SpacySmoke

V-LF-15B Updated May 31, 2012! Jump to the latest version! Support on Cuusoo LEGO Ideas! Original post below: Yes, it's another ambulance to add to the numerous ambulance MOCs on this forum. I chose to do this because ambulances are one of those vehicles that every city ought to have, but the official Lego versions don't look like the typical American ambulance. I've also seen some great ambulance MOCs here, but they weren't quite what I had in mind in terms of scale and proportions so hopefully mine will bring something new to the table. The first thing I started on was the 6-wide cab. I specifically wanted to be able to fit 2 minifigs in there. That wasn't too hard, but I did have to remove the seats in order for the roof of the cab to fit properly, otherwise I would have had to raise the roof by one plate in height. At first I used a 6x5x1 wall panel as the back of the cab to allow space for the seat backs. Once the seats were gone, I decided to use regular bricks. This allowed there to be an opening to the patient section in the back like on a real ambulance. The outside of a real ambulance has a lot of storage areas that can open up. For my model, I decided to focus more on the inside detail, which meant that outside storage had to be sacrificed since there isn't enough space. I do have a container on the driver side, but that's it. I added some 1x1 light bley tiles to simulate the door handles of some of the storage compartments. The roofs of the cab and patient section can be removed for easy access. This picture also shows the brick-built doors in their open position. This was the first time building my own brick-built doors and quickly found that simply using hinges wouldn't work due to the thickness of the bricks. At one point, I experimented with a snot door that had cheese wedges on the side to allow it to open and close. It didn't look good, so I scrapped the use of hinged plates/bricks altogether. A shot of part of the interior. There is a seat for an EMT to help with the patient and lots of storage for medical supplies. The other side (not shown) has an area where another minifig can sit, though the stretcher would get in the way of the fig's feet. There's also an oxygen tank and fire extinguisher that you can't see in this photo. The ice skater has had a bad fall! Her fans are quite worried. Here you see a bit of how the doors are made. There is a bar on the door attached to two robot arms. The other end of the arms are attached to a bar on the interior of the patient section. This allows the brick-built doors to be pulled straight out and then swiveled to the side. It's hard to see, but I also used 1x1 corner panels to allow a bit more clearance for the robot arms. I feel like I've seen this door technique before, but I'm not sure where I've seen it. The side door opens just like the rear doors. I'll probably use a similar design if I decide to make a bus. Comparison with official Lego vehicles. The bus from City Corner is looking a bit small now. Well, I guess that's it for this MOC! Thanks for looking! My next MOC might be an 8-wide bus, or maybe a regular car of some sort. This MOC can also be viewed at: Flickr MOC Pages LDD file: Spacysmoke's American Ambulance (ver.B)

