The Lego Thread

[undamned]

I don't think we've ever had an official Lego thread here. We do now! I was thinking this thread could just be a general repository for anything of Lego interest, whether it be your own builds, cool news, cool videos, etc.

I grew up playing Legos (like most kids?), but now that I have a son old enough to appreciate them (3yo), I've been re-bitten by the Lego bug. He gets up early every morning so we have some time to play before I go to work. There's a used Lego store about 45 min. away, so every other week or so we make the trek over there to rummage through tons of Legos to find stuff we want. So much more fun than hopping on BrickLink or some other on-line source (and cheaper, too, depending on the pieces).

I'm working on a custom road-warrior-esque motorcycle right now. I'll post up when it's done. Just need a few more key pieces

Here's an aligator-based (is that a thing? It is now!) ship I made while on vacation recently. Reminds me of something from the Mahou series:

https://twitter.com/therealundamned/sta ... 3821675521

-ud

[Necronopticous]

I'll just leave this here...

[KAI]

Lego Gundam should be a thing

Spoiler

[Squire Grooktook]

I have a lot of castles. Including one of the oldest.

Actually I have tons and tons of the older sets, but the castle stuff is what I'm most proud of.

Oh and the huge collectors edition Millennium Falcon.

[undamned]

I'll just leave this here...

Wow, some amazing architecture, there!

Lego Gundam should be a thing

Spoiler

I ran across this video interview w/ a guy who built a 3 ft. tall Sazabi. Staggering work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKcsK2-ThUc

I have a lot of castles. Including one of the oldest.

Actually I have tons and tons of the older sets, but the castle stuff is what I'm most proud of.

Oh and the huge collectors edition Millennium Falcon.

Neat! My one and only castle set was the Black Monarch, which is probably floating around my mom's place somewhere

I've actually begun the fool's errand of slowly piecing together a USCS Millennium Falcon set
-ud

[the_last_shmupper]

Lego bricks are my cocaine. I had to quit, because I started to count all the money I'd spend per year on Legos. Most people would just buy one set. I'd often buy ten of one set. Growing up I had all sorts of sets, but as I was older, I'd only have Town sets because when I've spent how many thousands of dollars poured in, why waste money buying anything else?

I was pretty active on Brickshelf and people still email me about it.

I'd use third party sites like BrickLink for rare pieces and colors, such as making a semmi that would cost $10, I made it out of rare colors so it cost $75 in spare parts and shipping. But why buy enough to make only 1 when you can have 2 and really wow people that have no idea how rare the colors are for specific pieces?

Ya know how video game collectors keep the box? Imagine hundreds of Lego boxes, opened and unflattened. I've thought about selling them, because they just take up so much space. What really sucks is I've got some boxes from the mid 1980s. Sad part is someone wrote all over them with a marker.

Wanna know who got me into Lego? My grand mother. I looked up the date it came out, I would have been 2 years old. She gave me a choking hazard. Good job grandma!

[undamned]

Lego bricks are my cocaine. I had to quit, because I started to count all the money I'd spend per year on Legos. Most people would just buy one set. I'd often buy ten of one set. Growing up I had all sorts of sets, but as I was older, I'd only have Town sets because when I've spent how many thousands of dollars poured in, why waste money buying anything else?

I was pretty active on Brickshelf and people still email me about it.

I'd use third party sites like BrickLink for rare pieces and colors, such as making a semmi that would cost $10, I made it out of rare colors so it cost $75 in spare parts and shipping. But why buy enough to make only 1 when you can have 2 and really wow people that have no idea how rare the colors are for specific pieces?

Ya know how video game collectors keep the box? Imagine hundreds of Lego boxes, opened and unflattened. I've thought about selling them, because they just take up so much space. What really sucks is I've got some boxes from the mid 1980s. Sad part is someone wrote all over them with a marker.

Wanna know who got me into Lego? My grand mother. I looked up the date it came out, I would have been 2 years old. She gave me a choking hazard. Good job grandma!

Yeah, I see my addictive tendencies pop up in some of my hobbies, too. I've yet to do much digging on the 3rd party sites, but I may have to go that route if I simply can't find something at my local used Lego store.

Lately I've been particularly interested in mecha Lego builds and am really enjoying looking at Lu Sim's work: https://www.flickr.com/photos/messymaru/

This is probably my favourite from him: https://www.flickr.com/photos/messymaru ... otostream/

-ud

[Softdrink 117]

Oh damn, here we go.

