The Green Dragon returns in under 36 hours

Discussion of personal LEGO Castle creations
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SavaTheAggie
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The Green Dragon returns in under 36 hours

Post by SavaTheAggie »

I've finally gone and Ldrawn my Green Dragon, Vildegraas. This is the last of
the four dragons to be digitally built.

Click on the image for a larger picture.

Image

And I did it in under 36 hours (that's from start to finish, not total work
hours).

Why did I do it? I did it (if anyone really cares) to catalog him, so that I can
take apart the black, blue and green dragons to reclaim their parts. As most of
you are aware, the red dragon has already been disassembled to be rebuilt with a
better design. I do not have any similar plans to rebuild the other three
dragons. Their heads will be kept in tact for sentimental reasons.

--Anthony
[url=http://www.ikros.net][img]http://www.ikros.net/links/ikrosbuttonsmall.jpg[/img][/url]

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wlister
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Post by wlister »

Hey Anthony,

Vildegraas looks great in virtual form. Any chance you will ever do instructions for one of these great dragons? I would love to see how these beasties are assembled. Not that I'd ever re-create an exact duplicate of any, but I would love to see how it was done. I have found that learning how others build is one of the best ways of expanding my own building skills. I know you did instructions for one of the versions of the griffin and that was great. But I would really love to see how the smaller 4 were done.

Formeathan is far too formidable for mere mortals to re-create, but one of the smaller dragons would be a nice introduction to brick built dragons. What do you say? You know you want to... :wink:

Will
After a long absence, I have returned. I can't wait to start building again.
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Post by Paco »

wlister wrote: I know you did instructions for one of the versions of the griffin and that was great
Will
Where abouts would i find instructions for the Gryphon?
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wlister
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Post by wlister »

This is the Brickshelf gallery link for the Griffon instructions:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=26674

As I had said, it was a greay resource, but one of the dragons would be even greater. :wink:

Hope you don't mind me replying to this post Anthony, I had the link handy.

Will
After a long absence, I have returned. I can't wait to start building again.
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Mr. D
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Post by Mr. D »

It looks great! I find LDraw pretty frustrating. I mean, move the brick this way, then that way, then a little to the left gets old fast. It's just a lot easier to sit down and snap bricks together.

Mr. D
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Sir Terrance
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Wow!!! You are awesome in Ldraw!!!

Post by Sir Terrance »

Hello Anthony,

That is an awesome dragon, saw it in real from on your nicely designed site but rendered form is awesome since you can put it in new positions you wouldn't be able to do with real LEGO. Anyway, 10/10 :D and just one quick off topic question, when you finish your story of The Kingdom of Ikros CHAOS SKIES, will you start another series?
Check out my Brickshelf gallery here:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=thebrickbin
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SavaTheAggie
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Post by SavaTheAggie »

wlister wrote:Hey Anthony,

Vildegraas looks great in virtual form. Any chance you will ever do instructions for one of these great dragons? I would love to see how these beasties are assembled. Not that I'd ever re-create an exact duplicate of any, but I would love to see how it was done. I have found that learning how others build is one of the best ways of expanding my own building skills. I know you did instructions for one of the versions of the griffin and that was great. But I would really love to see how the smaller 4 were done.

Formeathan is far too formidable for mere mortals to re-create, but one of the smaller dragons would be a nice introduction to brick built dragons. What do you say? You know you want to... :wink:

Will
Hehe.. Sorry Will. I know I *DON'T* want to.

First off, when I LDrew the other three dragons, and like this fourth one, I didn't set up LDraw to create the instructions for me. I also REALLY don't feel like going back and adding all the steps necessary to re-create the dragon.

Secondly, like the other three dragons, I cheated big time when creating Mean Green's body. You see, their bodies are solid brick. And I'm not kidding, there isn't a single bit of empty space in there at all. There are so many randomly placed (and a few not so randomly) bricks that it would take me weeks to disassemble the bodies and reassemble them the EXACT way I did it in real life. Weeks or months, not impossible, but closer to impossible than I'd like. So the bodies are full of overlapping parts.

However, the outside of the body is true to the original, so it wouldn't be too hard to duplicate the process. The rest of the body parts, the head, neck, tail, arms, legs and shoulder parts (wings, fin or scythe) are all true to the originals and are perfectly capable of being rebuilt verbatim.

Third, no one should recreate these old dragons. Do I feel I have a copyright? No. Do I feel they'd be copying me? No, feel free. Would I offended if someone built one? Of course not.

Why should no one recreate my old dragons? They suck! They look anorexic, they're not incredibly posable and they will NOT stand on their own without being attached to something, and even THAT is iffy. Christina fears the times when I have to pose one of them, cause I become so frustrated that I'll snap at anything that moves, a personality flaw that I am trying to work on.

