AmperZand

LEGO's blocky nature and limited colour palette make recreating the natural world challenging. But you have overcome those limitations in your great depiction of the trees and water. Your diorama is excellent overall but especially in your portrayal of the hardest things to create in LEGO. Nice one! Incidentally, if you're willing to go non-purist, BrickFortress do top quality articulated short legs.

True, but that'll be really easy to mod. The engines or whatever they're supposed to be are designed to fold away so can be hidden. Besides, as they're non-structural in the sense of not supporting the rest of the build, they can be removed or replaced with something that looks more organic. I was planning on using the dragon as a giant terrestrial lizard, but if I ever decided to make it aerial, that is where I would attach the wings.

Thanks. Have you managed to obtain one or do you work for LEGO? Can you please provide a picture of just the octopus head/armour part?

I was hoping it might be separate, but I have a bad feeling that it's a single dual-moulded piece. I zoomed in on the picture and the highly graduated pixellation from the dark orange of the octopus head to the pearl dark bley of the armour's right pauldron suggests it's one piece. Also, if they could be separated, the octopus head without the armour would sit oddly high with quite some space between it and the shoulders. I'm not saying separate pieces is impossible, just unlikely.

With some small cosmetic modding and just an iota of imagination, I'm planning on using the Ninjago Movie mech dragon (pictured below) as a real beast. Truth be told, there often isn't much difference between LEGO's mech monsters and how you would brick build the same creature. I converted Flinx's phoenix from the Chima range to make it into an actual phoenix; not much modding was required.

Cool! There's a LEGO store promo that I'm after starting in August, so the timing is perfect. Thank you to @dimaks13 and @J4ck for your replies.

Apologies if this has been discussed already or is widely known (except by me!) but do we have a European release date for the movie sets? I understand the movie itself is scheduled for late September, so I assume the sets will be out in the run-up to the film hitting theatre screens, but by how long?

I appreciate that the OP has a particular look in mind, but if you're willing to consider fantasy armour rather than sci-fi armour for your Batman, you have quite a few options. There's Excalibur Batman: Or you could MOC one from parts (sorry about the non-Batman stuff in this picture):

If you used an actual Sharpie, rubbing alcohol, A.K.A. isopropyl alcohol, will take it right off without damaging the print. Isopropyl alcohol can be tricky to find depending on where you live. If it's not easily available, try a clear sanitiser hand gel with "Alcohol Denat." as its main ingredient, Cuticura for example. If you're worried about long-term effects of any residual gel, you can wash off any excess with water.

I'm not aware of anyone doing a double bass. BrickForge do a violin though only one colour (dark tan) is in stock at the time of writing. I don't know of any modern harps, but BrickWarriors do a lyre in various colours.

@mocbuild101 I take your general point about more fruit being required. If you don't mind a bit of non-purity, BrickWarriors do bunches of grapes in a choice of colours.

@Eggyslav I don't think BrickForge do or have done a rapier. Do you mean BrickArms? They do one. It's cup hilt though. BrickArms definitely do a scalpel. LEGO, BrickArms and BrickWarriors all do syringes, not a surgical tool per se but something commonly found in a surgical theatre.

This thread got me thinking about what minifigure weapons and accessories don't exist, but really should. I don't mean re-colours of existing parts. I mean objects that aren't currently made for minifigures either by LEGO or a third party (BrickWarriors, BrickForge, SI-DAN, Kre-O etc) but would be particularly useful. What weapons/accessories would you like to have? For the purposes of this thread, let's imagine that 3D printing isn't an option and we have to rely on LEGO and injection moulding third parties .

LEGO make the umbrella pictured below. There are very few accessories like it with a curved handle. The reason is the shape of a minifigure's hand. If the handle were tightly curved (like the umbrella's) but the bar were uniform diameter (unlike the umbrella that has a tapering handle), the end of the handle would protrude between the 'fingers' of a minifigure's hand forcing it open slightly and stressing the plastic which could break the hand. You might be surprised by the accessories that have never been made either by LEGO or a third party. As far as I know, there's no candle for example. LEGO uses a white cylinder brick (pictured immediately below) but that's disproportionately large even for a system that often ignores scale. I prefer to use the string pictured, cutting it so that the grips are candles and the string, wicks. Pictures of umbrella, round brick and string c/o BrickLink.

I tried that when I originally got the claw, but it works neither aesthetically (it protrudes too far from the foot and therefore looks funny) nor functionally (the minifigure can't stand straight). I don't have a picture of it, I'm afraid.