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legoman19892

Todd McFarlane tries to make "construction" toys.

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http://www.nerdist.c...lding-toy-sets/

Do they look nice? Yes. The gritty realism is pretty cool. Although, Mega Blok does a nice job with Call of Duty already.

Does he know a good way to package things? Probably. His figure pack plan with the main character plus a few extra guys is cool. I think he already has the action figure license so anything seems fair game.

Does he understand what a construction toy should be? So far no. From the pictures, there is almost zero re-purposing potential to make something new with your own imagination. All he wants is the gimmick of having to construct the scene.

Topless Robot: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2014/07/todd_mcfarlane_hilariously_misunderstands_appeal_o.php

I think if McFarlane doesn't include directions his sets will be better. Market them as a puzzle.

Edited by legoman19892

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Seriously, what's the point in these pseudo brick sets? IMO McFarlane misses the point what makes LEGO being a creative toy.

Also "nippples"...

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I think Mcfarlane should focus on making sure his action figures don't crumble to dust first, I'm not sure who will be doing Halo 5's figures, but if they are anything similar to previously, there is still a lot of QC issues to deal with.

A proper way to go about this would be to focus on keeping the "figures" highly detailed and articulate, and the focus of the building set being a diorama or a display stand for the figure(s). That's sort of what that picture shows already, so we will see where this goes.

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I logged in just to chat about this. An interview with him was posted on AICN today, and he just totally misses the point of what is interesting about LEGO.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67922

“Why can't these blocks look cooler? Why do they all have to look bit-mapped?” The problem with their builds, for me, is that the closer I get to the build the less realistic it looks. There's some interesting builds out there and if I'm across the room, it's kind of convincing. I go “Wow, look at that. That's kinda cool.” As I get up to it I see it's just plastic blocks. It's not convincing to me. I've got three kids and from time to time we take them to places like Lego Land or Comic Conventions or wherever they have those things where people build giant things out of a million blocks. Again, from 100 feet it's cool as heck. Even for me, as an adult. But the closer I got the less cool it got. I just wanted to turn that equation on its head. I want my stuff to look cooler the closer you get to it because then you're going to see all the detail.

So much of what makes LEGO cool is the abstract quality of it. I never bought it because it was 'real.' These sets are infinitely less MOC-able than the average Star Wars set.

McFprison3_large.jpg

McFgovfloor_large.jpg

The guy just doesn't understand the point of building blocks, or else it's just him laying on PR shill. Either way, my opinion on the guy doesn't change:

McFarlane is an egotistical douchebag. He has done some good with the quality of his sculpts when his toy line first came out, and McFarlane Toys really did up the quality of all action figures when they broke out, but I just find him so loathsome overall. Not worth listing the reasons why, since it's irrelevant to the topic.

Anyway, this 'block' toy won't be cutting into LEGO's profits whatsoever. It'll be cutting into the diorama market, and maybe the plastic model market.

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McFarlane to produce 'realistic' bricks - will you be getting them?

McFarlane are releasing highly detailed brick-built sets. The first releases will be zombie themed: http://brickfanatics...n-to-lego-toys/

According to Todd McFarlane, teen and adult fans of construction sets want as much detail as possible: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67922 . I doubt they do. Sure, McFarlane may have hit upon a small niche but I don't think many AFOLs will defect to McFarlane. McFarlane's new line may appeal to teen/adult fans of some Megablah licensed lines and to diorama modellers, but that's perhaps the extent of it. I reckon AFOLs like the stylised shapes and colours of LEGO and relish the creative challenge of building recognisable MOCs from those pieces.

What do you think? Will some of your spend that would have gone on LEGO be going to McFarlane's modulars instead?

Edited by AmperZand

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Hmm, I don't despise this as much as I do with the obvious clones.

I think detail is a two-sided sword. On the one hand it makes things realistic and precise. On the other hand, this is exacly what limits use and compatibility. A very detailled part like these printed tiles can serve a handful of purposes while a single dark gray tile can be used for thousands of things.

I won't spend money on this I guess. The level of detail is so high that it looks odd if mixed with lego. It is already difficult to mix detailed lego with less detailed lego (put a brickbuilt dragon and a molded dragon in the same army and this will look weird), so why should we make this even harder?

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I view these toys as having more in common with plastic model kits than with the LEGO bricks we all know and love.