If you like this, please support it at Lego Ideas: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/96810 Classic Sega Arcade Machines made with Lego bricks! Perfect for any Lego City arcade! As an old school Sega fan, these games have the quintessential "Sega" feel. Simple yet challenging gameplay, colorful and interesting graphics, and most of all, they're just fun to play. I originally wanted to create 5 cabinets: these three plus Hang On and After Burner. However, I've been so busy with family, work, and other hobbies that it took nearly half a year of on and off building just to finish these. I figured it's about time to show them, yes? Out Run Sega's Out Run came out in 1986 and has been a long time favorite of mine. The game is iconic to me on many levels; the music, the graphics, the gameplay, the Sega-ness of it all...it's just perfect. This was the first arcade cab I worked on for this series and I worked on it on and off for months trying different ways to build it. It's still not very close to the real thing, and I'm still thinking of ways to improve it. I'm talking mostly about the front section; the real thing is much slimmer than this. The stickers were custom made in Photoshop and Illustrator. The Out Run logo was found off the web and the Sega logo was created using a font by HariHariSonic. BTW, all of the stickers in these photos are virtual; they were applied in Photoshop. Some Out Run cabinets have this little step on the side. I decided to include it since you can easily remove it if you don't like it. The screen for this cab is on a 1x2x1 brick. Not ideal, but there wasn't enough room to put a 2x2 tile in there and still have all the current dimensions. This is how a minifig looks playing the game. I kept going back and forth on whether the coinop device should be 2 studs wide vs. 1 stud wide. Neither is accurate as it should be somewhere between that. Eventually I decided on 2 studs wide because I felt the coinop panel on the sticker should be larger than 1 stud wide. This photo also shows how the cabinet can rotate left and right to approximate the movement of the real arcade machine. Thunder Blade Thunder Blade was the second unit I worked on. I thought it would be easy because it's such a simple design compared to the others. The problem was scale. If I added in all the details of the real unit, it became too tall. So I had to remove some things to shorten it down to something closer to minifigure scale. The helicopter skids took a while to get right and I finally hit on this solution after other tries didn't work. Other methods were too big, too fragile, or too small. This one was the closest to the scale I wanted to achieve. The model is pretty stable. The chair is probably the most fragile thing though. It's mounted on half of a 2x2 turntable plate. It could be stronger with an extra plate in there, but I felt that it added too much height to an already tall model. Like the Space Harrier cab, the screen here is on a 2x2 tile, so it can be switched out with other screenshots. Here's how the build looks with a minifigure. Obviously, the foot rest is kind of useless, but it's there for accuracy. You can also see how the chair swivels like the real thing. Space Harrier This was the third cabinet I worked on. I nearly gave up on it after a couple of failed attempts to build the front and seat sections. I took a break from it and tried to build Hang On, but that didn't go well either, so I came back to this. I decided to start from scratch and start with the basics: just study the dimensions and details of the real thing for a long time. I figured the front section would be 4 studs wide, the middle would be 3 (with SNOT sides) and the seat would be 2 (also with SNOTted details). This led to the use of some technic beams to add support to the weak 3-stud to 2-stud connection. Once I built the floor of the actual cabinet (the red and white section) and the seat, everything came together really quickly. In fact, I think I took less time on this than the other two. The front section was a bit of a pain though. There aren't any Lego bow pieces that have the same curvature of the arcade cabinet, and I didn't want to use hinges because I wanted smooth sides to make stickering easier, so this brick-built approximation is what I came up with. Connecting the front section to the floor was another issue I had to deal with. At first I simply used hinged bricks to attach it, but because it's a 4-studs wide piece connecting to a 3-stud wide floor, I could only connect the two section by just 2 studs (offset). This was too weak for me even though it looked fine. So I redesigned it to use a combination of technic pieces and clicky joints. This worked really well because it's connected to the technic substructure and it's really strong. The only con is the clicky joint is visible at the back of the cabinet. I'm fine with the tradeoff. Stickering was hell for this one. First, finding good source material was difficult. There really aren't many good shots of the Space Harrier cabinet artwork out there on the interwebs. I even searched in multiple languages. Eventually I found some photos that I had to manipulate in photoshop to create the stickers of the dragon and the back "jets". All the rest I created in Illustrator and had to customize to the dimensions of the Lego pieces. The fonts come from HariHariSonic. Sadly, his site is 404 right now. Here, you can see how a minifigure will look at the controls. A minifigure can't actually grab the control stick; that's just a camera perspective trick. This picture also shows how the cabinet can turn and tilt. It's mounted to the floor using the new ball joints. Minifigures The proposed minifigures for this project. I had originally wanted Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue to be included, but I felt that was just another license they would have to get if this project passes review. Yu Suzuki is the Sega game designer responsible for Space Harrier, Out Run, Hang On, After Burner, Virtua Fighters, Shenmue and many other iconic Sega games. That's it for now! I want to continue with the series and may try to tackle After Burner next. Thanks for looking!

Out Run cabinet updated! There were some things that really bothered me about the original build, and when something bothers me, I can't let it go until it's corrected. Here's what I wanted to accomplish: Use a 2x2 tile for the screen (the old build used a 1x2 brick) Get rid of the gaps below the top section Make the front section sleeker and more accurate to the real thing. So I started with redesigning the screen area, because I felt it was important to use a tile for the screen which would allow it to be swapped out with different screenshots a lot easier (you could have different screenshots printed on different tiles). I also used the build technique I used on my Space Harrier cabinet to get rid of the gap below the marquee/top section. This all changed the internal structure quite a bit and I basically had to redesign it almost completely. It was all for the better though; the redesign allowed for more space, which let me add some internal detail. So now you can open up the back of the cab and see the pcb and other components. I was even able to make the screen look kind of like a CRT! See this cross section to view the build and details (some parts removed to show detail): I still want to redesign the base, because I think it should be narrower, so maybe that will be what I'll tackle next. By the way, this project only needs about 1,600 more supporters to get to the 10,000 mark! I'd appreciate the support if you like this! https://ideas.lego.com/projects/96810 Thanks! Comments and questions welcome!

