LEGOtastic

Help me build a double sized Yoda!

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Hi All

Long time reader, but first time topic starter :-) Thank you for a great forum.

I need some help getting started - I love to build, but lack talent in designing the models.

How did you begin when you first started building your own models using LDD?

 

I have decided to create a double sized Lego Yoda using LDD. My initial plan was to hire someone on this forum to help me, but I understand this is not allowed :-)

  • I want Yoda to be roughly 130cm from head to toe.
  • He has to be able to stand on his own unassisted
  • Has to be in one of the poses linked below:

yoda.jpg

AttackoftheClones_2194942100_CF422369WDS

 

Do you guys have any ideas?

Cheers

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Well welcome and wow, thats a big project! With this id be measuring bricks and roughly getting a sense of size of the footprint in LDD, working from the bottom upwards would be my opinion!

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That's... ambitious! It's going to be expensive building in real bricks...

I never go for models that big myself, but I would also suggest starting from the base up as @All in the Reflexes said.  Maybe try and find an actual 3D model of Yoda, you could then slice into layers and draw them on graph paper so you have an outline for each layer of bricks.  Don't forget to build a good support structure - I've seen large builds use a kind of mesh of 2x10 beams to form 8x8 hollow squares, making it rigid and keeping the total brick content (and weight!) low.

Choose your shade of green for Yoda's head carefully - olive green is a good match, but not too many bricks around.  Sand green was used on the UCS Yoda set, but it is relatively rare.

Another possible method is to work at it like a sculptor.  Build yourself a giant block of 1x1 bricks, then delete bricks as appropriate to reveal your sculpture of Yoda.

Whatever you do, best of luck and please share work in progress pictures!

 

Edit: Actually, just did a search - there is dedicated software for this! Never even heard of these before, and I'm not going to try any of them out myself, but some of these programs might be worth looking at:

https://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/3074/is-there-a-way-to-convert-a-3d-model-into-a-lego-sculpture

Edited by NathanR

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Great inputs guys- I will consider a 3D model and then do the conversion..... Looks pretty complex though!

I do like challanges, will keep you updated on my progress :-)

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I would say use DUPLO. :wink: 

OK, on a more serious note the DUPLO could be used for a internal structure. Which would help keep it lighter. And help get to the size you would want, while keeping the brick count down. 

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You'd never do a double sized one. Not unless you've got very deep pockets.

Not only is sand green very expensive, for instance a 2x2 corner plate is around £1 each and the standard 7194 model needs 72 alone. There probably isn't a big enough supply for it outside of that guy in Portugal who charges €3 a plate.

But the real issue is Yoda requires the colour dark orange for his inner robe the 2x4 bricks haven't been made since 2004 and I only needed 15 of them and couldn't get them for under £3 each. It'll be a huge purchase.  The tan bricks are stupidly cheap. I got all 600 of them for under £40. Reddish brown isn't expensive either.

I have only just finished my ucs copy and can tell you from experience it will be a headache to source the parts let alone swallow the cost of it. 

With double sized one you could probably not have to buy plates and use bricks instead but it depends on the design. If you go on the lego ldd portal there is an ldd of the ucs yoda on there to download. Will be a good starting point 

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Actually, a "double sized" Yoda (130cm tall) might make things a lot easier, as everything will be bricks rather than rare plates. Lego are having a sand green renaissance, for instance look at sets 70612 and 21136. A lot of bricks (2x4, 2x2, 1x4, 1x6) have recently appeared in sand green, and in the last year or so some of the rarer plates have come back into production as well.  

You can buy parts direct from Lego, and for some sand green bricks it can be a lot cheaper than bricklink.  For example, plate 2x2 in sand green is something like 0.10 EUR from lego or 0.25 EUR from bricklink.

An alternative skin colour might be Olive Green, though this has a more limited parts palette.

 

6 minutes ago, therealharbinger said:

Not only is sand green very expensive, for instance a 2x2 corner plate is around £1 each and the standard 7194 model needs 72 alone. There probably isn't a big enough supply for it outside of that guy in Portugal who charges €3 a plate.

Ok, this is off-topic, but I'm also working on getting the parts for 7194 UCS Yoda.   However, I'm trying to do a redesign using the current sand green parts selection.  So far I have built the head and gone from 101 of the 2x2 corner plates and 1x1 plates (the rarest pieces as far as I know) to just 33 pieces, and am hopeful I can get it down further!

