ummester
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Everything posted by ummester
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That could be it - perhaps I should re-submit with only the blue truck and find out? I have noticed that the only military style planes up on ideas are in bright colours, where as spaceships/mechs etc can be very earthy in colour scheme - very fine line indeed. I picked the tan colours for the look of rust and dust, like the vehicle in the film - they aren't currently available but the blue truck colours are.
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That's not a bad idea MAB - which I think is also a fair trade off. Some folks like minis, so it saves them buying the set and get's me parts. 'Always held to the notion of fair trades in all my dealings' - sure I heard that in a TV show once :)
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The older ones were more sets, where the newer ones a generally a model with some collectable figs.
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That must take you ages. Here Eurobricks even has a thread on it http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=41993 Another useful piece of software for part pricing is Brickficiency http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=82975 Be warned that, with a large number of parts, Brickficiency can take a looooong time. Once you have exported a part list with LDD Manager and loaded it into your Bricklink wanted list, you can sort your wanted items by stores with unique lots, so can cruise around Bricklink filling your cart and checking the price - just don't check out because once you do it's a sale. Brickficiency helps by sorting smaller lists of harder to find parts into the cheapest combinations and making you aware of stores with specific parts you may be looking for - it interrogates the entire Bricklink database before giving you results. Oh, also, read the Bricklink stores conditions carefully before you check out - they may have lot rules and the like that you have to follow. I have found all Bricklinker's I have dealt with to be honest and provide good service (not to say none are dodgy but I have never encountered them). The only thing I have run into is slight language barriers - don't take it to heart if any communication seems abrupt, English is a second language to some of the really good sellers out there.
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Very cool MOC.
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Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
That's interesting rodiziorobs - I didn't know that and now it all makes perfect sense to me why and how the minifg became the flagship of LEGO elements. Of course LEGO bricks still feel nicer, build better and clutch with more power than the others :D And I agree that the LEGO female should be a thing onto itself and not so subjected to the scrutiny of real people. -
I think the original is the best to minifg scale and the new one is the closest in accurate shape, out of the box. I only have the middle one and I've MOCed it to a very accurate shape, rebuilt it actually - probably not much of the original left :D But it annoys me that it is too big. One day I might get around tho trying to reproduce the shape accurately at the originals size.
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Why don't they make water effects with smooth tiles and slopes, to better represent the texture?
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Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
By your own points raised above klinton - which I thought were very good, BTW, this comes down entirely to personal preference. Of course, as a generic face, the smiley can not cater for humanised characterisation - only human representation. Ultimately, as was raised in another thread, I guess it is TLGs purpose to make sales and more the parents purpose to define how their children play. If humanised minifgs sell, it's in LEGOs best interest to produce them and, if a parent wants gender neutral play for their children, they should supply the children only with smileys and blank torsos, rather than campaign for specific minifg design. -
Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Definitely - the classic smiley and blank torsos are still available. Depending on the build, I also like to include specialised minifgs - look at my avatar:) He's currently my favourite minifig assembly because I just find he has character - he's the confident clown from a large piratical MOC, a combination of bits from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Prince of Persia and Pirates of the Caribbean. The crux of this whole conversation, I thought, was about finding the best way to remove gender bias from creative play for our children. I find the solution to that is supremely simple - remove gender bias from play elements, don't try to represent either - it's just too hard to keep everyone happy all of the time. Of course, LEGO found it was losing the female audience with that approach but I think the answer to this is supremely simple also - girls don't have the same biological predisposition to construction as boys. Yes, it's a generalisation - girls can make great builders and all women are entitled to the same employment opportunity as men - I'm just saying that, on average, there are biological differences that prevail and perhaps LEGO is a toy concept that will always appeal more to boys than girls, no matter what is changed, because it is based on construction. -
Bricklink is more tailored towards filling a LDD MOC order, I find. There are some useful programs, like LDD manager, that can help with sorting part lists for large MOCs. A word from personal experience - try to over order. Unless it is a particularly large or expensive part, it never hurts to get extras and generally doesn't change the postage price or overall order price by that much.
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Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
More gender neutral is a solution to stop people passing criticism, one way or the other. I do think that there is too much emphasis on the minifg overall, that LEGO has become too humanised because of this. There was a totally non biased purity to the singular smiley face that was available originally - allowing the child to imagine the plastic representation of a human as whatever character they preferred. I used to imagine that some of my CS astronauts were men and some were women, depending on what Sci film, TV series, or book I was enjoying at the time. I feel the modern minifig does subtract from this allowance for versatility. -
A controversial pachyderm. Raiders of the Lost Ark sets also had non Nazi, Nazi minifigs. What I think this idea needs are some allied troops on horseback - then it can be a reimagining of WW2 meets the battle of Pelennor fields - commentary on how Tolkien was inspired by world events.
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Blondie Wan - PC values are Politically Correct values, toys that cater to concepts like sexual equality, ethnic minority representation and so on. It was suggested to me by a friend that this has become a stronger factor in how toys are marketed and purchased in the US. Personally, I don't care what the model is of - it can be a dinosaur, disabled person, panzer tank or flower bed - what I care about is it's aesthetic value - how interesting it looks to build and how good I think it would look on display. I will try and support ideas that I find extremely good, even if I don't find the build aesthetically appealing, though my preference is for how it looks and how I can imagine it sitting on display.
