Hey Folks!

Recently I've been displaying more and more custom creations (or just somewhat modified) Vs. actual LEGO designed sets. I guess I've just hit a point where i take more pride in something i have personally designed/fixed/added to. As many of you may have seen a few months ago; i made a large Jurassic World display with most of the JW sets (you can view that below), but as we all know - the JW sets other than the Dino's are pretty lame and not very screen accurate.

So it started look a little kiddie on display with my 10179 and Pirate Ships and i took it down. However JP still is one of my favourite franchises and i felt bad not displaying it in some way. So one Saturday i sat down with 5 million chrome tabs open and started brainstorming ideas and looking at parts and other mocs and decided to make a fairly large T-Rex paddock from JP1, three 32x32 tan baseplates to be exact that will span across 2 detolfs like my previous JW display.

Normally when i do these builds/fixes i just post pictures of the finished product, but this time i decided to do a build log at the suggestion of my girlfriend (she helped me make some foliage and wanted it shown off haha). Hopefully some of you will enjoy the pictures and/or the finished model, so lets get started! (lots of pictures below).

For starters here is my crude "blueprint" courtesy of MS paint:

I went with Tan baseplates as most of the road the cars go on is some kind of sand/gravel that resembles tan more than anything else. Also the new green baseplates are way too bright and do not look natural. One problem i know i'll have is the trees available in LEGO form will be fairly tiny and likely be smaller than the fence itself  but what can you do. I'm only going to make 1 Explorer as lime green parts are a pain in the ass to get. I actually have a custom explorer un-built that i received as a gift for Christmas from some company that sells custom kits (will post pics and the company when i get around to it). I'll use those monorail pieces for the car tracks which work perfectly.

Some of the pieces I've received so far:

I'm going to go with black technic axles for the fences. This isn't screen accurate, but it's more doable (most of the fence is grey in the movie) the large foundation will be grey however. The core design of the fence will be based around a design i found on LDD (http://ldd.us.lego.com/en-us/gallery/d1ebd352-7c59-4542-b859-a4efcb6cb429?index=16&searchword=fence).

I don't have enough parts to really start much, but i did build a bunch of foliage/tree setups for his cage along with a couple of the fence lights (not shown, picture is corrupt or something):

I would really like some more palm trees, specifically the crappy 2 piece ones as they are taller, but any kind of complete palm tree is pretty expensive. So i went to my local LEGO store and luckily they had a couple plant pieces and lots of green pieces on the wall. So i stocked up and combined my parts with theirs to create numerous foliage pieces. I may still end up having to get some more palm trees though if it looks wimpy behind the cage.

The final challenge i have is the minifigures. The only figure we have from JP1 is Dr. Wu (who i don't even need for this moc). So i have to custom make them by scouring bricklink/rebrickable for pieces that will match. And ideally flesh tone pieces. I'm only going to go with Tim, Lex, Alan, and Ian to make it easier on myself. Over time i may add more. Also the Explorer will only fit 4 people.

The minty fresh baseplates and some decals:

That's it for now! i have lots of pieces on the way and eagerly await their arrival. Once I've made some progress i will post again. The only thing i know i'm missing and have still yet to order is the goat figure from Mill Village Raid. Rexy has to have some lunch after all! I've actually posted in the trade forum looking for it, but it's fairly specific that i don't think i'll get any takers but i figured i'd try (link to that post below):

Future plans/ideas: A few more characters added, and maybe the JP1 opening scene/Raptor Paddock moc.

Thanks for looking!

Are you going to do green red jeeps too?

2 minutes ago, thoroakenfelder said:

Are you going to do green red jeeps too?

Yup! But probably just 1.

Really want to see it when you are done.

What's your table made of? Looks like it's got little piles of dirt on it. Very cool, applicable ground floor for a paddock MOC. Cool stuff man, looking forward to the updates on this one!

28 minutes ago, Zelgazra said:

What's your table made of? Looks like it's got little piles of dirt on it. Very cool, applicable ground floor for a paddock MOC. Cool stuff man, looking forward to the updates on this one!