Thanks for the compliments guys! I'm glad I'm not the only one with fond memories of playing these games. When I was a kid, one of my favorite arcades was actually at Disneyland -- the Tomorrowland arcade had all of the deluxe cabinets and I remember playing the massive Galaxy Force II deluxe cabinet there...that thing was so impressive that when I started playing, a crowd gathered around to watch. Living in California at the time, we would go to Disneyland at least once a year, and we'd always play in the arcade after riding Space Mountain or watching Captain EO. That reminds me, I totally want to make a Galaxy Force II cabinet as well.

Discussion topic for my Action Themes Halloween contest entries. The Monster's Lair (built for the Creature's Lair contest) The Monster's Lair by mista_carrot, on Flickr When I think of a classic creature's lair, I immediately think of Dr. Frankenstein's lab. I didn't just want to do the typical tesla coils and lightning bolts (not that there's anything wrong with that), so I turned to my other hobby as a source for inspiration: video games. More specifically, Capcom's Darkstalkers, which is a fighting game with classic monsters as the characters. If you're into classic monsters then it's a fun game with some cool takes on their stories. Anyway, this MOC takes a lot of details from Victor's (the Frankenstein Monster of the game) stage: the castle setting with the pillars and arches, the tiled floor, the style of the machinery and the red chair. The Monster's Lair 3/4 View by mista_carrot, on Flickr The Monster's Lair Overhead by mista_carrot, on Flickr I was unsure of how I was going to attach the electricity infusion thingy to the wall. At first I was thinking of some complex technic attachment, but in the end, a simple hinge did the trick. The Monster's Lair Back View by mista_carrot, on Flickr Peace Celebration (Monster Bash contest entry) The picture above is actually of the first version of the entry which did not contain any of the Fighters (except for Major Quinton Steele's head). I didn't read the rules as thoroughly as I should have and just assumed I could make a party with just the Monsters. With that line of thinking, I figured they should be partying over the deaths of the Fighters. The Fighters' weapons are hung on the walls as trophies and the Monsters are drinking and dancing the night away. Then there's this: Which is Steele's head mounted on the wall. Since he is the "big game hunter" type character, I figured it would be fitting for his head to mounted on the wall as the ultimate payback. After I posted the above photos I reread the rules and learned of my error. Thus the above became the "bad ending" version and I started reworking it to make a "good ending". (Of course, whether it's bad or good depends on your point of view.) The "good ending" version only needed slight reworking. The story then became that the Fighters give up their weapons (literally giving them up to the Monsters) and the Monsters in turn promise not to harm humans. Adding the Fighters made it better IMO; it makes the party more lively. Some shots without the figs: See more photos on my Flickr photostream.

One of my MOCs got recommended. If it gets full support, I will not give my approval. I believe only the MOC creator should be allowed to submit their MOC. I also don't like that you have register a user account for the site just to browse more projects.

It's not as common as a 2x4 brick, but it's been around since 2010 and has appeared in lots of trucks in the City line. http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=87609 Great review!

Whoa. I am extremely honored that I got 1st place considering all of the absolutely amazing turtles in this contest! Some of the build techniques were just stunning. A big THANK YOU to Eurobricks, The Lego Group, Peter Reid, Mark Stafford, Karen Frost Sørensen and of course, EVERYONE who voted for my little turtle! You guys ROCK!!

Lego Wooden Turtle Built in the style of the Lego Wooden Duck, this turtle is ready to roll! See one more image on my Flickr stream!

Presenting the Television Transport Turtle (T.T.T. or T3)! This turtle literally brings the entertainment to you and is fully equipped with a widescreen Television and 5.1 surround sound system. Included antennae and satellite dish allows for terrestrial and satellite TV signals. Speakers can be repositioned to the user's liking. I wonder what video is playing? This speaker configuration fits within the 8-stud wide limit of the contest rules. For more pictures, see the album on my Flickr stream.

