Commission project - Arkham Sewer

[Tom a.k.a. eastawat]

This isn't exactly a MOC but someone else's creation that I replicated as a commission, and I wanted to share the experience more than the build.

A few weeks ago while browsing reddit I came across a post asking for someone to replicate a model that the requestor had seen here on youtube - a sewer to go underneath set 76300 Arkham Asylum. He wanted it designed, instructions made, parts bought and then sent to him with a fairly limited budget of €400.

The top comment was along the lines of "there's absolutely no chance you'll find someone willing to do it for that"... Well, a combination of curiosity and spite for that dismissive commenter got the better of me and I offered to at least investigate the project. Of course, without designing the thing, you can't tell how much the parts will cost. But that's the fun part that I would do for free anyway - when the kids are asleep, often at least a couple of my evenings a week are spent designing in Bricklink Studio.

I guessed/hoped that there were about €250 worth of parts in the model, so I offered to do the work for a small fee of €100 (having established that he was in fact in the EU - definitely not arsed doing this work if I have to deal with sending bricks through customs somewhere). Admittedly I hadn't thought through how much work goes into making instructions - it's been a long time since I made any and I've never made them for something this size before. But I was happy to do this on the cheap, as it's my first real* commission and I'm just happy to get the experience. With shipping costs factored in we would still hopefully be under budget, with a little wiggle room.

We reached an agreement - I would design it, get a rough estimate of the Bricklink cost, and if he was happy to proceed at the estimated final cost, he would pay half of the total (my fee of €100 + estimated Bricklink cost) at that stage, then I would order the parts, make instructions and send him the parts and he would pay me the remainder. We discussed new or used parts (he was happy with used to stay within budget) and some rare parts (he said he could live without some of the rarer stickered parts if they made it much more expensive). I was also relieved to hear he didn't want the minifigs from the video included.

I think I had the design pretty much completed in 3 sittings. I work quickly in Bricklink Studio and even more so when I don't actually have to think much about design choices. It's almost an exact copy (at least as far as the visible parts go), though I did have to make a few small edits where the original designer had used some questionable building techniques.

A few checks on Bricklink and to my pleasant surprise, it was coming in at around €210 to €240 including shipping, even with some pretty rare stickered parts included and a rare Riddler question mark piece. None of these rare pieces exist in Bricklink Studio so plain unstickered tiles and a green curved bar were substituted into the virtual model as placeholders.

My client was happy to go ahead at that price. I received the first half payment and placed four Bricklink orders. Luckily everything came in at €202, from four EU sellers (I never bother with non-EU Bricklink purchases, not worth the hassle of potential customs fees and delays).

In the meantime I set to work on the instructions. The instruction maker in Bricklink Studio first requires parts to be placed into Steps in the virtual model just to establish the order of building, and then you go to the page editor where the real work begins, setting the view angle, zoom, creating callouts for sub-models etc. A painstaking task but very educational and I can now say I'm quite the expert on creating instructions.

As orders arrived (mostly without issue - one had two missing cheese slopes and a non-Lego plate that I replaced from my own collection and got a refund for - simpler all round than getting the seller to send replacements and I had plenty of spares) I began to worry that there would be mistakes in my instructions. I build all my MOCs in Bricklink Studio and then order the parts I don't have, and then build them from the virtual model, and invariably there are a few errors that I have to work around. Creating instructions meant the virtual model had undergone several extra rounds of rigorous inspection but still, I couldn't be completely sure it would be without errors or have structural issues. So I asked my client if he would mind if I built it first to check for errors. He agreed.

This was a great idea, as it made the whole experience much more satisfying, getting to see the actual model in the brick, and unsurprisingly it did expose a few small errors - a couple of steps in the instructions where one part was obstructing the placement of another part because they were in the wrong order, and one step where the view made it almost impossible to guess where exactly to place two 2x4 bricks. I built it over two evenings and disassembled it on the third evening. This also made it possible to provide numbered bags for constructions, as I disassembled it in reverse order, so hopefully that makes the building experience more enjoyable for my client.

An Post was saying that post would arrive in January, and we had originally agreed that it would take me a couple of months overall so January was to be expected, but since we were a few days from Christmas, my client said he would be happy to pay the extra cost of UPS Express shipping - which as it turned out was only €27, vs €21 for An Post. I let him know the final cost and he sent me the balance, and I boxed everything up and dropped it off at my local UPS access point yesterday; my client should be getting his sewer today.

Overall I definitely found it a worthwhile experience and enjoyed most of it, though the instructions did get a bit tiresome. The subject matter isn't to my taste, but like I tell my family members around this time of year, there's no such thing as bad Lego. I would make a MOC of the contents of the ACCA textbooks if you asked me to.

I've always been slightly interested in the possibility of the commission side of Lego as possible small side gigs (though I certainly wouldn't want to do more than a couple a year) and this has reinvigorated my interest. I've got a couple of half-designed local landmarks that, if I ever finish designing, I'll be approaching the owners/interested parties of to offer to build them. I'll try and make a bit of progress on these over Christmas.

Here are some photos of the build - sorry for the quality, the light was pretty poor.










*Technically my first commission was an orrery for my dad and my second was a duplicate copy of my ammonia train, also for my dad, but unpaid, so they don't really count :)