My fellow TexLUGgers can testify just how much trouble posing one of them is. It took Christina and I over two hours to pose all four of them at the Austin TexLUG meeting about a year and a half ago.

I actually am looking forward to taking the dragons apart in the next week. As I've said, I'll keep the heads of the dragons built, but I'm reclaiming the rest of the parts! Do you realize just how many 1xX black plates there are in the Black Dragon's wings?? Tudor galore!


HOWEVER... now that I've thoroughly bashed my creations, I will say that at some point in the future I plan to make the LDraw files of all four old style dragons available to the public. I am unsure of how, each dragon consists of more than 70 individual files. That's right, 70. In my current unemployed state, I am very tempted to sell the LDraw files on a CD, though I don't know how well recieved that would be. So who knows.

And don't worry about linking to the Griffon's instructions, I never mind people point other people to my stuff ;)
Mr. D wrote:It looks great! I find LDraw pretty frustrating. I mean, move the brick this way, then that way, then a little to the left gets old fast. It's just a lot easier to sit down and snap bricks together.

Mr. D
It is frustrating, but I put up with it for two reasons. First, it helps keep my CAD skills up. Granted, I was never formaly trained in CAD, and LDraw isn't exactly drawing 3D objects, but it keeps my spacial relations in check.

Secondly, I put up with it because I want a record of my dragons. As important to me and my history with LEGO as they have been, I didn't want them to disappear entirely when they were deconstructed. If they were real, I would owe it to them.
Sir Terrance wrote:Hello Anthony,

That is an awesome dragon, saw it in real from on your nicely designed site but rendered form is awesome since you can put it in new positions you wouldn't be able to do with real LEGO. Anyway, 10/10 :D and just one quick off topic question, when you finish your story of The Kingdom of Ikros CHAOS SKIES, will you start another series?
Thanks much! And brownie points for complimenting my website. Compliments will get you everywhere :)
A life after Chaos Skies? It's possible. However, Chaos Skies has never pulled the kind of traffic and support that the original Chronicles ever did, so I cringe to think how a third book would be recieved. I know already that I will be taking a break from story telling after Chaos Skies to just build MOCs, to build without having to save them until I can put them in the story. To be just a regular builder again.

The question is, does that break become indefinate?

--Anthony
[url=http://www.ikros.net][img]http://www.ikros.net/links/ikrosbuttonsmall.jpg[/img][/url]

Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Mr. D
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Post by Mr. D »

Hey, I LOVE Chaos Skies. Sorry if that's a bit obnoxious, but I like it every bit as much as the originals. Please don't ever think of not continuing Chaos Skies.

Mr. D
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SavaTheAggie
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Post by SavaTheAggie »

Mr. D wrote:Hey, I LOVE Chaos Skies. Sorry if that's a bit obnoxious, but I like it every bit as much as the originals. Please don't ever think of not continuing Chaos Skies.

Mr. D
Heh... Don't worry, D. I have every intention of finishing Chaos Skies. I was referring to whether or not I'd do something after that. Chaos Skies has been roughly written out to the end, there will be about 16 chapters, so we're getting close to the half-way point. Plenty more story to go.

--Anthony
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Post by Barbapple »

Chaos Skies has been roughly written out to the end, there will be about 16 chapters, so we're getting close to the half-way point. Plenty more story to go.
SO......if it is written out to the end....how's it end? Can't tell me, eh? Then it isn't! LIER! Ah-HA! I have you now!

Sorry about the childish logic....
Back on topic....
I Love your dragons....where can you get ldraw?
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SavaTheAggie
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Post by SavaTheAggie »

Barbapple wrote:
Chaos Skies has been roughly written out to the end, there will be about 16 chapters, so we're getting close to the half-way point. Plenty more story to go.
SO......if it is written out to the end....how's it end? Can't tell me, eh? Then it isn't! LIER! Ah-HA! I have you now!

Sorry about the childish logic....
Back on topic....
I Love your dragons....where can you get ldraw?
Hah! You shall never know the secret of Nihm!

Ldraw is available for download for free at www.ldraw.org

Be sure to at least look into if not downloading MLCad, an add-on to LDraw that I couldn't build without.

--Anthony
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wlister
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Post by wlister »

Hey Anthony,

I figured as much when I was making the post, just thought I'd rib you a bit. I have been playing a bit with making my own dragons using some of the pictures you made for the construction of Vildegraas that you have on your website. I was hoping for something similiar for a wing assembly, but your explanation of that should be good enough. I am waiting for the new designer sets to arrive so I can do more than play with the idea of building a large dragon. Thanks for the nice long explanation.

Will
After a long absence, I have returned. I can't wait to start building again.
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