They are old Warhammer tables back when i was into that, i just never got rid of them and use them to build LEGO! It's just random sand/gravel taken from outside and glued on.

I duno how many people might recognize it.... 

For many many many years I habitually played and modded a game called Myth 2 Soulblighter, made by that company called Bungie... you know, the guys that did the Halo franchise? They made sweet computer games before that. Myth and M2 were two of those games. 

In creating new maps when modding, you use photoshop and stacks and texture layers and layer masks, to blend and paint a top-down view of the mesh, which can then be topographed in the editor. Your table looks exactly like a sandy expanse I'd make on a myth map. Caught my eye for sure.

Sadly no new parts (of major importance) arrived last night, and with this weekend being a long weekend in Ontario; i won't be seeing any more parts until at least Tuesday  @Stragus 's parts arrived! but that's no surprise, always timely delivery

So i got antsy and started just physically mapping out the poddock in the detolfs. Couple new problems I've encountered is that Rexy's paddock may need to be raised to meet the concrete barriers, otherwise i risk dwarfing him by the fences. And also the goat won't be "eye level". Without the fences though i can't go much further to see what it will look like, but i will probably need to cut a few levels off the fence itself. Happy with the foliage, but will probably need 1-2 more palm trees for the right side.

Really loving the choice of bricks for the foundations, looks pretty cool. However i will need a ton more of these...

The yellow tiles represent ideally where the Goat and his little platform will go. As you can see it will be dwarfed by the foundation. Hence why i may need to raise the whole paddock interior by 4-6 studs and coat the whole thing in green plates. The black axles currently represent the missing monorail pieces obviously.

Couple more parts arrived last night, however i can't really get any further without more of the foundation slope pieces. I guess i stumbled upon a bricklinker that takes a little extra time to get stuff out.

However i had enough pieces to make 1 fence! (will need 3-4 more i think). With this 1 fence as my guideline; i was able to confirm that A: i do need to raise the inside of the paddock to be foundation-level, and B: i need to take a level off the fence. Otherwise any dino put behind is sort of dwarfed (as are the trees). So i've put a large order in for some extra green plates and some basic 2x4 bricks to go underneath and raise it up.

Still waiting on some 2x4 white tiles to replace the caution 1x4 strips so i can put the "10,000 Volts" decals ontop of them. I wanted to put the fences on smaller plate pieces, however with the fence... posts? so close together it obstructed too much of the view inside. As such i will go with larger plates under the foundation. Each fence should ideally connect with each other with technic connectors to look as seamless as possible. I tested out some ways of connecting each fence at the bottom with hinges, but couldn't get it just right. So i'll likely keep the bottoms a bit loose (at least on the fence pieces that have to curve).

Tonight i think i will finally tackle the Explorer. As i said before i don't actually have to design this myself or purchase the pieces as my SO purchased a custom kit for me a few months ago. However i think the scale might be too large for my build (543 pieces or something), if so i will see about building a smaller one.

Even though the fences are not %100 movie accurate since i opted to go with black; i think it looks pretty good. I did test out dark grey/light grey and it didn't look as menacing. The black makes it look a bit creepier and imposing.

More to come!

 

Edited February 17, 20169 yr by Sandwraithx157

FREAKIN AWESOME thread.  keep up the great work.

No new progress on the cage itself, but i finally got around to building the Explorer! And i have to say it is gorgeous. Again though this is not my design, it was some kind of custom kit my GF bought for me from Japan i believe. At first i thought they were probably fake pieces, but they look and feel real, either way the car is awesome.

It's obviously quite massive and not entirely minifig scale (however Han and co do look pretty cool in there), but i think it just looks so good that i'll include it for now. It almost becomes the centerpiece of the display which i'm ok with. If the T-Rex were bigger (or brickbuilt) he'd be the center of attention, but as it stands the LEGO version of Mr.Rex is a bit on the wimpy side which is no fault of theirs really.