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72 minifignick (2 votes) 32 yatkuu (1 vote) 74 SpaceySmoke (1 vote) 144 moctown (1 vote) 151 greg3 (1 vote) 203 viracocha (1 vote) 249 jaapxaap (1 vote) 26 msx80 (1 vote)
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I think there might be a lot of US supporters Artanis - explaining the attraction to NASA builds. Also, a friend suggested to me today that the placing of PC values on toys might be primarily a US trend, which could also explain the attraction to projects with that slant. If you look around, there are some very attractive models up there, like these 2 (also not mine) which I would buy without hesitation, build and display but they just aren't supported. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/59212 https://ideas.lego.com/projects/572
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Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Tyres are a manufactured (so an object), though leaves and rats are a naturally occurring. Rats are even mammals, exactly the same as us. My point was that humans are so human centric and marginalise other life because of it and that the LEGO community seems so minifig centric that it marginalises other aspects of the toy. -
Female minifigures - do we need the hourglass torso and make up?
ummester replied to williejm's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Do LEGO leaves look exactly like every possible combination of real leaves that occur in nature? Do LEGO tyres accurately represent real life tyres? What about the LEGO animals? Is every animal represented and are those that are represented accurate? A curved torso with breast shadows is a closer approximation of a human female torso then what the LEGO rat is to a rat - the LEGO rat looks like a possum and is the relative size of a cat or small dog to a minifigure. If we can be ok with an oversized deformed rat, why can't we be ok with female minifigs the way they are? -
LEGO is destroying creative play according to this article.
ummester replied to legoman19892's topic in General LEGO Discussion
See I would say yes but compromised, legoman. Yes, each box is still a pile of potential creation but it isn't sold as primarily that now. But no, it's defiantly not destroying creative play - it is one of the few toys that still allows it. BTW - don't take offence anyone - I like LEGO but also like playing the devils advocate when mindsets seem locked in a certain way of thinking. It's creative discussion, intellectual building It's too easy for everyone to go - 'nah, the lady is full of it, LEGO is cool, how dare she criticize it!' Every opinion is valid and I think it is better to fully understand something than just blindly appreciate it. -
LEGO is destroying creative play according to this article.
ummester replied to legoman19892's topic in General LEGO Discussion
I don't think the question with this is whether people are as creative as they want to be - sure, if AFOLs have more creative drives, they MOC more than those that don't. If a child is more creative, they will be more likely to pull a set apart and rebuild it than one that isn't. I thought the question raised (or criticism presented) was do LEGO sets now inspire children to create as much as they used to? The LEGO movie should certainly inspire children to create but do the sets, or are they tailored more to the idea of buy one, need them all? Collectible minifgs for instance. I personally don't think it takes a 'child expert' to work it out and agree that the article is more sensationalist than reasoned (wonder if she has even had her own children and played LEGO with them?). Yet it seems fairly obvious to me that LEGO has become much more of a collectible action toy following it's rebirth in the 2000s than it was before and that this structure would have effects on how much creativity can be packed into each box - Creator sets aside. -
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Modern Pirate TV Series - Black Sails & Crossbones
ummester replied to Matteo1130's topic in LEGO Pirates
I can't remember what it's called when they pull a wooden ship onto shore and tip it on one side to scrape the barnacles off - but there was a cool scene based around that in Black Sails that would be an interesting, if difficult, MOC to make. The boats and township were kind of standard though, they weren't designed with the visual appeal of the props in Pirates of the Carribean. The Title sequence, however, was very piratically artistic and may inspire some MOCing: -
LEGO is destroying creative play according to this article.
ummester replied to legoman19892's topic in General LEGO Discussion
One other thing on this, re Ole Kirk Kristiansen being called a philanthropist in the article - no, he was not, he was a businessman for his times. Funny though, next to the corporations of the 21st century, he was positively philanthropic. This is the issue, not LEGO itself, I think - the world has changed in a way that doesn't allow LEGO to be a pure toy of creativity for our children. I would not be surprised if some of the conflict in the LEGO movie is derived from the business conflict the LEGO board has regarding it's product. LEGO isn't destroying creative play - it's trying to hold onto it, in a world that is geared towards suppressing a child's imagination with consumption of franchises and products. -
How Much Does One Lego Piece Cost?
ummester replied to unclejeffie's topic in General LEGO Discussion
I would say that, in price per plastic, the minifg might be a larger source of profit for LEGO than bricks, if each minifig piece sells for approximately 42c, vs 10c for other pieces. -
LEGO is destroying creative play according to this article.
ummester replied to legoman19892's topic in General LEGO Discussion
The article isn't entirely wrong. LEGO adapted to succeed. It can be reasonably argued that, as a business, LEGO had to sell some of it's creative 'soul' to profit, by tapping into the franchise market. It's a business - it has to make money. But I do feel that in trying to keep up with the modern market place, LEGO has had to compromise the purity of it's product. It's probably more the fault of the way society has evolved, than LEGO itself. Re the LEGO movie - I do find that it's values do not totally align with the marketing of sets. The message in the film is clear - praise construction and creativity, all creativity - AFOL creativity should inspire child creativity. Yet LEGO sets, including those from the film, are often tailored for collection.