ReplicaOfLife
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Everything posted by ReplicaOfLife
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Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if PR survived one or two of it's successors, given it's the last modular that was met with overwhelming praise (not saying everyone liked it, but there were far more critical voices for all of the modulars that appeared after). And a somewhat early retirement of DO and/or BB might also indicate that their sales figures didn't live up to expectations - which in turn might be a reason why they returned to the true 'one building per baseplate, without a stupid storyline'-pattern with the Diner. At least, I would very much welcome that. -
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Oh, dang Didn't know there were two different tones. Thanks for pointing it out! -
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
@cimddwc actually used that old salmon color in one of his builds: The Fishmaster - Front 1 by cimddwc, auf Flickr It works for his building, but I wouldn't exactly be excited if the next modular used a color like that in huge amounts. -
Don't think this matters to you, since white bricks should be much easier to source than sand blue ones, but back then I had worked out that it'd cost me less if I used more 1x6 and fewer 1x4 bricks (so not jsut replacing the 1x8s with two 1x4s). So I went through the instructions and basically worked out how many 1x6, 1x4 and 1x1s I'd need (there's lots oif repetition, so this was lessw ork than it sounds like). It more or less worked out in the end, there was one portion on the uppermost level where I was one 1x6 brick short, and used six 1x1s instead . I didn't have any alignment issues - since I had to regroup entire sections anyway, I just took care to always have interlocking bricks.
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An Argument Against Most Non-Licensed Themes
ReplicaOfLife replied to Echo's topic in General LEGO Discussion
I couldn't disagree more. While I absolutely see the merits of having some licensed themes around, especially in the action-oriented markets you mentioned, the gross neglect of traditional themes like Castle and Pirates is a short-sighted and stupid move. Kids LOVE stories about knights and pirates, and love making up their own stories about them. The only thing you need to sell sets in that area is a consistent theme that can be continuously added to over the years that kids do play with Lego. Lego was really, really good at that 20-30 years ago, but at some point they forgot all about it, and the few attempts they made ever since where half-assed. And sinec you mentioned that the recent attempts at Castle and Pirates were short-lived: Yes, they were, but imo that's not so much for a general lack of interest but more so due to Lego itself not being commited to those Themes. If they released a strong initial wave and then added more and more stuff over the following release cycles (like they used to), things surely would've looked different. Lastly, I think that Lego's "One strategy fits all"-approach is also a problem here. as @Mylenium already pointed out, much of the licensed Super Hero stuff does not work in Germany. They may sell well in the US (don't know, just supposing), but over here there is still a huge demand for way more traditional toys that Lego simply fails to fulfil. So parents whose kids want to play with Knights or Pirates do the logical thing: No, they don't go to Bricklink and buy old sets for huge amounts of money - they simply go and buy Playmobil. Resulting in a kid who'll have little contact with Lego, and thus may have little incliniation to buy his or her kids Lego 30 years down the road. And that's just plain stupid. -
But do I NEED a bathroom and stairs...?
ReplicaOfLife replied to Lego Mike's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Personally, I rather omit the bathroom than the stairs. Not having stairs feels very weird to me, not having a bathroom is unfortunate, but having nicely detailed rooms makes up for it. Sometimes, I also only do incomplete bathrooms, so e.g. it'll have a toilet, but no shower, or vice versa. In my mind, minifigs are much more sociable than humans and thus have no problem at all to just pop into their neighbours flat if they have to let go of some digested ABS, or need to wash all that grime from the big hands moving them about off their skin. Often they'll stay for a chat, or a coffee, or whatever else is lying around in the kitchen. Confining them to floors with no way to enter/leave, on the ther hand, is just cruel. -
I'd third it. It would be an awesome colour for buildings. While there are a number of colours that you can use, we lack more options to represent the different colours of real bricks that exist throughout the world, and sand-red would be perfect for that! ...even though I actually used dark turquoise for the roof of my Outdoor Store before it was brought back, I absolitely would've preferred them to bring back sand-red!
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Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
It wasn't exactly popular with the community - after all, it's pretty boring to look at, and reportedly the build was rather monotonous aswell (I actually sold mine misb - it's propably my least favorite modular design-wise). As for the reason why it was canceled before its time: I don't know if anyone knows for sure. Two reasons I can imagine are that either Lego took a look at its sales figures (rumor has it that it was selling slowly compared to the others) and decided to axe it prematurely instead of giving it another production run, or maybe some of the parts (some of the dark orange bricks perhaps?) were not in production/stock anymore, and producing them just for one set wasn't feasible or possible (no production slots available). -
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
I agree, but why put them with City? They could just put them with Creator. Creator already has some minifig-scaled cars, so that should not be a problem. -
This is rather ridiculous, if you ask me. The price tag is a total joke, even if you factor in the power functions. 800+ pieces and a motor are not worth 180€. And while a few of the pieces are rather large, most are pretty standard in size. Lego's pricing policy is all over the place lately, and this is the most baffling example yet. This should be no more than 100-110€, and even then it would be slightly on the expensive side. And I seriously wonder if there actually is much demand for a set like this? The original sure is a coveted set, but apparently it's extremely rare mainly because it was only given away to Vesta employees. Those who really want one can get one now, but I just don't see a huge mass market appeal. At least here in Germany, wind turbines are considered eyesores by most, and pretty much wherever they want to build one citizens start interest groups to protest against them (typical nimby stuff, mostly, the protests usually aren't against renewable energy as such, luckily).
