[MOC][WIP] Lockdown

[ddeklerk]

Hello everyone. Recently I have come out of my second "dark age", which lasted roughly two years. But now Lego has got me hooked again, and I am determined to finish the MOC that I have started those two years back. Which is a posable/articulated model of the Transformer Lockdown as seen in Age of Extinction. Say what you will about those movies, but the designs of (most of) the transformers just intrigue me.

If you are not familiar with the design of the transformer that I have set out to recreate, here is a pretty nice image of him.

I apologize upfront for the low quality photos that I took. I don't have a camera, so my smartphone is all I can take pictures with for now.

Keep in mind that currently this MOC is very much a work in progress. That means that much of it is bound to change at some point, and that it does not look very good yet. Especially since I have yet to add the actual armor plating. Most of my work has gone into making a robust and posable skeleton that does not collapse under its own weight.

The only real thing that has survived my break since I have started this MOC has been the head. And I have not modified it since I have started working on the MOC again. It has a pretty complex design, but it is surprisingly durable. Since it is nearly impossible to make a proper face at this scale, and it would look silly anyway, I opted to make the head with the visor.

As you can see I made heavy use of the Exo-Force arms in black. I had to order the visor piece off Bricklink, and thankfully it worked out. The piece on top is Onua's mask. The visor piece can easily be removed by taking the top off. Something I intend to use for his face-cannon.

Next challenge is the feet. Lockdown has two "toes" on both feet in the movies. And unfortunately they are not parallel. The slight angle between them is hard to do with Lego at this scale.

Here you can see two of the many designs that I tried. I liked the way the toes looked on the right one, but that one was too large.

The new design is more fragile in the toes, but flexes much less in the base of the foot, where most of the weight will rest on.

When looking at the various design pictures, screenshots, and concept art, I have found that the lower legs were slightly bent backward. Almost like the "chicken legs" you may see on some mechs, but much, much more subtle. And in the end I decided to include this feature just because it made the legs look less bland and awkward.

A side view of the lower leg and the knee.

Plus a front view of the leg. I used a heavy duty ratchet joint for the knee, plus two ball joints for extra strengt. For now it is enough to keep the skeleton up without problem, but I may have to change it to double ratchet joints at a later point in time.

The axles sticking out at the top of the photo are coming from two ball joints in the lower part of the upper leg. Those axles will attach to the upper legs. The ball joints make it possible to swivel the entire legs. If that point of articulation was not included, the legs would have looked very robotic and awkward.

As you can see I used the ball joints from the Witch Doctor set for the feet. I actually don't own that set, and it came out when I was in my break from Lego. I came across it through a YouTube review from JangBricks and the idea of those joints is just genius. You will see them in a few more places in this MOC.

Like right here, in the hip joints. Fans of Bionicle will probably also recognize the pistons on the legs that I "borrowed" from the Mata Nui set.

The crotch piece is probably the single most problematic part of the entire build so far. I wanted to incorporate a waist swivel, and this piece is what joins the legs to the body, so it had to be sturdy.

Previously I tried to make the axle the only connection with the torso, but that resulted in too much flex and/or backlash. So I started to look for alternatives on Bricklink, and found these turntables. They greatly increase the robustness and stability of the waist.

You may be able to see why this part is so problematic. I still use a ball joint (or two) here for the friction, but that and the turntable are right in between the two sets of ball sockets. I had to connect the axle holes on the sides of these sockets in some way, because having them only connected by the axle holes on the top was simply not enough. This is still not a pretty solution and I will probably change it a million times before I am satisfied, but at some point you just have to work with something that works so you can work on the rest.

The entirety of a leg assembled. Already quite tall.

Hands are another tricky thing to make with Lego. It is nearly impossible to make decent looking hands that also look like the thing you are trying to make. In some pictures Lockdown's fingers look quite long, so that is what I was going for.

Don't know if I want to keep the ring finger and pinky like this.

Again the Exo-Force arms come in quite handy.

Because I had already made the legs, the arms were quite ease to make. They use pretty much the exact same swivel joint technique.

Hopefully the two ball joints in the elbows will be enough for when I make the weapons.

The chest, that connects to the second turntable in the in the middle of the torso.

