ludzik
Lenfald
Lenfald Freeman
Posts: 1,047 
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Post by ludzik on Jan 29, 2015 7:47:35 GMT -8
When you start on a project - how much of it is pre planned and how muchange is based on just going with it and evolving the build as you keep going forward?
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AK_Brickster
Innkeeper
Scouting the Lenfel Border
Posts: 3,272
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Post by AK_Brickster on Jan 29, 2015 8:19:04 GMT -8
I usually start out with a general idea of what I want to build, and for large builds I may draft a quick sketch of how different buildings will lay out relative to one another, but other than that, I pretty much just build as I go, adding/subtracting things as the build progresses.
What about you?
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Post by Lord Rolf Thrandr on Jan 29, 2015 8:24:24 GMT -8
Like AK_Brickster, I pretty much have a general idea and then go with the flow. Of course, it's not like I have enough parts to build something big enough to warrant much planning.  |
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josdu
Outlaws
Marooned on the Island of Lost Souls
Posts: 1,176
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Post by josdu on Jan 29, 2015 8:30:49 GMT -8
Go with the flow, you really can't know how good it will look until you try. Though of course I usually have a rough idea of what I'm gonna build before I start.
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AK_Brickster
Innkeeper
Scouting the Lenfel Border
Posts: 3,272
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Post by AK_Brickster on Jan 29, 2015 9:08:18 GMT -8
I know that some people rely heavily on source material, and will have photos of different ideas pulled up on a computer screen while they are building. I don't have enough room in my building space to do that, so at most I may have a folder of "inspirational" source material on my laptop, but once I start building I rarely if ever refer back to it. On larger builds, I think it is important to do a brief layout just so you know that everything you want to incorporate into the build will fit whatever your size restrictions are (how many base plates do I have, what are the rules of the contest, how much room am I allowed to take up at a convention, etc.) The only builds that I've ever had to do this on, that I can think of, are my "Orphaned" build for the CCC last year, and the collaborative castle display that I did with David Frank at BrickCon a couple of years ago. This one I had to lay out ahead of time due to the size restrictions of the CCC. I knew that I wanted 2 buildings with an alley between them and a set of stairs on one of them, and also needed enough room for a graveyard. This is probably the most planned MOC I've ever done, with a very clear idea of exactly what I was going to build.  CCCXI - A Child's Life by AK_Brickster, on Flickr This one I had to lay out due to having to coordinate my alignment with David and also to ensure that I had enough room to set up a small village with a pond outside the long wall (my section is the wall and everything outside of it)  Fraslund and AK_Brickster Collaborative MOC by AK_Brickster, on Flickr |
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Post by soccerkid6 on Jan 29, 2015 12:40:32 GMT -8
I've found that the more I have pre-planned the quicker and easier the build comes together. At the very least I have a pretty good idea of the layout of the build when I start. Though sometimes that means just messing around with building floor plans at the start of a build.
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ludzik
Lenfald
Lenfald Freeman
Posts: 1,047
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Post by ludzik on Jan 29, 2015 13:18:53 GMT -8
My method is to start with an idea and build upon it. Unfortunately this results in many redo's at times as from time to time halfway through (or even worse when you're almost done) it turns out that what you thought will work... doesn't and you have to pull things apart and start over. I'm dealing with that on my current modular castle build: I'm redoing the whole gatehouse as it didn't fit the way I expected.... now it seems that the new version might encroach on the Lord's chambers that are contained in the castle....  I guess the dominoes like to fall |
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Post by Graham Gidman on Jan 29, 2015 13:19:41 GMT -8
I'll usually get an idea or an image in my head and then just start building. |
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SpearralSquid
Garheim
Green is not a creative color.
Posts: 1,049
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Post by SpearralSquid on Jan 30, 2015 6:08:52 GMT -8
Like others have said, I usually have a mental picture of what I want to do, then start building. Occasionally if I need something to do with my hands in a class or something I'll make a sketch of an idea, but it's not necessary, just for fun. To be fair, though, a lot of my mecha are based on drawings I had done at some point or another.
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Post by Sir Caedric Moore on Feb 1, 2015 21:34:56 GMT -8
It really depends, for me. Sometimes I have a a good idea of what I'm going to build based on new techniques I want to try out or based on something I saw recently that inspired me, but more often than not I just kind of jump in. Oddly enough, I build from the top-down pretty often.
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lilcurt
Outlaws
Back Home, Somewhere along the Lenfeld, Garheim Border Preparing for winter :)
Posts: 1,041
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Post by lilcurt on Feb 1, 2015 21:59:43 GMT -8
Building? Whats that? I am constantly stuck sorting I rarely build from a plan. I probably should more often how ever I just go with the flow. I look to many different things for inspiration. My biggest issue is I always get halfway find something I dont like tear down and start over, its a never ending cycle  |
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pyro5050
Outlaws
Resident Historian
Building a ship north of Dingewater
Posts: 446
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Post by pyro5050 on Feb 2, 2015 11:36:43 GMT -8
i write my story first, i plan i out in my head. and then build to suit a section of the story that interests me. it is for this exact reason i did not enter the guild last month, as my character did not get past his current dilemma (his build wasnt done..., ) so i am currently working on his build. so i plan out his story, i choose the part, and then i slowly start building it from the image i have crafted in my head. and then i change things slowly as i find i either a: forgot i was working with lego in my head and things are too crowded, or b: forgot i am working with lego and things look very very plain and stud covered. my current build went from a market place to a jail cell under a brothel in 45 min last night because i decided to add a naked man chasing a woman. |
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Post by SEdmison on Feb 27, 2015 13:17:55 GMT -8
My process depends entirely on what I'm building. Let me give a couple of examples.
