Gabe

This is quite amazing. The subject is great, and I love the profusion of plants - such a riot for the eyes! (in a good way, of course! ) The tiling on the floor is amazing as well. Just beautiful.

Thanks! My partner is always on at me to tackle Flinder's St station - yr right, it would be a heck of a challenge. I've seen some nice microscale versions done, and one lovely minifig scale building that was based on Flinders St, but what bugs me is that the colour ppl tend to chose for it is bright yellow - it just doesn't seem right. I've been thinking that nougat might be closer, but i'll need more bricks if i'm going to go that way. (A good excuse to buy another Battle of Alamut maybe?? ) Thankyou! Thanks LT. Part of me is already planning a full-width rebuild with a more realistic interior, while the rest of me is screaming "enough is enough! Move onto something new!" Thankyou! Perhaps the lamppost is a little prosaic, but it does tie the foreground and the middle ground of the dio together nicely, and adds to the realism of the scene. I really notice the difference when it's not there. It does tend to get in the way of some of my shots at certain angles though!

Now yr making me want to watch Time Team! Great little vig, and one of the best uses of the caveman that i've seen to date.

Nice review evilempire22! I've been waiting to get a look at this set. It looks great, i'm not convinced about some of those new weapons as weapons, but i'm sure i can come up with some other uses for them. The blacksmith is a standout figure too.

Thanks for the great review DarkFader! I'm not that into SW sets, but this one caught my eye for the ewoks (they look to be versatile minifigs, will prob look right at home in a castle landscape) and the tree parts. I'll be definitely waiting for a sale though.

Ok, so i recently went back and rebuilt the market building facade for an exhibition in Melbourne called "The Art of the Brick" by Nathan Sawaya - the Melbourne LEGO Users Group were invited to join the party with some of thier Melbourne themed MOC's. So i took the opportunity to make some changes to my MOC in the hope of improving it along the way: Here you can see the first and second verions side by side. I changed the windows from white to trans-black bricks (and some trans-clear 1 x 2 plates to make the SNOT sections fit - i was a little worried about how that would look, but i don't think it's too horrendous), changed the under-profile of the diagonal ledge, created an interior, changed the left wall from tan to red-brick, added a gate to the left wall and made a few changes to the minifig personnel. This image shows the red-brick wall. I am pretty pleased with the way this turned out. The interior. It's a bit cramped in the fish shops due to the reduced width of the building. But it's all moot anyway, as the model will be against the wall in the exhibition, and thus the interior won't be visible. Oh well! Anyway, i'd love to hear about what ppl think of the changes i've made. Do you think it's an improvement or not? There are more and (slightly) larger pics on my flickr, for those who might be interested. Thanks for looking, and for those Melbournians about, i highly recommend seeing "The Art of the Brick" at Fed square. (i got a sneak peek when i was setting up on the weekend - it looks great!)

There are a lot of things you can do to improve yr photography before you make the jump to a DSLR. Do you have a lightbox? Seriously, i can highly recommend them for photographing smaller MOC's, they help diffuse the light evenly and get rid of harsh shadows and glare. You can make them out of an old cardboard box, some white paper and some thin white cloth, so it's not expensive at all. Also, a couple of extra lamps would be a good investment - nothing fancy, just a couple of $15 cheapies from kmart or similar do the job. ps. Swinger's party! Oh you. It's a great little scene.

Wow! What a great MOC to bust out of yr dark ages with! I love the way you incorporated the MMV water wheel with the little aqueduct/race. Can't wait to see what you build next.

Lovely detail on the castle, but what really stands out to me is the rockwork - some really nice diagonal angles going on there. I love the little spiky tree as well!

You might want to have a squiz at the brick-built statues in my MOC "Temple of Amset-Ra" - it's in the Action forums. They ended up being quite posable, altough a little thin in places. Size-wise, they are about 2.5 minifigs tall.

Nice little storyline! I like yr use of the Anubis headdress, and the lighting is spot on. I'm undecided about the use of the sand though. Part of me is saying to myself; "but it helps it look realistic! I ought to like that!" but my gut reaction is just getting creeped out at the thought of sand getting through all yr bricks.

Great review! I particularly like yr final comic. I like this set, but probably won't get it - far too many sets already on my "to buy" list.

This is so cool. The arches over the top window are inspired, as are the cross beams in the window pane. The handcuffs are a cute detail too! I'm with KeilDaMan, i'd love to see it worked up, but i can understand that having a limited number of pieces restricts one to smaller builds.

Ooh, cool! I've never seen that baseplate before. Sorry about the Megabloks slur, and well played!

Haha, nice one! Red shirt Sparrow is pretty damn funny.

This was a quick build i made for the new series 4 surfer... i've been wanting to make a decent wave out of slopes for ages, but have lacked the parts in the right colours until recently. I'm pretty happy that i managed to get some discoloured blue slopes on Bricklink a while back, i think they add more nuanced shading to the water surface. I have a few more viewpoints on my Brickshelf. Cheers and thanks for looking!

Good point. It does depend on the type of wave though. Churned up or wind affected waves are more opaque, as are thicker swells. Also, that tranlucent effect is often dependant on high sunlight - you wouldn't necaccerily expect it in a storm at sea for instance. As to the practical considerations, inverted slope bricks don't come in trans-blue, and i am iffy about the transition between medium blue and trans dark blue as a gradation. So solutions using slopes could be quite challenging. I expect that i'll have a play around with different colour combos though, just to check it out.

Thanks everyone for yr kind comments. This vig was also a bit of a small test of sorts, i'm planning to scale it up later for a more extensive ocean/coastline dio. I'm going to have to go shopping for a stack more bricks before i do that though!

Well, "aborigine" simply means an indiginous person and is not specific to any region, so i'd say that the original title was fine as it was. If he had called it "Australian aborigine", that would be a different matter entirely. Also, your illustrative comparison was a little off, as RussianBear's vig is clearly not a parody. Anyway, enough of that. That's a cute little vig RussianBear, i'm curious about the little dragon/dinosaur.. Is it his pet? Will he have to share his fish with it??

Damn! That is coming together really nicely! The lights look intriguing. Can't wait to see yr next update - keep 'em coming!

Well, this set is starting to look a bit better than i originally thought. Great prints on the king and the horses, some brown slopes and greenery and some interesting pieces like the arches and the bottle. But as always, the price is the sore point. $40US will look something like $80 by the time it reaches Australia, and even at 20% off i wouldn't be tempted to get this. Going to be saving my pennies for the Mill Raid instead!

Wow... so much nice art in here! I especially like the cartoons, i've always wanted to try my hand at it, but i find the storytelling aspect of it quite intimidating. Most of my stuff is painting, i'm kinda semi-professional within that small creative area. I actually find playing with Lego to be very good at maintaining my "creative drive" when i'm having down periods with the painting. I've got a website for my paintings, feel free to check it out if yr interested. (It's still under construction btw, so some of the pages aren't populated yet) http://www.gabriel-thomson.com/

Wow, that's huge! So many nice details to take in, both inside and out... I was a bit sad to see that you removed the windmill though, that was one of my favourite bits! Anyway, congrats on completing such a massive and complex build.

Interesting. What is that giant rocky outcrop piece on top of the structure? It looks like a Megabloks piece...