[MOC] Three Modulars

[zux]

What happens when you agree with your LUG members to build three modulars each to start a City layout? You build them!

Disclaimer. I'm a Technic guy, so building with normal bricks was a funny and interesting (and expensive!) challenge I've accepted. The idea was to have three modulars built on 32*32 baseplates with at least three floors each. I've immediately came up with ideas for first two buildings. But the story comes in three stages.

Modular #1 - Office (aka LitLUG Headquarters)

The very first modular had to be an office-like building. It ended up looking like standard squarish building you can imagine an office could be. The nice thing is that it can be easily expanded in height, which I'd love to do in the future. The back side is plain and has nothing interesting to see.

It was the time I found out challenge I've accepted isn't going to be cheap simply because I don't have many bricks. Despite building being simple there final cost for the bricks was already higher than I assumed it would cost.

Modular #2 - A replica of a building in Vilnius

This was easy to decide - I really wanted to build this house in LEGO for a long time and I didn't have tight budget on this to implement a dream. This house is located in Vilnius (Lithuania) and has been built over a hundred years ago - in 1912. The district it is located is well known for more fancy houses built in that time.

Luckily building has decent proportions and fits into 32 studs nicely. There were quite a lot of challenges for me (as a Technic guy) - facade isn't flat, 3 stud wide windows, some other odd features and of course the roof. Oh and the wall covering the roof - it turns out building sideways was the only way I could achieve the right angle without major holes.

Since I don't have right bricks I've built the model using LDCad. This helped me not to overspent money on unnecessary bricks, just build and buy required parts. I know there is no collision detections in LDCad, but I'm pretty used to understanding the parts, so there were no issues building the models with real brick later on. 

While the building looks to be fineshed at this moment there things I'm not totally happy with so it must be revised some time in the future.

Modular #3 - The ugly duckling

I've already blew my budget on just two of three buildings, so I had to improvise here. This model wen't through numerous revisions - it went from houses you can find in Amsterdam (pretty, but expensive) to ugly-ugly ones (and still not budget friendly, doh!). I've made an extensive research on official Modulars and other people MOC's looking for ideas. And this is what I ended up with. Not the prettiest, but certainly not that ugly. I also got lucky to acquire LEGO store 10145 set, which became a part of my modular.

Fun fact - this modular actually contain a duckling! You can clearly see one composed of white and dark orange bricks with that tiny balcony. It wasn't discovered until I made this picture:

In conslusion, I'm happy I took part in building these three modulars. This was fun experience. Coming from Technic it was much easier to build with bricks in general - you just stack them from bottom to the top, but it gets tough when it comes to aesthetics. Unlike in Technic MOCs you must micromanage each aspect of the building making sure it looks the way you need it to look. The lack of some odd key parts didn't help either and I had to check many things with real bricks first. Fortunately new 2x2 macaroni tiles got released in time - modular would look slightly different without them!

Behind fun part of this challenge comes the nasty one - expenses. Initially I had roughly estimated (without pre-calculations) how much this would cost me. It happens, I've based my calculations (roughly) keeping in mind the facade and roof only, but you still have two-three more walls to build! 1 x 6 x 5 panels turned out to be the most cost effective solution. This was, partially, the reason why my modulars are just modular-like - you cannot disassemble them floor-by-floor. Due to reasons above interior wasn't designed and built at this stage as well.

Hope you like it. Oh and I'd be happy you would share your thoughts how can these models could be improved.

More pictures in my Flickr album.

Edited April 16, 2017 by zux

[peedeejay]

Good looking set of modulars.

The first one works very well with the simplistic and bland design. The second is a nice rendition of the original. I would try some brick profile bricks on that one to see how it works (maybe difficult due to the gable). I like the third one the most due to it's colorful and variety.

[kreimkoek]

A good recreation of the real red building you posted, I like that one the most. My only suggestion would be to change the roof colour to reddish brown.

[zux]

1 hour ago, peedeejay said:

Good looking set of modulars.

The first one works very well with the simplistic and bland design. The second is a nice rendition of the original. I would try some brick profile bricks on that one to see how it works (maybe difficult due to the gable). I like the third one the most due to it's colorful and variety.

Thanks! I've considered building second modular with profile bricks at the very beginning. Found it wouldn't look very well as there are lot of odd distances. My idea is to rebuild it later with plates (once my LUGBULK arrive later this year). 

Funny thing about medium blue house in last model - it looks like this because I didn't have required number of brick in medium blue, thus had to improvise. I love and hate it 

 

1 minute ago, kreimkoek said:

A good recreation of the real red building you posted, I like that one the most. My only suggestion would be to change the roof colour to reddish brown.

Good point regarding a roof. I don't remember why I made decision keeping it DBG.

Edited April 16, 2017 by zux