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Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
This...no. Just no. Green Grocer remains one of the best looking modulars ever and is usually ranked correspondingly by the majority of fans. And since they unfortunately downsized the general scale of the modulars soon after, that will propably remain so for a long time. I wouldn't mind a re-release as long as we still got a new modular on Jan 1st. I would mirror build it and pair it up with my bricklinked sand-blue version of it. That would look fantastic. Not that I have place for any more modulars right now, but still... Only doing a re-release and NOT releasing a new one would be yet another stupid decision by Lego's business department, though, so I hope to god that rumour is as false as it was last year. -
Good luck finding those missing pieces, especially the TV antenna (already mentioned), the cones and supports, which are rather expensive and hard to find (most shops only have one or two). I think some of the larger light grey plates are also pretty rare. I luckily have that set from when I was a kid, but it's not complete - I'm still missing the TV antenna and 3 of those large cones. I've had them on my Bricklink Wanted List for ages now. Oh yeah, if you don't care about it not being 100% original, there's a mould variation for the big cone (with an axle hole, 3943b). It also exists in dark grey, and is slightly less rare than the original version with the axle hole.
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PRESS RELEASE for LEGO 10263 - Winter Village Fire Station Announcement
ReplicaOfLife replied to WhiteFang's topic in LEGO Town
Of course it does - why the hell did I write sand-red there?!? Momentary lapse, or maybe wishful-thinking I guess... *facepalm* Granted, it's fun to find new ways to use specialized parts, but to be useful as a parts pack for modular/city builders, you surely want a set that contains mainly bricks and a useful assortment of plates, brick modifieds and plate modifieds. I have several bags fill of specialized parts I have doubt's I'll ever find usage for, e.g. the odd Technic liftarms that somehow made their way into my collection, some oddly shaped wedge-plates, the huge balljoints, and pretty much all highly-vehicle specific parts such as wheels/wheel holders, windscreen canopies (apart from the old fashioned ones that can also serve as glass-fronted counters) etc. -
PRESS RELEASE for LEGO 10263 - Winter Village Fire Station Announcement
ReplicaOfLife replied to WhiteFang's topic in LEGO Town
Totally different perspective here, since I don't care much for the Winter Village: But this will make an awesome parts pack for modular MOCers once it hits the free market and get's discounted the usual 10-20%. Barely any specialized, 'throwaway' parts or parts in odd colours in there (except maybe for the tree, but even those might find their usage). With sand-red and grey being the predominant colors, it might also be a good starting point for those who missed out on 10197 and want to bricklink it. -
Just pciked up an order consisting of 2x 21136 - The Ocean Monument (Minecraft) from the post office. Gotta say, in all my years of buying Lego, this is the most bizarre experience yet. Bough these at Bricklink, new & sealed, for 77€ each (which is a total steal, imo, for this absolute fest of useful parts...just look at all that sand green ). Guessed the person selling it was a dealer selling off his stock. When I got them, I received a big box...which had two original amazon packages inside, opened just enough to remove the invoice, adressed to the guy who sold them to me. These definitely weren't repurposed boxes as the original amazon tape was still mostly intact and itwas impossible to remove the sets without breaking it. Now I really wonder why this guy sold them for so cheap - there's a site that monitors amazon prices over the time, and judging from the date on the packages he must've bought them for around 90€. Don't get it at all, but I'm happy. ...you can expect my next modular to be sand-green ;-)
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This is my newest modular building. I started building right after I finished the Mage's Mansion. As with that build, I did not plan ahead in LDD but just started building with the pieces from my collection. Since I parted out a lot of sets in the past few years, this felt like the natural thing to do. I ended up doing one (rather large) Bricklink order solely for tiles, 1 by x plates and a few bricks, since I was running out of those soon. I had always wanted to do a 24-wide modular. I remembered that I still had at least two of the old 24 x 16 baseplates with my childhood Lego, and wanted to use those. So I got them out, cleaned them...and thought, hang on, these feel pretty small. Did some counting, and yep, they aren't 24 x 16 baseplates, they are 20 x 14s! Whoops . I used them anyway, so this building occupies the rather unusual footprint of 20 x 28 studs. Less space then I had planned with (I had a basic idea for the general layout of this building), but I took it as a challenge... Since I did no digital planning, I have no idea how many pieces I used, I'd estimate that there are about 2500 pieces in here, but I could be way off. As usual, more pictures are available on flickr. This time, it's a lot more This building features two businesses and two apartments. The idea is that this used to be two very small buildings that at one point in time were combined into one. The little girl just bought her plutonium ice-cream. The girl's dad also got an icecream, but when he saw the new mountain bike on display at Mike's Bikes, he forgot all about it... Closer look at the facade detail on the sand-blue