Created a Vine of the food truck: https://vine.co/v/MdnJLLAX2qj Might make a YouTube video later for it.

*UPDATED May 21, 2014! Click HERE to jump to the post and see the updated version! Support this project on Lego Ideas: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/937 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The post about the 2nd Revision can be found HERE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original version below: This is my first MOC as an AFOL. While waiting in line at one of my favorite food trucks here in Los Angeles, it dawned on me that the food truck would be the perfect choice for my first MOC. As I stared at the food truck in front of me, I started imagining how the details of the truck could be translated into Lego. For the past 3 weeks, I've been working on this vehicle, solving problems, adding details, and making the build as efficient as possible. My goal was to make it in the style of official sets while adding as much detail as I could. Hence, it is 6-wide and uses the wheels and mudguards seen on most official sets. I was very tempted to go 8-wide since that would have made things a lot easier, but I like a challenge. Above is the food-serving side of the truck. It has a large panel that can swing upwards to reveal a counter and a serving window. The silver 1x1 round plate is a handle so the door can be lifted easily (without it, it is really difficult to open since the panel is flush with the wall). The 2x4 light bley tile is for the menu. This is what I call "the boring side" of the truck. It's not really boring, but it is a bit plain. I tried to add as much detail as I could. There's a fuel tank panel and some vents. I also added that ridge, though I wish I could continue it down the entire length of the truck. The door is one of the things that bugs me the most. Unfortunately Lego doesn't make a door in quite the style seen on these trucks. I was debating whether to have a door at all. The back of the truck is one of the first things I worked on. Those vents are one of the most distinctive things about a food truck, so I knew that if I couldn't get that to look right, I might as well not do it. Here's the serving side with the panel open. The display area was inspired by a similar display in the Winter Village Bakery set. There's also hot water and coffee dispensers on the right. Oh, and say "hi" to the chef! The skylights are another detail that help make a food truck a food truck. This build was inspired by the roof door of the Fire Brigade modular building. Now if only Lego made those glass pieces in trans blue, it'd be perfect! C'mon Lego, make me happy! You can take off the skylights to access the cooking area of the truck. I tried to make it as easy as possible to remove, but it can be a little difficult. Here's the best shot I could get of the cooking area. I had to remove a bit of the walls to get a clear shot, but you can see that this truck is equipped with a stove, oven, grill, sink, cabinet, shelf, and a place to hang a frying pan. "I'll take one brickwurst, please." "That'll be one hundred bucks." The counter is a little high, but I think it still works. Here's a quick height comparison to the bus from the City Public Transport Station set. I think the truck fits in rather well. That's it! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed my first MOC! Now to think about what I'll do next! Also at MOC Pages!

Just storage space, though you can't fit much in there. On real food trucks there tend to be storage spaces in that area.

Thanks! I'd like to reinforce the hinges on the flip up door, but there's no more room! Thanks for the comments! Yeah, it could probably use more stickers to add a little extra umph to it, but I tend to be a little hesitant with custom stickers, and to sticker this up properly would probably mean STAMPs. Thank you! You don't happen to be related to Hinckley Springs? I see the company trucks and ads when driving around IL ( I just moved here a year ago). Thanks! I'm trying to strike a balance between detailed and simple building. LOL! No, I'm just a web designer with obsessive compulsive tendencies to improve past MOCs indefinitely. Thanks! It was important for me to approach it like an official set as much as possible, so playability became a big focus on the 2nd revision. Thanks, Tiger! I learn from the best! Your sticker work is truly inspiring! Getting frontpaged was a nice surprise after a long work day! Thanks! The original design's interior was so cramped that it bugged me every time I looked at it. I contemplated going 8-wide for a bit, but I had some ideas to open up the interior a bit and thankfully it all worked out. Good idea! Though I'm not sure if I'm happy with the current stickers...I kind of rushed it and I feel like I can come up with something better. I was also thinking of using large tiles (like those 6x6 tiles) to put stickers on, then you could just remove the tile and switch it if you wanted to change brands, so to speak. Thanks for your support! Thank you! I appreciate it! Thanks! Haha! Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had anything with carrots from a food truck...hmmm... Let's hope that'll be the case, but I don't think it will this time around. I need to get support from non-FOLs to make it happen I think. Anyway, thank you all for your comments! There's still some things I want to improve, but I currently either don't know how to improve them or I'm waiting for a certain part to be made in a certain color.