I haven't built much in the last four years (due to college taking up so much of my time and relocating me away from my collection) but I was very active during high school. A couple of my builds were even featured on prominent LEGO blogs such as The Brothers Brick.

Anyways, some pics of some of my stuff:

Spoiler

Probably my most well known work in the LEGO community. A spaceship heavily influenced by various STG, but the design borrows most heavily from R-Type.


A small scale model of the R-9A Arrowhead.


A mecha. Was really fun to make, and is highly poseable... I should really make another one of these guys sometime.


A small cargo and maintenance mecha designed for a non-military mech contest. Heavily inspired by IZMOJUKI, which reamains a huge influence on me even all these years later.

I have something very large in the works, but at the current rate I'm building it'll take another couple years to finish. I only have about three days a year to work on it, and it's an absolutely massive project...

Spoiler

It's as long as my desk, and only about half done. Said desk is about 3.5 feet wide. It's what is known as a SHIP -- a Super Heavy Investment in Parts -- which is a classification used in some parts of the LEGO space community to describe ships that are over 100 studs in length. It weighs about 10lbs right now, and will likely weigh more than double that once it's finally done.

More of my stuff is on my flickr, although it's been buried behind my photography work (and a couple pixel sprite pieces, which are hilariously poorly scaled unless you view original size since the originals are like 35x35 px and flickr doesn't like that). Just a fair warning -- I haven't looked back at some of my older posts or comments in literally years, and may have said some very dumb stuff. Especially about STGs, since I was very new to the genre 4 or 5 years ago when I was building a lot more.

[brentsg]

My son and I are working on the new Ferrari F40 kit.

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Ferrari-F40-10248

I've actually picked up a couple of the recent Star Wars UCS sets and put them in hiding for my kid b/c he's not quite old enough to appreciate them. I figure they'll be gone by the time he is old enough, as with some of the recent UCS sets that are now thousands on Ebay.

My problem is space. I either need a bigger house, or a large purge of stuff.

[undamned]

Wow, nice work, Softdrink 117! I checked out your flickr, too

My son and I are working on the new Ferrari F40 kit.

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Ferrari-F40-10248

I've actually picked up a couple of the recent Star Wars UCS sets and put them in hiding for my kid b/c he's not quite old enough to appreciate them. I figure they'll be gone by the time he is old enough, as with some of the recent UCS sets that are now thousands on Ebay.

My problem is space. I either need a bigger house, or a large purge of stuff.

Haha, boxes tend to take up a load of space. At present, 95% of our lego stuff is loose/unsorted, so not much space is taken.

This is a few years old, but I just learned about it:



It's not actually sold as a Lego parts kit, but rather a book w/ info, decals, and build instructions:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2 ... a-in-legos

-ud

[soprano1]

This looks amazing and expensive, it's Hyrule's Castle from TP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Puc0v8bsSw

[KindGrind]

I used to have lot of Star Wars, but I sold most at a good price to buy video games instead.

I kept a few favourites, like Jabba's Palace / Rancor's Pit and a dozen of small sets so the kids can play with.

Pricy stuff, Lego, but very well-designed toys. If I had infinite funds I'd have a lot more.

I love the MOC creations some of you posted before. Hyrule Castle from TP and that explosion of building... Just amazing.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Some of those cool retro Lego Idea Building books from the late 1970s to the early to late 1980s dealing with Legoland and Technic themes sure fetch a pretty penny nowadays (including Legoland #6000 Idea Book with a slick set of speciality mini lego figurine stickers insert not found anywhere else circa 1980 & Lego Idea Book #226 circa 1982). Still have them in my Lego collection. Will have to see if my local Toys-R-Us has their shipment of the Lego Creator F-40 sets in -- instabuy indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[undamned]

Found this Gundam builder recently:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/matt_one/18280709420/

He works in LDD (Lego Digital Designer) a lot, but that's understandable when some of his mechs are upwards of 6k pieces. For those of you that don't know, if you can build it in LDD, you can build it in reality. Some people prefer it over requiring a massive collection in order to do large builds.

In other news, I'm still pecking away at a few builds. It's so hard for me to call something "done." I'll complete one rev. and then think "I wonder how it would look if I changed this area or used this other piece."

