Discovery One

Sam the Sham

Here are some shots of the Lego Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey that my son and I completed today. Biggest piece I've ever made: 6 feet long, 3,873 pieces.

shedweller

That is simply awesome! Well done.
Could you give us a little background to this? Is it pure custom made, for example? It's hardly a set is it??

Sam the Sham

shedweller wrote: »

That is simply awesome! Well done.
Could you give us a little background to this? Is it pure custom made, for example? It's hardly a set is it??

It's not a set. It's a MOC created by a genius lego designer named Jason Allemann in 2003-2004. He was kind enough to draw up and post instructions for anyone to use on his web site: http://www.truedimensions.com/lego/customs/2001/

PDF: http://www.truedimensions.com/lego/customs/2001/2001discovery.pdf

The biggest challenge was assembling all the pieces (and paying for them!). Between Rebrickable and Bricklink, it wasn't too hard.

Because Allemann built his in 2003, he used mostly light grey pieces. That colour got replaced with "light bluish grey" in 2004. My model is built mostly in light bluish grey since it would cost a fortune to build it in light grey now. But a few pieces (e.g. the quarter saucer panels at the back of the command module) don't exist in light bluish grey and others (the big radar dish) cost €20 in light bluish grey, so there's some light grey mixed in. It doesn't really spoil anything in my view.

Also, I changed the pods from grey to white (as they are in the film) and added Dave Bowman and Frank Poole microfigures, which are closer to the right scale than minifigures.

Sam the Sham

Here's another 2001-themed build my son and I just did. This one is also originally by Jason Allemann but there were no plans for it so I just reconstructed it from photos. One difference between his and ours: he was building in 2004, so only had monkeys (with tails!) for his. But in 2011, the "Gorilla Suit Guy" minifig was released, so I used those instead. Which is good, because, after all, in 2001 the apes were played by people in monkey suits...