Did anyone else get two lightsaber blades with their Revan figure? I thought it was normal, but I just read Elrond's review and it seems like he only got one blade.

Well, there's been some new parts and new colors of existing parts since the last revision, so I figured it was time to update this model again. Plus, it'll be the first time this was updated since Lego switched from Cuusoo to Ideas. This is the 3rd major revision of this model, so let's get to what's new: Stronger, redesigned, removable roof. The removable roof is now one plate thicker, making it much stronger. I've also added "handles" to make it easy to know where to hold the roof in order to remove it easily. Redesigned snack/display case. The older model used a part that is no longer being produced (1x2x2 panel without side supports). The new display case uses currently-produced Lego parts and is built with interesting SNOT techniques. New wheels. The old wheels have been replaced with the new wheels that have been showing up in late-2013/2014 City sets. These wheels are about a 1/4 stud thinner, and thus, do not stick out from the vehicle body as much as the older wheels did. This allowed me to get rid of the front mudguards, making the food truck more accurate (real world trucks of this type do not have mudguards on the front wheels). Other minor changes. Here's the link to the Lego Ideas page: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/937 Thank you to everyone who has already supported this project! C & C welcome!

In The Lego Movie, Calamity Drone uses a brick-built minigun and not the rifle that her minifig comes with. The Lego Movie Videogame allows you to play as Calamity Drone complete with her minigun, and it allowed me to see how it was built. I was also able to compare it to the actual movie scenes and it does appear to be accurate as far as I can tell. It's a simple construction using the following pieces, and you should have no problems figuring out how to build it by looking at the above image: 1x Minifig, Utensil Loudhailer / SW Blaster (black) 1x Plate, Modified 1x1 with Clip Horizontal (black) 1x Tap (black) 1x Technic, Axle 3 with Stud (dark bluish grey) 3x Technic Bush 1/2 Smooth (bluish grey) Enjoy!

Not sure if it was mentioned already, but you can also get the robot DJ when you buy the Lego Movie videogame from Walmart, but only for the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions. http://www.walmart.com/ip/The-LEGO-Movie-Videogame-Walmart-Exclusive-Xbox-360/34288941

Looking forward to the Ecto-1. Wasn't surprised that it's just the car and figs; I don't think they want to make huge, $100+ cuusoo sets. First time I've heard Macross pronounced as "May-cross". I think there are a lot of licensing issues with Robotech/Macross stuff because different companies own the rights in different countries, so not surprised that didn't pass either.

I've been to two Christmas markets this year (one in Toronto and one in Chicago), and beer stalls were quite popular at both of them. Here's my Lego version of a German beer stall. Inside the stall is a cash register and four barrels of beer, two of which are tapped. Next to the stall is a small area where people can drink and take a bit of shelter from the snow. Merry Christmas!

Thank you, all, for the kind comments! Sorry, I don't quite have time to reply to everyone (going on vacation real soon!). The cherries were something I really wanted to work into the build since they haven't been used like this in an official set yet and I thought they would give a nice impression of holly. Thanks for the comment. I wanted to make it feel a bit busy like a real Christmas market. I was tempted to add more people but I didn't want it to be too crazy. It's in the Distillery District. They have a big tree that they light up, some rides for the kids, and quite a large group of stalls for adult beverages...it is the Distillery District after all :)

My argument is that ninjas are central to the Ninjago name/theme. To say that astronauts are central to astronomy is, well, wrong. Nin-JAH-go may be the official way to pronounce the theme name, but it'll always sound weird to me.

I say ninja go. Once, a Lego Store employee pronounced it nin jago which sounded so bizarre that it took me a moment to figure out she was talking about Ninjago. They're ninjas! I think you should keep the ninja part together at least when you pronounce it! lol

Congrats everyone! And thanks to Peppermint for putting on the contest! It was great fun!

This must be different door than the one I'm seeing in your pics if it can *actually close* with 1x1 round plates attached to both sides.