ReplicaOfLife
-
Content Count
705 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by ReplicaOfLife
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
It would be hella weird for them to release a car dealership, when just two years ago Mike Psiaki said that they originally wanted to do a car dealership as that years modular, but changed it to a diner because they just could not make it work. Ans, seriously, think about it. Car dealerships usually have airy showrooms with lots of space around each car. Assuming they'd also include a way to get to the upper floor and at least one desk or office area somwhere, they propably could barely fit more two normal sized cars on one level without it looking cramped. Unless they dramatically increase the buildings footprint compared to other modulars. Just try and put the Diners's Cadillac inside the diner, and you'll see what I mean. -
Welcome to Green Brick Grand Hotel! After over seven months in the making, it's finally time for me to present my newest modular MOC to you. Green Brick Grand Hotel is my biggest MOC to date, it is the largest both in footprint and height. It is built as a regular corner building, but features an inverted corner! Inside, it is fully furnished, featuring a lobby with reception and bar/loung area, dining room, kitchen, manager's office, an indoor pool and 6 rooms (two single & four double). I estimate this one to consist of about 7000-8000 pieces. Building time was February to September 2019. Except for the top of the tower, I did no virtual planning, it was all done as a free build using pieces from my collection (and a couple of bricklink orders I had to place...). More pictures can be found in the flickr album. A couple is just arriving at the hotel... Upon entering, you can't miss the reception. To the left is the grand sweeping staircase leading up to the other floors. The room for the couple isn't quite ready yet, so they enjoy some refreshments in the bar/ loung area. The dining / breakfast room. Currently, there's just one couple in. Overview of the ground floor Coming up from the reception area, there is a nice atrium from which you can look down to the ground floor. This also gives access to the manager's office, the small pool and a huge double room. The small indoor pool. There's only one room on the first floor, but it's a spacious double bedroom. The second floor also has two single rooms and one double room. Both singles are rather small, but they offer everything you might need! The other single room. Double room on the second floor. There's only two rooms on the third and topmost floor, both very spacious double rooms. One of them even features a small balcony with wide, opening doors! The couple we saw earlier arrives in their room. They booked the other spacious suite on the top floor. Again, there are some more pictures on my flickr account! Hope you like it - I'm looking forward to your feedback! Greetings, Tobias (RogerSmith)
-
Thanks! Tbh, I'm a bit surprised to get so many comments on the color combination - I really didn't think it was that special Thanks! I wish I had been able to get some more good pictures of the interiors, particularly the bathrooms, but this time around I didn't feel like disassembling parts of the model to get better angles for pictures.
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Well, let's hope that means that they won't annoy us with a parts-wasting vehicle in the next one, then -
Thank you guys! I can't actively recall ever seeing a building with a shape like this, either, but I wouldn't rule it out that somewhere there is one that vaguely resembles this. The arches at the bottom are meant to represent basement windows - some are walled off, though. You're definitely right regarding our choices of colors - I mostly abstain from very bright colors. Most colorful buildings in real life also seem to use toned-down or pastelly shades, not the extremely bright ones. To be honest, if I had designed this digitally, without the restriction of needing the actual parts ion the required colors, I propably would have done a few things differently. When building with real bricks, you always find yourself maing compromises, which, for me, is part of the fun. One thing I would do different though, given the parts, is getting rid of the tan stripe in the middle of the first two upper floors. That would tie those two together nicely. Alas, I don't have sand green tiles in the required quantities, so that will have to wait.
-
I reinterpreted the Minecraft prints as modern art. Some might give the minifigs nightmares, but apart from that, they should be fine Regarding the bright red: I actually would've preferred to do the parts of the lobby floor that now are bright red in dark red, too (like in the entrance). But I did not have the necessary pieces, and I didn't want to start with bricklink orders that early in the build. In the end I figured, what the hell, and just used the bright red which I had plenty of.
