In the last chapter, I showed you several macroscale building techniques; there you learned to make models much larger than the objects they represent. This chapter focuses on the opposite technique, something called microscale building. As the word micro indicates, this scale is very small. Keep reading to find out just how small. If you are someone with a limited supply of LEGO bricks, or perhaps you do your building in a confined space, then the microscale route might work well for you. You can still create interesting models no matter how limited your palette of pieces might be.
Figure 6-1 shows an example of the type of subject matter you might explore when building at this scale.
Though only 7 inches long, this microscale cargo ship captures many of the details of the real thing, including shipping containers, the bridge, and the always necessary smokestack.
Now that you know that micro is yet another scale at which you can build models, you probably want to know how to define micro. How small is small? Let’s back up a couple chapters and think about the train station (shown in Figure 3-4).
In Chapter 3, I showed you how to build the walls, doors, and windows of that building to accommodate the standard-sized LEGO minifigs. However, suppose you wanted to build the train station smaller, maybe only one-half or even one-third the size. In such a case, the features of the building would no longer be properly sized for minifigs. What label then would you apply to the scale of the building? In a word: micro. In this book, the term micro or microscale applies to models of objects that are built much smaller than is suitable for minifigs to live or travel in.
So far in this book, I’ve talked about several different scales to which you can build models. To put them all in perspective, take a look at Table 6-1, which describes each one.
Table 6-1. Comparison of Various Scales Used to Build LEGO Models, from Largest to Smallest
|
Description | |
|---|---|
|
Macro |
Discussed in Chapter 5. When you are working at this scale, the model ends up being many times larger than the original object. |
|
Lifesize |
As the name suggests, models you create at this scale will be exactly the same size as the original object. These could be sculptures (as seen in Chapter 7) or just about any faithful reproduction of a real life object. |
|
Miniland |
Models and figures built to miniland scale are roughly twice the size of minifig scale constructions. This is the scale used to create the miniland displays at the LEGO theme parks. |
|
Minifig |
The train station we built in Chapter 3 was created at minifig scale. Buildings, cars, and other objects are all built in proportion to the minifig characters. |
|
Micro |
I’ll show you microscale in this chapter. The models built this way are typically even smaller than those built using the minifig scale. |
Note
In order to standardize microscale building for the purposes of group displays, some LEGO builders have decided to use a 1x1 cylinder brick to represent the size of a person within the microsized world. In other words, in such cases, one brick in model height is equal to roughly 6 feet in the real world. This should give you a good idea of the scale of the micro world.
Of course, there are any number of scales upon which you can base your models. For instance, you may decide to build a 1:3 replica of the grandfather clock that sits in your living room. That certainly wouldn’t be minifig scale. The model isn’t larger than the original, so you know it’s not macro. In fact, it really doesn’t match any of the major scales noted above. That’s okay. The scales I laid out in Table 6-1 are just guidelines, not rules.
These scales are, however, useful if you want to understand the scale at which you are making your models. For instance, suppose you are building a model that you want to display alongside one built by a friend or a member of the LEGO builders group to which you belong. If you both (or all) agree to build something to minifig scale, you each know what that means. The minifig label provides a reference to a particular size of building. That way you don’t arrive with a 1-foot-tall warehouse that’s supposed to go next to your friend’s 3-foot-tall ice cream stand. That could be embarrassing!
When we looked at minifigs back in Chapter 3, I helped you figure out that structures or vehicles intended for those little folks should be built to about 1:48 scale. However, microscale models aren’t locked into one set of numbers, much like the macroscale bricks back in Chapter 5 that weren’t all built to the same scale. For example, a 1-foot-tall model of the Empire State Building in New York would be approximately 1:1250 scale, because the actual building is 1,250 feet tall. On the other hand, a 1-foot-tall model of the Great Pyramid in Egypt would be approximately 1:480, because the actual pyramid is about 480 feet tall.
This might seem a bit confusing because earlier I mentioned that some builders use a 1x1 cylinder brick to represent the height of a microscale person. The examples of the Empire State Building and the Great Pyramid are obviously not built to the same 1-brick-equals-6-feet specification. In fact, they aren’t even built to the same scale as each other! But they are microscale examples nonetheless. These examples demonstrate that the actual scale can vary within the micro world, but models still hold to the same principle; they are extremely small versions of very large things. Just as you did in Chapter 5, where you learned to build 4X and 10X versions of the same brick, you can use different numbers to achieve the dimensions for a microscale model.
It’s also worth noting that neither of these two models would be classified as minifig scale since even minifigs would look like giants next to the LEGO version of either structure. Instead, both of these models are definitely considered microscale for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.