2023 Buildarmy® construction toy. All design & instruction are copyrights of Buildarmy LTD.
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Buildarmy story
As a LEGO® and WW2 fan, I used to create WW2 vehicles in Lego Digital Designer and search for bricks on Bricklink all over the world to build my MOC. However, I found it difficult to build an army from LEGO® bricks since some parts are rare and expensive. I have even bought the red motorcycle tops (85983) and painted them to grey in order to build the German motorcycle.
Once when I was travelling in China, I occasionally saw my nephew playing some Chinese brand bricks, which have the identical geometry of LEGO® and surprisingly good quality. Sadly, I found most of them were simply copying the entire set of Lego, which I personally quite despise. I bought some sets only to recycle their bricks for my MOC. After some reading, I realized that the patent of LEGO® expired in 2011 and the manufacturing of basic bricks is legal. Thus I did some research to identify the top quality brick brands in China and began to order from them.
Since then my access to bricks in Lego geometry had vastly expanded and I could use any pieces in Lego Digital Designer for the best of the accuracy and details of my designs. I started from recreating WW2 German vehicles, such as the Panzer III and Tiger 1, as they are my personal favourite and also because most of our stock bricks were in grey. Those earlier MOCs were liked by others on social media and I started to sell them on eBay to support my hobby.
How I create the models:
Before I start creating a model, I would read the information through websites and books regarding its history and decide which variant to go for. Then I would collect massive images and videos of the model from different angles and interior, to see every details and functions of the parts. Once I get the whole picture, I would starting measuring and converting the dimensions from the blueprint to basic Lego units (Fig.1), which are the distance between studs and the height of a single plate. Although I use Lego compatible pieces, I also follow the rule of LEGO® in my MOC and never bypass building difficulties by using cheating/invented bricks that are not in the Lego system.
The bricks we use:
Creating custom Lego models is like 3d painting and the highest quality “paint” on the market is of course LEGO® pieces. Due to the limited access to Lego pieces, especially some dark grey ones which are heavily used for our tanks, we mainly use high quality Lego compatible bricks (Fig.2) at the moment. However We have started the project of preparing Lego/compatible hybrid kits in which the basic plate & tiles that make the main frame and surface of the model are from Lego while the less common pieces are compatible ones.
Figure 1: this is the blueprint I used years ago to convert the dimension of Panzer 3, the first tank of Buildarmy, into Lego units.
Figure 2: Compatible pieces we use.