-
The title picture of this build is my first picture on flickr to be added to Explore There's never enough room inside , but the large footprint really helped here. Still, I didn't manage to get a proper shot of any of the bathrooms, for example.
-
LEGO Ideas Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Real Indiana Jones's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Very glad about Pirate Bay, hope it will be an awesome set. Also kinda looking forward to Sesame Street - might be a decent parts pack (don't care for the IP at all, though). I have no real opinion regarding the Piano. -
You, sir, are correct. What an absolutely awesome parts pack for sand- and dark green bricks and plates that was. Thanks :) It's a but of a boutique hotel with each room being different from the others, so of course the linens differ, aswell. Or I just might not have had enough pieces in the same colors for 6 beds and came up with that backstory Actually never heard that saying, though others have already said similar things. Personally I think that with the right color blocking the different 'sand'-colors will work just fine together (maybe with the exception of sand-red, but nobody can afford that anyway nowadays )
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Imho, it's absolutely logical that they push out police/fire sets every two years. Both hold great fascination for children, which are their core market, espcially in the city line-up. And considering that most children will be into Lego for a little over half a decade, and taking into account that they usually will not get all the sets they want every year, I don't think many run the risk of being bored. And there is plenty of examples for other exciting jobs, too. Exploration, astronauts, mining etc are all subthemes we've seen in recent years. Don't get me wrong; I get your point. It's just that I think that Lego's target audience in case of City isn't the adult market. And I also think that after a few so-so years, City is one of the few themes where they're moving in the right direction with a lot of the stuff they released this year. -
[MOC] Italian Trattoria Modular building 4 pcs LEGO 41379 alternative build
ReplicaOfLife replied to CoolerTD's topic in LEGO Town
That looks damn good. I have that set on my list of sets to possibly get as parts packs, and this just reinforced that. As soon as they're on sale somewhere, I'll get two or three. -
Very nice write-up, and I totally agree that your proposed cars look way better together with Lego buildings than whatever Lego throws at us nowadays. The SC series always looked totally ridiculous imho, and I always felt that they were way to big in comparison to minifigs. Your write-up confirmed that.
-
[SURVEY] Frontpage News Review: Have YOUR say...
ReplicaOfLife replied to Mister Phes's topic in Forum Information and Help
Thinking about it, I don't visit the frontpage as often as I used to: - At times, it feels like there are way too many updates all at once, then at other times, nothing changes for several days. --> imho, there should be some regularity to the posts, while not exceeding one post per day regularly. Ideally, there'd be one MOC highlight every day, and, as rare exceptions, maybe one other post about other interesting things, like a huge new set announcements, a new contest or maybe an in-depth review. MOC highlights could also be queued up to a point - sometimes, a lot of great builds are posted at the same time, while at other times there's a bit of a lull with not much going on. - Selection of front-paged MOCs seems a bit biased at times. Some members will be frontpaged regularly, while others rarely or never get the honour, even if their creations and photography are on par with what's being front-paged. - Purely digital creations should be marked as such -
Unpopular Opinions about LEGO
ReplicaOfLife replied to Lego David's topic in General LEGO Discussion
Yep! While it is kinda hard to compare old to new sets, because even comparable sets usually have way more parts nowadays, the instructions used to be a lot more straightforward. 50-100 piece vehicle build? Here's a double sided piece of paper with a couple of steps, and you're done. Nowadays, that would require a 20-40 page booklet . Some thoughts of my own: Lego relies too much on licensed themes and has pretty much forgotten what its own product was actually designed for. Lego nowadays actually doesn't want its customers to come up with new creations, instead if ypou want something new, you should just buy another set. Lego's pricing policy is all over the place and at time smakes no sense at all. Some sets offer pretty good value, while others are just way, way overpriced. Replacing actual remote controls with apps on mobile phones is an extremely stupid idea that will render all the new components useless in a few years time. Lego has too many special interest themes. -
Great build, I dare say 'as usual'? Two different but equally nice facades - the 'back' one is my favorite though. Daring use of [whatever] azure (or is it turquoise? It's kinda hard to tell), but it works for me. Nice details both inside & out - I always like how you are able to come up with new stories to tie parts from official sets one wouldn't necessarily connect with City into your buildings. On a sidenote: I'm spying an Assembly Square mod on some of the flickr pics - did you ever share that?