I recently built (and will soon post some pictures of) a trophy for Bricks Cascade that is a Gothic cathedral in microscale. Because I had a teeny-tiny footprint to build on (the convention for trophies is that they be built on an 8x8 brick or plate), I planned the model to about 90% complete in LDD before I even picked up a brick. That was largely because I was going to have to order a few specialty parts, but also so that I could do the planning on my laptop with a Bing image search open to a bunch of shots of Notre Dame and other Gothic cathedrals. Planning was key here, because I wanted the overall architectural style to be recognizable. In fact, pretty much any time I'm "building to life" or trying to create a model of something that's real or inspired by something real, I tend to do a lot of prototyping in LDD so I can Alt-Tab back and forth between LDD and reference images. That has worked well when I've made models of anything from churches to a V-22 Osprey. And of course it works well if I want to be sure about something before I order parts for it.
If I'm building as part of a collaboration with others, planning is also crucial, because where my road comes off of my section it needs to line up with the next guy's road on his section or else we both look like n00bs. So at least the interfaces between sections need to be planned out in terms of 3 dimensions (x, y coordinates for where certain transitions happen, plus the height at which the sections need to connect) plus the general color scheme (dark tan for a road? reddish brown?).
If I'm just building something for myself, my process might be much more free-form. For instance, if I want to do a building, very often I'll just pick up a baseplate and start putting some long 1x8, 1x10, 1x12 bricks down on it until I rough in a floor plan. I start with things like where the doors need to be, how thick the walls are going to be, where the stairs connect different floors, etc. Once I have that figured out, I might build the entire thing without any more explicit planning than that.
When I build stuff that I want to look natural, like paths, trails, forests, riverbeds, etc., I don't plan anything if I can help it. Maybe I have a rough idea of the curve of a river, but I try to put down rocks and grass and bushes as spontaneously as I can to avoid letting myself create a pattern or anything that looks too artificial.
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Post by SEdmison on Feb 27, 2015 13:18:30 GMT -8
my current build went from a market place to a jail cell under a brothel in 45 min last night because i decided to add a naked man chasing a woman. Uhhhhhhh, okay.  |
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Post by SEdmison on Feb 27, 2015 13:31:55 GMT -8
My method is to start with an idea and build upon it. Unfortunately this results in many redo's at times as from time to time halfway through (or even worse when you're almost done) it turns out that what you thought will work... doesn't and you have to pull things apart and start over. I'm dealing with that on my current modular castle build: I'm redoing the whole gatehouse as it didn't fit the way I expected.... now it seems that the new version might encroach on the Lord's chambers that are contained in the castle.... I guess the dominoes like to fall Yeah, I find that the more complex a scene is and the more elements it contains, the more I need to do some amount of pre-planning. That can be as simple as just marking out some space on the baseplate, but it really helps. In fact, I know it's going to sound silly as heck, but I very often walk a minifig around the space as I've got it roughed out, just so I can get a sense of the overall scale. I'll stand the minifig next to a well to see whether he can reach the crank, or build a couple of steps to see whether the height profile seems too steep. I'll stack a few bricks and arch pieces to create some door frames to see whether the figure looks cramped or tiny. If I'm going to have trees in the scene, I'll build a few ahead of time and drop them onto the baseplate to see whether they look too large or small in comparison to my planned height for a building.
A lot of this stuff you can get a sense of from experience, but until you get to that point, there's nothing wrong with noodling around with spare parts. In fact, sometimes I'll even keep the roughed-in sketch of a build untouched while I do the build. If I've only used a few bricks to sketch out the spaces, it's not too much of a burden to leave them on the other baseplate as a reference while I do the actual build on a clean baseplate. Plus that lets me do things like building the new one up by a few plates or a brick to allow myself some height profile for things like ruts in the roads without risking covering over my initial sketch.
So, in the case of your modular build (and I'm working on something like this as well), I do something like this: - Set out several baseplates for the major parts of the castle that are most important to me. Maybe one for the gatehouse, some for the wall sections adjacent to it, the main keep, etc. - Then I put down some brick to rough in the footprint of each building, making sure to extend all the lines to the edge of each baseplate so I can see clearly how they connect up. - That also gives me a chance to think about how/whether I want to put in some Technic bricks with pin holes or axle holes to allow me to connect sections together, and if so, how to hide those Technic bricks under other stuff so they don't mess up the height of the ground, etc. - Any place where there will be a major door, arch, etc., stack up some parts to make a prototype of it to get a sense of height and scale. - Pose some minifigs around the scene, particularly around the areas of the scene that are designed for interaction: doors, windows, arches, booths and vendor stalls, etc. - Choose a point in the scene to start building, and build out from it. I try always to proceed from one module to an adjacent module, because things have a tendency to shift slightly, grow or shrink a little as I get them figured out, and that tendency can be managed if it's happening incrementally, but can be a real pain in the butt if several sections have all pushed up against one section from all sides.
Cheers, Sean
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I guess the dominoes like to fall 