Softdrink 117 (and anyone else): any experience with opaque custom stickers? Transparent seems simple enough, but it would be nice to not be restricted to lighter color bricks, just so the stickers remain visible.
-ud

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I've used those water applied decals from old-school plastic mecha model kits (from the animes of Genesis Climber Mospeada and Special Armored Battalion Dorvack) -- they do apply well to lego parts (and for some added realism, they have that old/aged & cracked appearance) -- sure does look much better with using dedicated plastic mecha model based decals than going the custom sticker route imho + they adhere to the plastic much easier (& no overall shiny/glossy coat to mar the appearance either). The decals that I applied to my lego mecha suit was done back in 1986-1987, so it does have that cool aged decal overall look/feel/vibe going on. I know this is quite different from using the modern-day stickers that lego provides nowadays with it's current sets that use them.

One trick I've learned over the years when applying lego stickers, is to use a toothpick and apply the sticker to the end of it and sorta figure out in advance how the sticker will be placed on the desired lego piece (you only get one shot to apply it right the first time -- no second redo's whatsoever). It's doable in this day of age but takes a lot of patience and time to do it right the 1st time (especially when affixing one of the larger stickers on a Technic piece and the like).

And by using the old-school lego light bricks (sized 2x2x1) from the early 1980s (powered by an external lego battery box using 3 'C' type batteries), they do add a cool vibe when iilluminating red transparent lego pieces for added realism (this was before the advent of using modern-day flexible electro-luminescent wiring to do the internal lighting deed or even using fiber optic lighting for that matter, nowadays). It'd be a matter of using a set number of lego pieces to hide such wiring as not to mar the final/overall appearance of said lego model/diorama -- a little bit of ingenuity and improvisation goes a long ways when working with lego parts to get the job done.

Back in 1982, I did enter a lego building contest with just myself and another boy. I had built a red colored spaceship armed to the teeth with retractable wings/shields/landing gear and even a cool laser gun turret that spun 360 degrees in either direction. The other boy had built a castle but there wasn't any rhyme or reason to using a dedicated color-coordinated scheme (like as it was with my custom built spaceship fighter craft using red roof bricks and occasional gray colored pieces as shields) -- it was all crazy colors like that of an artist's mixed up easel if you will. We were told to come back in about 30 minutes and the judges would determine the winner. Came back 30 minutes later and found out that I won 2nd place and could choose up to $15 worth of legos (whilst the other kid got to spend a whopping $25 in credit towards any lego set his heart desired). I thought it was supposed to be judging on overall visual appearance, originality and careful use of said lego parts (but in reality, all those key issues/points "went out the window" during judging...I was stunned that I got 2nd place -- still better than 3rd place, right?). Of course, using lego parts from the late 1970s and early 1980s wasn't as specialized as they are nowadays, that's a given alrighty. You basically had to make do with what lego parts you had and improvise to get the custom model done -- more of a limiting factor (or say, a challenge) if that's all you had to work with back in those days.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[undamned]

After pecking away here and there this year, I finally finished a few builds

Here's the Mad-Max style motorcycle I mentioned previously (not sure what happened w/ the lighting. I plan on re-shooting this):

Spoiler

This one I actually completed before the above:

Spoiler

And this started out based on the previous motorcycle, but I added some classic space love

Spoiler

-ud

[Squire Grooktook]

That's so cool! Love seeing the OG spaceman alongside the sleeker new parts and design in the last one.

[undamned]

Thanks, Squire Grooktook!

Some of those cool retro Lego Idea Building books from the late 1970s to the early to late 1980s dealing with Legoland and Technic themes sure fetch a pretty penny nowadays (including Legoland #6000 Idea Book with a slick set of speciality mini lego figurine stickers insert not found anywhere else circa 1980 & Lego Idea Book #226 circa 1982). Still have them in my Lego collection.

I visited my mom's place last month and had a chance to dig through a bunch of my old stuff (G1 Transformers, Legos, a lot of good stuff in there!) and found one of those old idea books. It's funny how much I'd forgotten about what I did and didn't have. Some of the Lego stuff I didn't even recognize (Blacktron II, where they get all stupid with Trans-Neon Green, Red, and White? How is that even Blacktron?). The main thing I was interested in was my old space figures. I thought I had maybe 5-10, but when I got digging I found over 20!