The articulated shoulders are inspired by Maxilos. There is barely enough room for the pistons. Unfortunately the pistons hardly add resistance when moving the shoulders up. I think it has something to do with the pivot point being almost inline with the attachment points of the pistons.

The whole torso plus upper legs assembled.

Now I've talked you through all the parts of the build that I have finished so far. And when all of them are assembled, you get a very large skeletal robot... thing...

Looks a little skinny, don't you think?

And lastly a comparison shot with the Arocs with fully extended crane to give you a sense of scale. BTW, I can highly recommend that set if you are into Technic. It is my first set I have bought since 8297-1: Off-Roader from 2008, and it was a blast to build it.

I hope you enjoy this WIP of mine, and I would love any feedback and criticism that you may have. I'm sorry if this post seems a little long, or if there are too many pictures included. Truth be told I intended to take a few more photos demonstrating the articulation and such.

I certainly did not expect to be spending this much time writing a post about a Lego build on this forum, but there you have it. If there is any way I can format this better, please let me know. I am not at all familiar with the language used on fora like these. I am much more at home with Markdown, personally .

Edited July 4, 2016 by ddeklerk

[Hisstori]

Love the progress so far! From what I can see from the source, I feel like the the chest could be lengthened by a a stud or too. Since this is obviously the skeleton of the figure, I'm sure the the trunk of the body is gonna be thickened up via armor.

[ddeklerk]

While building, I keep an image for reference open in Photoshop with a grid overlay that roughly indicates the dimensions in studs. So one square in the grid would equal one stud. I got to the scale that I work with right now by going off the size of the head, which I built first. The head is roughly 7 studs from top to bottom.

Even while I tried to stay true to the source material when it comes to dimensions and proportions, somehow something still fells off. But I guess it will look much better with actual plating over the skeletal structure that is there now.

[BrickJagger]

Looks good so far. I'm interested to see what the final model will look like.

[Leewan]

I have a similar (but much smaller) head sitting on my desk since last summer haha.

It's interesting to see a WIP topic, people rather tend to post finished MOCs. It looks good so far, although the lower arms and the upper torso seem a bit "weak" compared to the legs.

You could use H-beams to strengthen the upper torso. Also, you may need to rebuild some parts of the MOCs in order to attach the "armor".

Good luck with the rest of the MOC !

[ddeklerk]

The lower arms are actually really sturdy. And I don't expect to put a lot of strain on those, but who knows. The upper torso is really flimsy as it is. It was the last part that I have built, so I have not had much time to improve it. I'm using one of these in the torso, plus one bionicle limb piece, so the upper torso itself is robust enough as it is. The problem areas lie in the swivel connection with the lower torso and the shoulder joints.

Unfortunately I don't have any of those H-beams that are not in the Arocs at this moment. And the Arocs is just a week or two old, so I am not ready yet to disassemble it. I may just order a bunch off Bricklink though.

And I am fully expecting to have to rebuild parts in order to fit the plates on it. Especially the limbs. But I have gotten quite used to redoing parts of the MOC by now. It has been an iterative process to find out what works best.

[Kalhiki]

This looks promising. Very cool so far!

Just make sure to give him his sexy butt ;)

[ddeklerk]

I have been making some guides in Photoshop when it comes to dimensions and proportions, and I am contemplating making it all a little larger. The current head design, although good enough, does not really look like the "real" thing as much as I would like it to. The feet are another thing that I am not very satisfied with. And maybe it will be a little easier to better recreate those things at a larger scale. Or perhaps I should just stick with this scale and see it through to the end? I don't really know. Would love some opinions.

In the meantime I have continued my work on the torso. I have completely redone the upper part of it, and made some minor adjustments to the lower torso as well. The shoulder joints now use the same 4 ball technique that I used throughout the rest of the MOC. And I attached two pistons to it from the lower torso. This makes the torso swivel much stiffer, which is good.

Sorry for the bad lighting. The sun is already almost down, and I don't have proper lights suited for photography. Or a decent camera for that matter

[BarfolomewMog]

Thanks for the WIP pics, and your explanations of the points of articulation.

I'm working on a project of similar scale and have had many redesigns due to joints being load bearing but don't want to go down the path of geared joints.

Since reading your post, I have checked out the Witch Doctor instructions and that is one great tip!

