Just cruising on the lake in my Ford Mustang

In this incredibly detailed digital build, ExeSandbox was tasked to put a 1965 Ford Mustang in beautiful scenery. I think nobody told him it was supposed to be placed on a road, but the builder just slapped it straight in the middle of the scenery. And it looks amazing! Never before has a car driving on water looked so right.

Lake Scenery (Front View)

The centerpiece of the scene is the quite accurate Ford Mustang, and it really gives the scene context. But it is the landscaping that shines here. There is a lot of simple parts that just work really well, like trees built of stacked leaf pieces or the clean layers of the ground. On the other hand, there are also very intensely textured trees with plates facing all directions and an extremely realistic lake bed covered in rocks. The water benefits the most from computer rendering, as finding this many perfectly clean translucent panels and placing them this straight without bending would be nearly impossible. What does not benefit from computer rendering is the perfect curved road though. While this technique looks beautiful and requires a proportional amount of work in real life, the builder states that it was a nightmare to do digitally, reminding us all that digital builders face their own challenges (the whole scene contains over 90,000 pieces). Often skeptics see digital builds as cheating or an easy shortcut, but the naysayers are often people who have never opened a brick-building program. And below is the final piece of art with a full background, and we can all agree that digital or not, the end result is a stunning image. And sometimes that is what matters.

Nothing Like a Ford on a Lake

5 comments on “Just cruising on the lake in my Ford Mustang

  1. Purple Dave

    I can think of a few things that benefit even more from the digital nature than just having clean transparent parts. For one thing, many of those elements don’t exist (specifically, the yellow and orange small leaf pieces aren’t official LEGO elements, though there’s someone who has produced near-copies of the leaf elements and sells them in various unreleased colors like these). For another, there are a few cheats regarding the water surface. There are some large hemispherical objects that are probably meant to represent rocks, but while at least one of them is a true hemispherical element, some of the others are clearly full spheres that are just embedded in the water layer, meaning at least one part would have to be cut to achieve that look. The cattails are another example of parts that intersect in the digital model that couldn’t work that way in real life without modifications.

    The overall presentation is really well done, and, as someone who designs almost exclusively in LDraw, I have zero issues with people making digital models and/or using Q elements in their designs. That said, I take issue with violating the physics of the brick in such a blatant matter. It feels dishonest, I guess.

  2. Exe Sandbox

    Hi Purple Dave, thanks for your comment :)

    One thing I wanted to clarify is that there are no intersecting pieces in this diorama.

    The spherical rocks above the water is actually a half spherical cockpit element but the hinge that sticks out faces away from the camera which makes it look a bit too perfectly sphere.

    The cattails is made using the technic pins connected to a shaft which is then connected to one of those pieces that minifigures regularly use to attach lightning to their hands and all that is clipped to a transparent 1×1 plate with clip. (I believe it is the weird use of transparent colors that makes it look like it’s intersecting)

    Using parts with colors that does not yet exist and violating a bit of physics is as far as I would go when I’m building.

  3. Purple Dave

    @ExeSandbox:
    Okay, I can see that the medium boulders would be 50747 canopies, and the larger ones would be 95198 canopies (in fact, some of the alternate shots show the hinges). I was thinking of the 41250 Duplo ball that was used in the NXT kit.

    However, I still think the cattails are a cheat. They appear to be minifig ski poles with the handles pointed up. I just checked, and the pokey bit at the other end is just a slightly larger diameter than a hat pin, so I’m not sure there’s any legal connection that can be made with them other than reversing one of the poles so they clip together. Have you actually tested it with real parts to see if it’s physically possible?

  4. Exe Sandbox

    @PurpleDave

    I don’t know by “ski poles” you mean SKI STICK 3M, W/Shaft O.32, which isn’t what I used. Here is the configuration that I used for the cattails:

    CONNECTOR PEG/CROSS AXLE (Tan)

    |
    V

    SHAFT 3M O.32 (and two other kinds of shafts) (Tan)

    |
    V

    3.2 shaft w/ knob (Tan)

    |
    V

    PLATE 1×1 W. UP RIGHT HOLDER (Transparent)

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