If down the road the scale bugs me i'll make smaller cars. I also really like the open window/no window design. This allows the figures to be viewed a bit easier which will be crucial when my minifig parts arrive to make Grant/Ian/Lex/Tim. I did do a couple modifications to try and increase the integrity, added the famous cup to the front dash  and added exposed studs to the back seats so the figures stayed seated. The back seat even has a place for Revan to store his lightsaber! (or the goggles/flares from the movie).

The car is very fragile, designed to %100 be a display model and not touched, hell it even has issues just rolling on it's wheels (they get caught on pieces when pressure applied. The doors do open and close, but are quite fragile. Lots of illegal building techniques in this model to say the least haha.

I think once all the fences are up and the inside paddock raised; the car won't look as big compared to everything else. Raising the paddock is my next goal. I plan to use the old Duplo trick to cut down on hundreds of bricks.

Overall though i love this thing no matter what it's used for.

As you can see in the last photo i have all 4 foundations ready and awaiting the slope pieces. Each foundation needs about 24 of them, and the Bricklinkers in Canada have very few of these pieces so it's a slow process getting them all.

I expect my next update will be a very rainbow-y Duplo mess

 

Edited February 18, 20169 yr by Sandwraithx157

9 minutes ago, Sandwraithx157 said:

As you can see in the last photo i have all 4 foundations ready and awaiting the slope pieces. Each foundation needs about 24 of them, and the Bricklinkers in Canada have very few of these pieces so it's a slow process getting them all.

I expect my next update will be a very rainbow-y Duplo mess

 

Very cool! I wish I had pictures of how we built our city structure.. no duplo, but it wasn't cheap. We used 2x4 bricks to build towers and then connected the towers with 2x8 or 2x10 bricks. Then we locked it all together with plates before dropping the road plates down. Because we expected a lot of weight between the sets themselves and little kids leaning on it, we wanted it to be very strong. I could probably stand on any part of it except the archways which the subway passed through.

Nice work though!

2 hours ago, gregpj said:

Very cool! I wish I had pictures of how we built our city structure.. no duplo, but it wasn't cheap. We used 2x4 bricks to build towers and then connected the towers with 2x8 or 2x10 bricks.

Luckily i only need about 3-4 layers of bricks which will be 1 Duplo layer and then 1 layer of random coloured pieces, a layer of brown 2x4's, and then finally a layer of green plates. I can't just do 2 Duplo layers and the green plates as plates do not actually bind to Duplo  but any 2 by whatever brick will.

It's so deceiving how many 2x4's and such you actually need to fill in a large area. Can't imagine doing massive mocs.... but yeah napkin math shows these 30-40 duplo pieces will save me a couple hundred bricks, which is crazy.

I debated doing what you mentioned, but i really wanted to make the bottom of these 3 base-plates really sturdy. Ideally so they can be picked up and moved and stay together. Also since i'll be using varying sized plates i'd need some of the towers to be pretty darn close together anyways. So a full coat of bricks it is!

 

That's looking really cool!  Can't wait to see the finished product.

Started filling in the paddock to raise it up about 3 bricks (previously predicted 4, but 3 will suffice). So I've got a layer of Duplo bricks, 1 layer of LEGO bricks (and maybe some megabloks in there, shhhhh noone will see them :3), and then the green tile pieces on top where all the tress and such will be placed. I might see if i can add a little river/stream off to the left, but i don't think i have the pieces for that on hand.

I also played around a bit with the fence design and need to make some changes. The LDD schematic i was taking inspiration from does not actually have the fences connecting to each other and I want mine to connect. So i need to change around the size of axles so that i can get each foundation piece to be flush with each other and connected with Technic connectors in between. I don't have any Black Axle 2's to go between each so I've ordered a few.

Still no more grey slope pieces, so not much has changed aside from the rainbow-y mess  You can see in the last picture some green tiles being placed which is the final level of bricks. The angled fence was tricky to get as flush as possible, but i think i got it.