Keep up the go work

[ddeklerk]

Sorry that I don't have any new updates right now. Have been pretty busy with other things. Got the Technic Porsche and did some modding on that (and still want to mod it some more...), and I'm in the middle of renovating (is that even the right word?) my new room - which is currently completely empty.

I'm working on a project of similar scale and have had many redesigns due to joints being load bearing but don't want to go down the path of geared joints.

Funny that you say that. I have been considering bringing up the scale and using geared joints. Although I have not been working on this MOC a whole lot lately. I am not really sure how to proceed with it to be honest.

The main things that I don't like about the current scale is that I cannot recreate certain aspects the way I want them to. Like the feet that I have shown. It is also pretty tough to make a structurally sound skeleton without using a bunch of pieces to strengthen it, which will bring up the weight. And I don't like how I have used the piston pieces. I get the idea that they will be a big obstacle when adding the armour if I leave them like this.

If I do decide to make it bigger, I think redesigning the head will be a pretty tough challenge.

Right now I am contemplating whether I want to place a few orders on Bricklink to get some gears and turntables to try out the joints used in the Teknomeka mech. And I am also not sure how I want to make the armour. If I want to stick with Bionicle/Hero Factory armour pieces and Technic paneling, or go for a brick built exterior, something like this.

If anyone has any feedback/suggestions/whatever, I sure could use them.

[Eyckzim]

Really love the detail you've put into getting the articulation right on this figure! Too often I see complex designs that sacrifice stability for aesthetics, so it is refreshing to see you doing the opposite.

As for the question of scale, I'd say you've got something really good in the works here and I don't know that it'd be worth the time to redesign the entirety of theMOC at this point. The proportions look great, and it appears as though your techniques to keep the joints stiff will work at this scale. I can certainly tell what character it's supposed to be, even without armor and detailing on it.

Now I did have an idea for the feet though. Looking at the source material, Lockdown's toes are pretty skinny. Could you possibly put the exo-force arms to good use as toes too? With some armor detailing above them (maybe the smallest basic HF armor?), I think it'd achieve the look of the source material. Just be sure the base of the foot bears all the weight, since you certainly won't be able to trust the stability of a bar connection in the toes to do much.

Overall, an extremely impressive MOC, especially from someone who's been taking a break from LEGO recently. I look forward to seeing more progress in the future!

[ddeklerk]

Not a lot of progress lately. I am still in the middle of renovating my new room, although progress on that has picked up significantly this last week. I don't really have much motivation to work on anything lately. Hopefully a new workplace will change that. Larger desk, actual sorting drawers... should be much better.

In the mean time I had my Bricklink orders come in to try some geared joints. The discontinued worm gears that have the axle holes on either end have much less backlash than the normal worm gear, so perhaps I will use those. I still am thinking about redesigning the whole thing in a larger scale. And geared joints will hopefully help with stability.

To not loose the work I have done so far I have recreated my MOC in LDD. Everything is in, apart from the head and the hands. I could not find the pneumatic T-piece that I used on those parts in LDD. And it was a royal pain to get the piston assemblies lined up.

You can download the LXF file here.

[SuperMegaMech]

May I know what  is the ID number for the pistons?

[Lego David]

22 hours ago, SuperMegaMech said:

May I know what  is the ID number for the pistons?

Here is a link to its Bricklink page:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=53586&idColor=66#T=S&C=66&O={"color":66,"iconly":0}

[SuperMegaMech]

5 hours ago, Lego David said:

Here is a link to its Bricklink page:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=53586&idColor=66#T=S&C=66&O={"color":66,"iconly":0}

 I know the number for  the ,part you sent me what about the axle with Ball joint  on the end.

[Kalhiki]

3 hours ago, SuperMegaMech said:

 I know the number for  the ,part you sent me what about the axle with Ball joint  on the end.

It's two pieces. Specifically, an axle with stop (55013) and a ball joint (53585). Here're the Bricklink pages for them, respectively:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=55013&idColor=11#T=C&C=11

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=53585&idColor=11#T=C&C=11

[SuperMegaMech]

On 6/14/2021 at 11:30 PM, Kalhiki said:

It's two pieces. Specifically, an axle with stop (55013) and a ball joint (53585). Here're the Bricklink pages for them, respectively:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=55013&idColor=11#T=C&C=11

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=53585&idColor=11#T=C&C=11

 thanks