I could see products like this being very popular with the sort of people who do table top war-games (and in fact a line of "brick-built" highly detailed scenery would probably sell VERY well to that crowd as something that could be easily customized, modified when its "damaged in battle" etc) but I cant see too many AFOLs being interested in it.

I for one have no plans to abandon the brick :)

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I don't like them, but then again action figures and war dioramas and all that stuff has never done it for me. And I'm not a big fan of the attitude that makes him say, and I quote:

"I want a product that when you're done building it you don't have to put it in your bedroom because you're a fan of something, but you know you just built a toy. I want something that when you're done with it you're proud enough to put it in your living room for everybody to see."

Just because he wouldn't want to put it in his living room it doesn't mean that everybody feels that way. If I added his "sense of realism", I most certainly wouldn't feel that it was a LEGO build anymore.

Then again, that's probably what all the "legos aren't what they used to be back when I was a kid" people think of the stuff we build with our "modern" bricks. Except it's all still LEGO and they have no idea what they're talking about, of course :)

So it'll be interesting to see how this goes. I'm sure some people will like it, but personally I don't think this will appeal to AFOLs in general. I'd also like to see the scenes when the first builders with McFarlane bricks try to get their stuff accepted at a LEGO event. I feel heated discussions coming up...

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It looks more like an easier way do highly detailed miniatures rather than being a direct competitor to LEGO. I don't know much about model building but I know it's a pretty involved process. These don't have the same level of complexity but still look good.

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If it's going to be realistic, why bother making it a brick system? Why not just sell the completed model instead? Part of Lego's charm is its rebuildability. I admit Lego has gotten somewhat away from that, but most of us should remember the alt-models they used to display on the backs of boxes: "Hey kids, here's some other stuff you can build!" This stuff looks like one model only.

Also, I didn't realize McFarlane was still around.

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Also, I didn't realize McFarlane was still around.

He's stll president of something at Image comics, despite being almost universally reviled as a comicbook creator. He must have made a ton of money in the 90's.

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I used to have a bunch of McFarlane action figures (or whatever they are) 10 years ago. I don't know if things have changed much, but their quality control was pretty miserable back then. They break easy and have a hard time standing up on their own (although interlocking block systems would probably take care of that, I guess). Plus, their high level of physical detail makes them a pain to keep clean if you skip dusting for a week.

I mean, it's a neat idea, but I'll pass.

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So they look like preprinted plastic models? Where's the fun in that? Although the fencing and those towers might be useful for tabletop war gamers.

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Taking another look at these--they look realistic, but also very "patterned"--perhaps an unintended effect of the fact that it's a building system. Take that scene with Daryl on the motorcycle: the road looks incredibly organized for what's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic road.

I wonder if this is sort of an "uncanny valley" effect of applying realism to a brick system. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's normally applied to robots and CGI animation. The idea is that the more realistic you make artificial life appear, the less humans are able to be fooled by it. For example, in the movie The Polar Express, people complained that the CGI characters looked weirdly artificial even though they were incredibly detailed and based on real human movement. I kind of get the same feel from these Walking Dead sets. They look very realistic, but also so organized that I'm not fooled by them.

I think one thing that's always separated Lego from clone brands is that it's generally avoiding unnecessary realism to its sets, even its highly detailed ones. Lego always maintains its "house style" of bright, consistent colors and mostly using its own pieces to simulate what an object is supposed to look like. If you look at a model like the new Mini Cooper, it's not a precise model of the real car. It's a Lego model of the car. It uses Lego parts to approximate the car, but it still uses pieces like the traditional switch for the antenna and a minifigure skate for the door handle. If Lego wanted to go for ultimate realism, it would have manufactured brand-new parts for the Cooper. To my knowledge, it didn't.

A lot of clone brands insert "realism" into a brick-like environment, and it never quite jibes up. I remember 10 years ago, I bought one of those Transformers "Built to Rule" sets and was very dissatisfied with it. It was too limited in what I could do with it--you either made a pretty accurate model of the vehicle, or a lousy, bricky model of the robot, and it didn't cleanly transform the way a toy model would have. Lego doesn't fake that sort of thing--it makes an effort to have everything maintain its "Lego" feel.

Edited by ResIpsaLoquitur

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I'm a modelmaker. I spend all day in work making models from scratch for all types of reasons. If that guy Macfarlane thinks the models in those pics are realistic then he needs to check his scale ruler again. The figures are way too small for most of the surroundings they have been placed in. Check the size of the holes in the chainlink fence..the sheer hugeness of the door in the tower, the over sized crash rail on the road side....I could go on.

