General Details of the Daily Planet

The finished model of the Planet consists of a whopping 5,870 LEGO elements and stands 29.4 inches (74.6 cm) high not including the MILS plate that it rests on. It follows the basic idea that many official modular sets follow in that the baseplate represents “street level” with steps up into the building, similar to how real world buildings are designed. There are also the standard LEGO Technic connector blocks for those wishing to connect the building to other modulars in their cities.

After the model was designed and built, I flirted with the idea of submitting it to LEGO Ideas, a submission site where aspiring LEGO set designers could post their designs and have the broader community support and vote for them. A very small percentage of submitted designs do eventually become official LEGO sets, but one of the constraints of submissions is that they consist of fewer than 3,000 elements, and the Planet was at almost twice that size (though I did consider removing or changing the floor tiles to see if I could get it under this limit). Further, I wasn’t sure based on history that LEGO would ever be willing to create a DC set that was so large and elaborate. In short, I think it’s something that’s interesting to a small enough group of fans that I’d never get it through the process successfully.

I’ve already mentioned a few of the elements I wanted to have including the famous “stair step” exterior, and the Chrysler Building-esque dome supporting the giant globe at the top, but in addition to these I also had a list of other features I wanted:

• Lobby globe like was shown in the 1978 movie.
• Face-to-face desks in the “bullpen” for Lois and Clark.
• Roof access where Lois could go to smoke or take a ride with Superman, including the roof access structure where Clark (finally) took flight in the finale of Smallville.
• A copy machine/room.
• Break room.
• Janitor closet for Clark to change in.
• Perry White’s office.
• Desk for Jimmy.
• Office details like water coolers.
• A store room with boxes of papers.

Playability & Interfloor Access

Ostensibly, one of the original goals for the model was that it have access to allow our son to play inside of it. Several approaches occurred to me, including each floor having a hinged back that would open to, or a “clamshell” design that would allow the model to be split in half so half of each floor could be on one side of the hinge while the other would be on the opposite side of the hinge. What I couldn’t see immediately was that how I designed inter-floor access would determine what I could do around playability.

As I was trying to decide on the playability aspects, I was also starting to think about whether tI should have an elevator or stairs between each floor. I knew that if I had an elevator I’d want it to be functional, preferably motorized using one of the many LEGO motors.

For quite some time, I clung to the idea of having an elevator on the back center of each floor (the elevator couldn’t be off-center left or right because the building was stair-stepped as it went up, a design feature I wasn’t willing to part with.

I tried several designs for elevators, but in order to make them functional I would have had to build room in the model for the shaft, guides, etc. The loss of floor space, particularly on the upper floors, led to to the conclusion that I’d have to take the stairs… literally and figuratively.

The design of the stairs and where to place them though also vexed me to a point. If they were all going to be on the rear right (as they are in the first floor), they wouldn’t line up just as an elevator shaft could not.

At the end of the day, I decided that I didn’t need a dedicated stairwell that ran from the top floor down. Instead, I’d just start on the right rear on the first floor, and then alternate left rear, right rear up to the final floor.

This in turn made me realize that having a clamshell design to open would make placing the stairs very difficult. Having backs of each floor that open would be a bit easier, but still quite challenging, and I was worried about the overall impact to the details if I did add that. In the end I decided to forego playbility to a degree to get all the fun elements in that I felt would make the model special.

Custom Printed Tiles

When I started the project I didn’t plan to have any custom tiles printed, and I intended to leverage only official LEGO elements. For signage like on the front I found the choice I had very constraining. I also know how well received stickers in LEGO sets are by many folks, including me so I decided to look around to see if I could get a limited set of tiles custom printed. There are lots of companies that are willing to do custom printing but many have a minimum size for orders due to the labor intensive work required. After reaching out to a number of them, I was surprised to find a company in my own backyard.

I live in the SF Bay Area, and joined BayLUG, our regional LEGO User Group. One of the members, Dan, owns a promotional printing company, PromoTec, and was already doing LEGO element printing for the club.

After chatting with him and coming to understand what he needed to do the printing, I resolved to have not only signage for the model done, but also custom “newspaper” tiles to display on the walls of the models lobby, as well as in the printing press room. Dan did have a minimum order of $200 worth of printing, and I’d have to buy the LEGO tiles to print on, and mount them to baseplates to make them ready for him to print on.

This meant printing many more elements than I needed for my model, but I decided to go ahead to do the printing, and then sell the overstock. It was a risk of course, but in the end I’m super glad that I did it; Dan’s printing is first rate, and it afforded me the opportunity to learn to do graphical design at a much smaller scale than I had ever done before. We’ll look at how I created the artwork for Dan on another page in this guide.

As a small aside, if you’re interested in getting some of the newspaper tiles or signage for your own model you can find them for sale on The Lunar Shadow website.

Next we’ll look at each floor and how it evolved.