it's hard to see. I'm going to do it in mostly reddish brown because I think that will match the rusty color the ship has. But due to necessity there will be other shades thrown in, so it should be a motley mix by the time it's finished. The monochrome look of the LDD renders is definitely crappy!

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Now I want to see it made with real bricks! a very big and beautiful moc ! love it

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wondering if you have instructions for this, cause it looks like alot of the parts can be found from the SW Jawa vehicles which I had a couple of.

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Now I want to see it made with real bricks! a very big and beautiful moc ! love it

Thanks Guss!

wondering if you have instructions for this, cause it looks like alot of the parts can be found from the SW Jawa vehicles which I had a couple of.

I will try to post some instructions, but I would like to build it in real bricks first. I'm going to totally redo it when I build it for real, and make the framework straight from a scaled plan, so it should be more realistic. After that I will make a new LXF file and post it. I can say that it probably has a lot more parts than a few sandcrawlers. The exterior hull alone has almost 5K pieces.

I have been working on brainstorming ideas for possible interiors. Here is a rendering of the salon(someone else's work), showing the interior with the window separated and offset:

loge3.png

All the interior piping that surrounds the salon is a real challenge in lego. :wacko:

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