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8 minutes ago, NathanR said:

Actually, a "double sized" Yoda (130cm tall) might make things a lot easier, as everything will be bricks rather than rare plates. Lego are having a sand green renaissance, for instance look at sets 70612 and 21136. A lot of bricks (2x4, 2x2, 1x4, 1x6) have recently appeared in sand green, and in the last year or so some of the rarer plates have come back into production as well.  

You can buy parts direct from Lego, and for some sand green bricks it can be a lot cheaper than bricklink.  For example, plate 2x2 in sand green is something like 0.10 EUR from lego or 0.25 EUR from bricklink.

An alternative skin colour might be Olive Green, though this has a more limited parts palette.

 

Ok, this is off-topic, but I'm also working on getting the parts for 7194 UCS Yoda.   However, I'm trying to do a redesign using the current sand green parts selection.  So far I have built the head and gone from 101 of the 2x2 corner plates and 1x1 plates (the rarest pieces as far as I know) to just 33 pieces, and am hopeful I can get it down further!

the 1x1s for me were OK, 8EUR for the lot. I'd like to see how you've reworked it. the corner plates are quite hard to find in a relatively big supply, all of mine came in batches like 5 here and 7 there. Yes on Lego you can get some of the common sand green parts for filthy cheap, mainly the ones that come from Slave1.

Something else that is possible is not to not use the 2x4 bricks and plates and the larger 2x8s, 6s etc and make them up from the smaller cheaper parts, I did that for some of the Dark orange bricks, you cannot tell the difference, it may be a little bit weaker but it's not like Yoda gets Swooshed every now and then. But I'd love to see how you've reworked it. If it looks the same you are certainly onto something with it.

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I have not put any consideration into the diffrent colour prices.... I will obv. not build this Yoda if it is gonna cost me a fortune! Would love to do this project so will start designing and then worry about costs later.

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Ok, this is quite fascinating stuff reading how costly such a big project could become. 130 cm is really sizeable and would throw the amount of bricks into the tenthousands... have you considered building a darkside yoda? Red and black are much cheaper :wink:

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1 hour ago, Littleworlds said:

Ok, this is quite fascinating stuff reading how costly such a big project could become. 130 cm

Well, let's try and work it out :classic:

Assuming a human being has a volume of 80,000cm^3, a 2x4 Lego brick has a volume of 1.6*3.2*0.96 = 4.6cm^3, therefore a life size statue of a human should contain around 17,400 bricks.  

Yoda would be 130cm tall, or 70% the height of a human.  However, volume is cubic - all three dimensions (height, width and depth) reduce by 70% so total volume is down to 0.7*0.7*0.7 = 0.34, or 34% that of a human.  So the number of 2x4 bricks reduces to 17400*0.34=6000 bricks.  

Tan 2x4 bricks are on sale in bulk on brick link for about 0.14EUR each, therefore I estimate total coast of 6000 bricks would be about 850 EUR.  So expensive... but keep in mind this is an upper limit, and that if you build a large hollow structure then the number of bricks might drop significantly.

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49 minutes ago, NathanR said:

Well, let's try and work it out :classic:

Assuming a human being has a volume of 80,000cm^3, a 2x4 Lego brick has a volume of 1.6*3.2*0.96 = 4.6cm^3, therefore a life size statue of a human should contain around 17,400 bricks.  

Yoda would be 130cm tall, or 70% the height of a human.  However, volume is cubic - all three dimensions (height, width and depth) reduce by 70% so total volume is down to 0.7*0.7*0.7 = 0.34, or 34% that of a human.  So the number of 2x4 bricks reduces to 17400*0.34=6000 bricks.  

Tan 2x4 bricks are on sale in bulk on brick link for about 0.14EUR each, therefore I estimate total coast of 6000 bricks would be about 850 EUR.  So expensive... but keep in mind this is an upper limit, and that if you build a large hollow structure then the number of bricks might drop significantly.

Very good points! :classic:

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1 hour ago, LEGOtastic said:

Is this the expensive "Sand green" colour?

 

Yep, that's sand green.  Quick glance suggests 2x4, 2x2 and 2x3 bricks making up the skin.  Where is this statue?  Is this a LegoLand model?

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