And yes the Haunted House has currently been displaced and i am not sure where to put it now

 

Nice figurines in the back.

Looking good!  The vehicle seems way too big compared to everything else though.

10 minutes ago, lego rules said:

Looking good!  The vehicle seems way too big compared to everything else though.

Agreed. Gunna go with it for now and see how i like it when done as the model itself is awesome. Otherwise i'll make smaller ones.

27 minutes ago, TheOrcKing said:

Nice figurines in the back.

Heh thanks. Remnants of my older (also expensive) hobby that sit around collecting dust. Big problem with fully built/painted Warhammer/Warhachine armies is they are very hard to sell unlike used LEGO. People want them built and painted their way and repainting them can "blob" the details out a bit.

Started filling in the green plates and placing all the tress and such over the weekend. Still missing a lot of large leaf/tree pieces so what you see here is not the finished paddock interior. Also finally got the Goat figure and he will go where the horse currently is (along with a couple fence pieces and a chain around him). Instead of getting more expensive palm trees, i decided to go with brown 1x1 cylinder pieces and just pile them on top of each other with various leaves put on throughout. However piling these too high makes them unstable, so i just slid in some minifig wands/lightsaber blade pieces to strengthen it.

Originally i was just going to do a little river/pond on the left side, but the paddock interior felt a bit boring with just trees. So i had these light trans blue 2x2 round Chima pieces from the PAB wall that looked great to make a waterfall. And then if i did a waterfall i would obviously need some sort of rock face. And luckily i had a generous amount of parts on hand to make a pretty decent looking build. Not entirely happy with it yet, but it will do for now. I also played around with somehow lighting up the waterfall from behind with some small brick LED's i have, but not sure i really liked the look. I'll also probably add the little Compy from "Gallimimus" trap to the inside of the cage (not movie accurate, but book accurate, someones gotta eat up all that dino poop :3) and maybe the Pterodactyl flying above the waterfall.

Should have the rest of the pieces to finish up this week. Once the fences are placed and I've got the monorail tracks on the road.. it will all really come together and look awesome.

This is the first time i actually picked the thing up, and it is just as sturdy as i planned which is great.

 

I dig the waterfall. It could be my favorite area of the landscape thus far.

I'm going through lots of bulk ATM, I know I saw a bunch of palm leaves. Are you still trying to get more?

10 hours ago, thoroakenfelder said:

I'm going through lots of bulk ATM, I know I saw a bunch of palm leaves. Are you still trying to get more?

I "think" I've got more than enough foliage in the mail on the way to me, thanks for thinking of me though!  

Since i have no room to have the bathroom hut off to the right side on the road, i took a look at some pictures of the outside of the paddock for something to add to the road area to give it a bit more detail. Besides the monorail tracks and maybe some gravel greebling - there is quite literally nothing else on the road but sand/dirt. However I had totally forgot about the little signs by each paddock! So i got to designing one:

I'll need to make some custom decal(s) of course, but that's no problem. I made it in two scales to see which will fit best. Left one is a bit more screen accurate, but getting that circle to look proper is a bit difficult. LDD did not allow me to attach the small 1x1 circle tile to the technic pin in the hole (or i just don't know how to do it), but i might just leave the hole empty and see how it looks (or just leave the pin in it without the tole applied). Right side one may be too small for the decal to really be visible, but it is much simpler. And I've got a Frankenstein minifgure for scale

Source material below:

The T-Rex one is harder to find a clear image of, but it includes additional information like "No Flash Photography" or something along those lines i'll probably exclude as it will be too hard to read in such small scale.

Have you any thoughts for adding the toilet scene as a finisher

1 hour ago, TheGallows said:

Have you any thoughts for adding the toilet scene as a finisher

 

 

Haha very cute. I don't think i'll have room, but it was certainly and idea!

Maybe have the lawyer posed on the road in a way so he appears to be running towards where the lavatory would be. "Well, when ya gotta go....ya gotta go...."