I've used those water applied decals from old-school plastic mecha model kits (from the animes of Genesis Climber Mospeada and Special Armored Battalion Dorvack) -- they do apply well to lego parts (and for some added realism, they have that old/aged & cracked appearance) -- sure does look much better with using dedicated plastic mecha model based decals than going the custom sticker route imho + they adhere to the plastic much easier (& no overall shiny/glossy coat to mar the appearance either). The decals that I applied to my lego mecha suit was done back in 1986-1987, so it does have that cool aged decal overall look/feel/vibe going on. I know this is quite different from using the modern-day stickers that lego provides nowadays with it's current sets that use them.

One trick I've learned over the years when applying lego stickers, is to use a toothpick and apply the sticker to the end of it and sorta figure out in advance how the sticker will be placed on the desired lego piece (you only get one shot to apply it right the first time -- no second redo's whatsoever). It's doable in this day of age but takes a lot of patience and time to do it right the 1st time (especially when affixing one of the larger stickers on a Technic piece and the like).

Thanks for the tips! One thing I'd completely overlooked was just doing some old fashioned sticker-bashing. Just buy sticker sheets from other official Lego kits (from Bricklink or wherever) and get creative. I found some wonderful Classic Space logo stickers on the sheet from the recent "Benny's Spaceship!" set. They are opaque so they can be applied to any color brick without funky color bleedthrough.

And by using the old-school lego light bricks (sized 2x2x1) from the early 1980s (powered by an external lego battery box using 3 'C' type batteries), they do add a cool vibe when iilluminating red transparent lego pieces for added realism (this was before the advent of using modern-day flexible electro-luminescent wiring to do the internal lighting deed or even using fiber optic lighting for that matter, nowadays). It'd be a matter of using a set number of lego pieces to hide such wiring as not to mar the final/overall appearance of said lego model/diorama -- a little bit of ingenuity and improvisation goes a long ways when working with lego parts to get the job done.

I had a "Light & Sound" space set as a kid Cool blinky lights and sound effects was pretty exciting. I'd like to do some of my own modern lighting experimenting at some point.

Back in 1982, I did enter a lego building contest with just myself and another boy. I had built a red colored spaceship armed to the teeth with retractable wings/shields/landing gear and even a cool laser gun turret that spun 360 degrees in either direction. The other boy had built a castle but there wasn't any rhyme or reason to using a dedicated color-coordinated scheme (like as it was with my custom built spaceship fighter craft using red roof bricks and occasional gray colored pieces as shields) -- it was all crazy colors like that of an artist's mixed up easel if you will. We were told to come back in about 30 minutes and the judges would determine the winner. Came back 30 minutes later and found out that I won 2nd place and could choose up to $15 worth of legos (whilst the other kid got to spend a whopping $25 in credit towards any lego set his heart desired). I thought it was supposed to be judging on overall visual appearance, originality and careful use of said lego parts (but in reality, all those key issues/points "went out the window" during judging...I was stunned that I got 2nd place -- still better than 3rd place, right?). Of course, using lego parts from the late 1970s and early 1980s wasn't as specialized as they are nowadays, that's a given alrighty. You basically had to make do with what lego parts you had and improvise to get the custom model done -- more of a limiting factor (or say, a challenge) if that's all you had to work with back in those days.

Haha, I know that sense of loss. "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?" $15 worth of legos back then actually went a little further than it would today.

. . .

In other news, I just got blogged! http://thelegocarblog.com/2015/12/17/space-hog/ Yay!
-ud

[Pixel_Outlaw]

I was a kid who grew up with the color themed space sets.
I'm talking like Blacktron, M Tron, Ice Planet, Space Police, Exploriens etc. I guess the early 90's sets.

One thing I kind of dislike about modern Lego (not that I play with it anymore) is that it seems to be moving away from standard simple angular pieces and towards pieces that are so heavily themed that they might stand out if used in your own creations. If you go back to the early 90's sets they had some custom pieces but they still had pieces and colors that were fairly standardized looking so you could easily build from multiple sets.

Also I had some fixation with colored transparent pieces as a child.
Space theme sets of that era contributed with their neon colored cockpits.
They just looked so damn cool.
Lego models photographed against that laser grid on the box with soft photography...ah memories.