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Why 'could'? It is! -
This is propably the best argument ever for the return of sand-red
-
To be honest, I never really thought about the storage angle, that's actually a good point. Imo, though, they would do better if they reduced the number of different decorated pieces in sets with lots of stickers, and made those as printed pieces. I've seen a lot of sets that, for example, featured detail stickers that where almost, but not quite, identical (without the difference bearing any relevance to the 'plot' of the set). While that attention to detail in itself is welcome, I'd still prefer to get those as identical printed pieces instead. They also could re-use a lot of designs that are nowadays realized using stickers. I'm thinking about stuff like masonry, wood, etc. Then there are the stickers that are just there to liven up otherwise boring pieces, e.g. huge panels. And - in sets that already have thousands of pieces and cost a tenth of their parts count - it should be possible to just throw in the 12 or so pieces for each panel that would be needed to fill the same space using regular bricks and pieces, including some greebling... Regarding the different printing methods: That's very propably true in cases like the huge window adverts ion Palace Cinema, but on the other hand there are many, many stickers that have far fewer than twelve colors. And I still maintain my point that it's ridiculous that they include stickers in the big and often way overpriced D2C sets. If it's really such a big deal because they don't have enough shelves in the factories, just optimize which different decorations are actually needed, and include those as printed pieces.
-
Of course, including stickers is a pure cost-cutting measure. Which is absolutely ridiculous if applied to any set that retails for way over 100€. I'm very glad that Palace Cinema is the only modular with stickers, but just look at what they're doing in the other lines - 370€ for a 3600 piece Bugatti that, though labeled as Technic, pretty much is a pure display piece - and it comes with megablocking stickers??!!? Seriously? For that price you could expect each piece to be painted by hand and it would STILL be ridiculously overpriced. Same goes for the Aston Martin. And pretty much all of the big Star Wars sets. And so on...
-
Still wrong, as there were printed pieces in most of the previous modulars. Palace Cinema was the only modular ever to come with a dreaded sticker sheet. Parisian Restaurant also wasn't the first to contain exclusive printed pieces, i.e. pieces that were made specifically for that set. That honour goes to Town Hall, I think, which had at least two exclusive printed pieces (the clockface and the shield - the latter still is exclusive to that set, while the clockface made a second appearance in a Winter Village set a few years later).
-
What part do you have way to much of but refuse to get rid of any of it?
ReplicaOfLife replied to Takanuinuva's topic in General LEGO Discussion
When I was a kid, they had exactly that (early 90ies). As I remember, they were small cube-shaped boxes full of basic bricks in just one color. That was the time when Lego was pretty much only using the basic colors, and yopu could get them in white, yellow, red and blue (I think). There also was a similar box full of all kinds of slopes, which I also got a couple of for the ever growing city I had as a kid. Good times... I really don't understand why Lego doesn't do something like that nowadays. Even the most basic boxes you can get now have lots of specialized parts and often way too many different colors, too. -
Great work!
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Looks a lot better in this picture. The blue might be medium blue, after all . I still find it a tad too colorful, but I already see some bits that might just convince me to get two or three - all-white parrots!, 3 or 4 of the large window panel pieces or the ornate fence in white, to name a few -
Very nice! Love how you managed to make the facades look interesting despite their relativ simplicity. Having two houses separate in three sections is an interesting idea, too, don't think I've ever seen that before. Sure makes it easier to take a look inside.
-
Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion
ReplicaOfLife replied to The Jersey Brick Guy's topic in LEGO Town
Thanks! And no worries - we're good! After all, it's all about having as much fun as possible with Lego - and talking about it, about what we love and what maybe we don't.