I guess there will be a market for them but anyone who already makes their own models will notice the figures are about 25% to small as they are. the paint finish on them is just ok if you are a wargamer type of painter but he doesn't say if they are prepainted or the builder has to paint them. The Lego grid system suits the Lego world but when was the last time you saw asphalt laid in a grid in a realistic model.

He sounds like he is expecting people to by his stuff and use it with their existing Lego system but i don't see that happening. If i wanted my Lego floors to look more realistic and like old worn wooden planks it would be real easy to do. But then they are stuck being planks. If he thinks model Makers will buy his stuff and combine it with Lego to make dioramas, he has another problem, and that goes back to scale. The average door in the real world measures just a tad under 2 meters high (2000mm) the average Lego door is 57mm high, 2000 / 57=35.08 so giving a scale of 1:35. There are no model production companies that work to that scale so getting extra accessories to suit your diorama would be next to impossible unless you scratch build them yourself. So if you have to build the stuff anyway, why bother buying the stuff in the first place? Makes no sense to me.

I don't think he realizes just how fussy model makers can be, and as a fussy builder i already know i would have no use for any of the stuff I've seen in those pictures.

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Wow. I just read the full interview in the second link. Todd doesn't get Lego at all.

I can't accept that if you give me a piece that's ten by ten and is brown and has a hundred nipples on it and you put it in front of a dog house or something then that is dirt. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's this supposed to be? Dirt. What do you mean it's dirt? “But, Todd... it's brown.” Dude, there are a lot of things in this world that are brown, I wouldn't necessarily call them dirt, though. You're saying that I have to accept if you take this exact same piece and paint it black then that now is asphalt and if you paint it green that's now grass? I reject that concept. If you want me to accept that is grass then make it look like grass! There's nothing stopping you from making it look like grass. There's nothing stopping you. It's just plastic. You've just chosen not to do it.

No, Todd, Lego users don't work like that. Maybe kids do--we have a few of those 32 x 32 green baseplates, and yes, they look acceptably like grass to an eight year-old. Older users, however, know how to dress up something so it can look like "dirt." For example:

1363635383m_SPLASH.jpg

Yes, that looks like a landscape despite the "hundred nipples." Todd doesn't understand the "house style" that MOCers employ.

I have no problem with detailed models, and good luck to him in this latest venture. If he thinks he's going to crack the market of AFOLs who like to make detailed models using greebles and bricks, he's mistaken. I would imagine that most AFOLs would reflexively reject these models as being entirely anti-creative.

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“Why can't these blocks look cooler? Why do they all have to look bit-mapped?” The problem with their builds, for me, is that the closer I get to the build the less realistic it looks. There's some interesting builds out there and if I'm across the room, it's kind of convincing. I go “Wow, look at that. That's kinda cool.” As I get up to it I see it's just plastic blocks. It's not convincing to me. I've got three kids and from time to time we take them to places like Lego Land or Comic Conventions or wherever they have those things where people build giant things out of a million blocks. Again, from 100 feet it's cool as heck. Even for me, as an adult. But the closer I got the less cool it got.

Not to sound overly harsh (I do want to sound harsh, but not overly so :tongue:) but, isn't this statement rather... no, quite dumb?

Christ, I didn't think I'd ever see Lego criticized like I do video games nowadays. I guess the "it's not realistic enough" complaint has bled into my second hobby too. :sceptic:

They look like "just plastic blocks" because that's what they are. And guess what? They can be used to make about anything.

And as Speedy said, I don't see this giving Lego any competition. Actually, I don't see these selling very much period. Certainly not as successful as most clone brands.

Edited by Sir Walter Maugham

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I'm a modelmaker. I spend all day in work making models from scratch for all types of reasons.

Cool! What sort of stuff do you do? Anything we might have seen in films or on telly?

the paint finish on them is just ok if you are a wargamer type of painter but he doesn't say if they are prepainted or the builder has to paint them.

I believe they're prepainted.

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Like alot of people have suggested, these bricks look too detailed and/or out of place with Legos. I just don't see how this will help or support Lego fans anymore than MegaBloks has. Te age demographic also doesn't help as these are more geared to adult themes.

I see these as nice customizable accessories for action figures, with limited use in the Lego world.

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