portion of the building. This involved building in multiple directions - most of it is upside down! The rooftop terrace on the blue portion of the building is accessible via a working sliding glass door, and features a pool for these hot summer days! Closer look at the roof of Mike's Bikes. Mike's Bikes is a pretty small shop, thus it is very cluttered with barely any room to move around. Still, Mike manages and has a lot of fun at his job! The Ice Cream parlour is even smaller than Mike's Bikes. It doesn't offer any seating, so everything is 'to go'! The apartment on the first floor features kitchen and bedroom areas and a living room with a cozy sofa. While her girlfriend relaxes on the rooftop terrace (as we saw earlier), the other occupant of the second apartment is preparing dinner. Looks like it's time for chicken! The bathroom is rather spacious, featuring a large tub. The topmost floor features a small bar area - together with the small swimming pool this is THE place for parties! Since these are always popular, here's the bird's eye shots of all the floors (click for larger versions!): Overview - Ground Floor by Tobias T., auf Flickr Overview - First Floor by Tobias T., auf Flickr Overview - Second Floor by Tobias T., auf Flickr Overview - Third floor by Tobias T., auf Flickr To finish this up, here it is together with some other modulars Again, more pics are available on flickr. Looking forward to your thoughts and comments on this, hope you like it! Cheers, Tobias / "Roger_Smith"
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[MOC] MIKE'S BIKES / ICE CREAM PARLOUR (Modular Building)
ReplicaOfLife replied to ReplicaOfLife's topic in LEGO Town
Thanks, you two! I wasn't aware of those pieces, either. I got them from two copies of a Ninjago set I bought cheap and parted out, "Temple of the ultimate ultimate weapon", or something like that. At first I had no idea what to do with them. They are intended as claws for creatures, but make for a nice shingled roof, methinks. -
[MOC] MIKE'S BIKES / ICE CREAM PARLOUR (Modular Building)
ReplicaOfLife replied to ReplicaOfLife's topic in LEGO Town
Wow. That last photo in the opening post showing this building together with the Outdoor Store and the Medieval Townhouse has been gathering favorites on flickr faster than any other photo of my modulars! It's been up only about two and a a half weeks and now is my most favorited photo on there (atm tied with an exterior shot of my Record Store). To celebrate this and to thank everybody, I decided to upload three additional shots of this build, which I also want to share here: Another exterior shot by Tobias T., auf Flickr Another look at the street... by Tobias T., auf Flickr Unseen view from the back by Tobias T., auf Flickr Thanks to everyone! -
Beautiful buildings. Great SNOT-work on the left and right buildings! There's also some simple yet effective ideas scattered throughout the build, like the flower baskets peedeejay pointed out or the enclosure of the palm tree's stem My only criticism is the background color on the second and third picture. It's kinda garish and overpowering.
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MOC: Just a humble 0-8-0T... (Flensburger Kreisbahn No. 1 in 1:22.5 scale)
ReplicaOfLife replied to Sven J's topic in LEGO Train Tech
Brilliant. This really is scale-modeling, seen from afar it's hardly recognizable as Lego anymore. -
[MOC] MIKE'S BIKES / ICE CREAM PARLOUR (Modular Building)
ReplicaOfLife replied to ReplicaOfLife's topic in LEGO Town
Thank you :) Sound sinteresting with the complex shapes, hope they work out for you! Tried some more unusual stuff with this one, too, but not everythingw orked out. E.g. for the roof decoration of the blue building, I wanted to use an idea involving some technic connector elements that I've had a long time ago. But it just didn't look right on this building, so I guess we'll see it on the next. Or the one after that xD -
Wow, these are some very impressive builds. What a dense atmosphere! I love the way you used all those tinmy pieces to create textures everywhere. Too bad there's no interiors, but on the upside, you don't have to worry about interiors . And details like the broken glass within window frames are definitely worth it!
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[MOC] MIKE'S BIKES / ICE CREAM PARLOUR (Modular Building)
ReplicaOfLife replied to ReplicaOfLife's topic in LEGO Town
Thanks! @Bricked1980, @DK_Titan I know what you mean; I always think about that when posting a new building. No matter how I count, someone will be confused. So I just count the way I'm used to Yeah, I feel pretty damn honoured. They actually managed to get that blog post up faster than I managed to post it on here. The pics were on flickr for like 10minutes or so when I already got the invite to add the picture to their flickr group Thank you. It takes some time to edit the photos for presentation, so I really appreciate that! Thank you I'm extremely happy with how the blue portion turned out aswell, it's propably my favorite part of the building. Using those beard pieces was one of those spur of the moment ideas that worked out way better than expected. Well worth the countless iterations to get the positioned just right! When can we expect your dark red/sand green building? -
Hehe, just saw that manor on flickr via archbrick, would've posted it here if you hadn't done so already. Really great design. The detail that immediately caught my eye is the lightsaber hilt on top of the round 1x1 with bar in the windows of the tower. Gives a perfect silhouette for that kind ornate of window.
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Your MOC, of course! I hadn't even consciously noticed Cafe Corner in that one pic its visible in.