Homemade Road Plates

[koalayummies]

That is excellent, the cobblestones compliment the smaller Creator buildings and flower cart and make it feel like a lively side street somewhere in Europe.

[ColletArrow]

Excellent work; the streets look beautiful. Perhaps add a few leafy trees or vine canopies, and it will be perfect.  I bet those minifigs are having a fun time cycling over those cobbles! 

[danimarroquin]

great ideas to come from with this road plates

[Bricked1980]

@Jasper Joppe Geers @LegoModularFan @alsielou @koalayummies @ColletArrow @danimarroquin Thanks for the kind comments guys. 

On 16/03/2018 at 6:22 PM, LegoModularFan said:

I’m thinking about making similar brick-built roads in my future city

I guess you would need a heck of a lot of bricks but I reckon I brick built road would work very well in this style using different shapes and sizes of tiles laid out in a cobbled or brick pattern.

On 16/03/2018 at 7:48 PM, koalayummies said:

That is excellent, the cobblestones compliment the smaller Creator buildings and flower cart and make it feel like a lively side street somewhere in Europe.

Thanks, that's the effect I was going for with these ones. I wanted it to look like those narrow closed in streets you get in Europe where maybe only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed to go.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Bricked1980

[Littleworlds]

Excellent ideas and designs! They add quite some realism and authenticity and are definitely food for thought. 

[bmassaer]

These are wonderful!

[Bricked1980]

16 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

Excellent ideas and designs! They add quite some realism and authenticity and are definitely food for thought. 

 

2 hours ago, bmassaer said:

These are wonderful!

Thank you!  Glad you like them. Hopefully I'll be doing some more of these soon so keep checking back.

[dylanfarrow]

Love the cobblestones, great work!

[Bricked1980]

21 hours ago, dylanfarrow said:

Love the cobblestones, great work!

Thank you!    Can I just say your Blue Tornado engine looks awesome by the way. 

[Bricked1980]

Here are a few more pictures featuring my printed road designs. These ones were created to showcase my first attempt at designing a MOC modular building.

 

[Froh987]

Your road plates are absolutely amazing!  I have been lurking on this thread for awhile and was hoping to see some more of your awesome work. 

I read that you printed these from your office, and since 400 gsm is a relatively uncommonly thick card stock to print from a color laser printer, could you please disclose what brand and model your work printer is? Is it something like an Intec CP2020?  I would love to be able to design and print something similar to what you have created, but I am wondering just how feasible that would be.  Also, along those lines, is this printer a normal CKYM laser printer...as the white lines look almost as if they have been printed as well...which would of course require a completely different kind of laser printer.

[Romanos]

Roads are great ;)  Only my son notices the sky and buildings behind printed ? wher did you get pic to print sky and town ? and if you can send link ;)

[LegoModularFan]

Looks amazing with your Convenience Store! Your photo editing is always top notch! Any new designs coming? 

[Bricked1980]

20 hours ago, Froh987 said:

Your road plates are absolutely amazing!  I have been lurking on this thread for awhile and was hoping to see some more of your awesome work. 

I read that you printed these from your office, and since 400 gsm is a relatively uncommonly thick card stock to print from a color laser printer, could you please disclose what brand and model your work printer is? Is it something like an Intec CP2020?  I would love to be able to design and print something similar to what you have created, but I am wondering just how feasible that would be.  Also, along those lines, is this printer a normal CKYM laser printer...as the white lines look almost as if they have been printed as well...which would of course require a completely different kind of laser printer.

Thank you very much and welcome to Eurobricks. 

The printer I use is a Konica Minolta Bizhub Pro C5500. Officially it is only supposed to take card up to 300gsm but I have managed to get small amounts of 400gsm through it without any issues. Some of my more recent roads were printed o 300gsm though which still works just as well.

It is standard CMYK printer and all the designs are printed on to white card. When I designed them I gave the white road markings a slight transparency effect so that some of the road texture could be seen through them. That's probably why it looks as if the white lines are printed over the top of the roads, but actually everything is just printed in CMYK.

19 hours ago, Romanos said:

Roads are great ;)  Only my son notices the sky and buildings behind printed ? wher did you get pic to print sky and town ? and if you can send link ;)

Many thanks.  I created the background image myself using photoshop and the official box art for the Modular buildings. I've included the picture below.

Spoiler

 

18 hours ago, LegoModularFan said:

Looks amazing with your Convenience Store! Your photo editing is always top notch! Any new designs coming? 

Thanks a lot and glad you like my Convenience Store MOC  Yes there will definitely be more road designs coming. Watch this space! 

[bombcar]

Absolutely phenomenal!

[kasmca]

Wonderful designs.  They remind me of the playmat set recently released by Lego: https://brickset.com/sets/853656-1/Play-mat  If you have problems with them sliding, perhaps you could use a similar mechanism of locking the tiles together via punching cut outs and using bricks to lock them in place.

 

[Bricked1980]

On 17/04/2018 at 12:24 PM, bombcar said:

Absolutely phenomenal!

Thanks very much. 

On 17/04/2018 at 9:24 PM, kasmca said:

Wonderful designs.  They remind me of the playmat set recently released by Lego: https://brickset.com/sets/853656-1/Play-mat  If you have problems with them sliding, perhaps you could use a similar mechanism of locking the tiles together via punching cut outs and using bricks to lock them in place.

Thanks.  

The simplest way I've found to stop them sliding about is just to use a small amount of masking tape on the back of each one.

But yes, that's a good idea to cut holes in the corners and hold them together with bricks like in that official playmat set.

Actually looking at that picture you posted has given me an idea. On the city playmat set, the roads have got grass and bushes at the sides of the road. I might have a go at setting up some new designs with similar features.

[RuffDraft]

Do you do PhotoShop tutorials online?! 

I love your work! The road plates are insane, but your PhotoShop work is even better!!! 

This thread kept me entertained whilst waiting for the new modular leak!!! :O) 

[Roadmonkeytj]

I absolutely love the cobblestone...  Would you be willing to share the image files for the cobble via pm (or here if inclined)

[Bricked1980]

3 hours ago, RuffDraft said:

Do you do PhotoShop tutorials online?! 

I love your work! The road plates are insane, but your PhotoShop work is even better!!! 

This thread kept me entertained whilst waiting for the new modular leak!!! :O) 

Glad you like the roads and my photoshop work. I've work with photoshop every day for the past 19 years as part of my day job, so have learnt a few tricks during that time. 

17 minutes ago, Roadmonkeytj said:

I absolutely love the cobblestone...  Would you be willing to share the image files for the cobble via pm (or here if inclined)

I designed all these roads at work several months ago using software called CorelDraw. Since then we have stopped using Corel and upgraded to different software. Unfortunately as a result I can't open the files anymore but when i get round to it I'm hoping to re-create some new and better road designs using the new software.

It's a different story with the cobblestones though. They were by far the simplest ones to create. I just used a repeating cobble pattern I found on Google, scaled it to roughly the right size and then printed them off on square sheets the same size as a standard road plate. The only thing I added was a thin strip of pavement running along the edges but I still think they'd look good without that.

Here is the cobble pattern I used.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Bricked1980

[Roadmonkeytj]

3 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

Here is the cobble pattern I used.

  Hide contents

 

I thank you greatly sir!  I hate when they make software changes then decide you don't need the program anymore.   You might check with IT .. I scored a copy of AutoCAD back in the day when they updated to the newer version this way. 

[benvelor]

sorry for necroposting

Just one question: what material do you use, to print the road?

It's amazing

thx!