Mylenium

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by Mylenium

  1. At least from my own experience it's always the parts that I think I would never need that become the stone on the road for my own projects. So it seems to me an "all or nothing approach" might in the end work better, even if it leaves you with a lot of dead weight of unsold parts. Can't tell you specifics on BL, since I'm only a buyer, but if you really want to part with larger quantities it's usually better to just sell bulk boxes/ bags on eBay at flatrate prices. Due to the recent legal issues with some German stores getting ugly mail a lot of them are still trying to close down, yet they can't seem to get rid of their supplies for good and have to drag on for even longer, risking more legal action. Perhaps therefore a quick and painless cut is better, though of course in the US you may not face any such issues. Mylenium
  2. Mylenium

    The LEGO Fairies

    In the scale modeling world we called it the carpet monster... The parts will reappear, trust me, but when you least expect it. It's amazing how far this stuff flies off when only it hits the ground at the right angle and velocity. If you haven't already, look in crevices on your window bench, flower pots and other stuff that logically may seem out of reach of the debris spray. I'd bet you find at least some parts in those more exotic locations... Mylenium
  3. I have to disagree. You see, to me this is the old argument about new parts, new molds, new whatever where people don't seem to understand that it's an organic process of rejuvenating your production means continually. So let's for sake of argument say that the production line you may have seen several years ago doesn't even exist in the form and shape it was back when you visited factory X. It could long have been replaced, its components been refurbished and integrated in another production line, the machines switched out for a better product from a different vendor and so on. So LEGO (or for that matter any other industrial manufacturer) are already shelling out a certain amount to keep the trains running, as it were. Therefore expanding such a production line would in my view not be as much as an effort. Sure, they need to make space to put the machines into, change the synchronization of the production line and a million other things, but it likely could be done even as part of a regualr maintenance cycle with a bit of extra preparation. the other part is of course true and you get no arguments on that to some degree - of course the cost and effort will eventually outweigh any gains in quality, versatility and flexibility. That's why more or less was only speaking of "they could do it in one factory" just in case this need arises and to me it appears that at least for some stuff we are not that far away from such a situation. While there are currently terrible quality issues e.g. with minifigs, the prints have become more and more complex and we could soon be seeing parts that have 7 or 8 layers of paint/ ink, exceeding the currently possible maximum of 6. It doesn't take much to take this line of thinking even further, though I guess then you'd have to seriously consider other things even more for technical reasons. Either way, the current situation with the poor print quality is simply unacceptable and LEGO need to do something about it, regardless of what methods and actions they chose to mitigate the problems. Mylenium
  4. Mylenium

    REVIEW - #70828 Pop-Up Party Bus

    It's a brilliant set. I even got a second one just for the parts (I do have plans even for the large canopy piece). Mylenium Couldn't agree more. I would love if there were more of those over-the-top sets like the Party Bus and I'm really keen on getting the Spa and Space Castle, too. At the same time, though, I'm in fact underwhelemed by most of the other sets because of exactly what you describe - they are trying to hard to tug on the heartstrings of 40+ aged men and their childhood memories. Can't make up my mind about the Rex sets, too. They appeal to my technical interests and look nice, but at the same time somehow look oddly like those boy-oriented kids toys that I never had much use for. Mylenium
  5. Yeah, sure, then why not do it? It's not like LEGO, despite not having the m ost successful years in recent memory, would go broke by shelling out 20 million for a new production line that can print 12 or more layers in at least one of their factories. This seems like a super lame excuse. Sorry for the late comment, just picked this up in @MAB's post. Mylenium Agree. Often the alternate faces seem superfluous, anyway. On some figures the heads fit so tightly, I have a hard time imagining kids even being able to rotate the part/ remove it and plug it on in reverse just for play. Mylenium
  6. Won't happen for a million reasons... Mylenium
  7. Mylenium

    [MOC] Gun Shop Modular

    I kinda like it, though I'm still feeling a bit uneasy about all that gun stuff... Mylenium
  8. Mylenium

    [MOD] Eggsplore the Friendship House

    A bit too Friends-y still, perhaps? I would have changed the building itself more drastically like e.g. getting rid of this stupid bedroom. Since you already built a second "tower", perhaps the observatory could have been expanded as well with a bigger telescope? Mylenium
  9. Of course CG textures can be influenced by their layering, how shaders evaluate, the lighting situation and so on. The same texture applied to different shading models will sometimes look completely different. A Blinn shader works different from a Phong and this is again different from contemporary physically based BDRSF shaders. In fact often the reverse is true - you have to work hard to make the textures look clean and without a color tinge. That said, LEGO's CG is simply shoddy as quite general are their image manipulations. This stuff makes me cringe every time and it eludes me how they can get it so wrong so many times, including inconsitent rendering of their standardized colors even without textures. They seriously need to step up their game in this department. Mylenium Yes/ No/ Perhaps. Printing multiple layers may exhaust tolerances for layer thicknesses and have other ill effects like the colors on top of e.g. a white underprint becoming even less crisp due to ink creep or the coat becoming brittle and cracking in the long term. Printing is a complex physical process. That said, I think LEGO have some serious issues with their prints lately. The white prints not being fully opaque are a particular nuisance, but there's also more general issues with overall sharpness/ crispness and alignment. Squinty eyes on minifigures are unfortunately not uncommon these days. To me it seems, though, as though these issues are particulalrly prevalent only with pieces coming from certain factories, so it's most likely a thing of tweaking settings and training the machine operators better. Mylenium
  10. Fair enough, though the underlying question to me would actually be if there is enough story there to make a deeper movie. It's based on a pretty shallow TV series to begin with. Not sure. I don't mean to imply that every movie needs to be based on a 1000+ pages book or a back catalog of comics, but it sure helps, especially when it comes to your proposed Elves movie. That's the old gag of people failing to realize how at least subconsciously a fully formed world influences critical story and design decisions and helps to ground the movie in some sort of reality. And I also think therein lies the rub with anything LEGO-related on a quite general level. A lot of people simply associate it with their own memories and a much broader context, so for what it's worth, I could never see a LEGO-based movie work without it recognizing and acknowledging this. I would maintain that in your given example the Elves theme isn't even deep enough to actaully mine it for this exploitable alternate content or an alternate interpretation. Either it would be entirely contrived or really just share the name. In both cases it wouldn't even need any relation to LEGO and the original Elves theme. I guess that's the point I'm ultimately trying to make. The rest is neither here nor there, as they say. You can find just as many people who despise those "reinvented" and remade movies, series and whatnot and personally I find it a worrying trend just as well. Incidentally they talk about this a bit in this video in relation to those godawful Disney remakes... Mylenium
  11. Mylenium

    [REVIEW] 10264 - Corner Garage

    I have to agree, even more so in light of the very apparent shortcomings. Mylenium
  12. Mylenium

    2019 Friends Sets - Rumors and Discussion

    I feel the same. The other sets will require more and better pictures to make a final judgement, especially how useful the parts will be for building other stuff. Mylenium
  13. Mylenium

    [REVIEW] 10264 - Corner Garage

    It might be okay-ish with the historic Americana theme, but these days garage floors have to be impenetrable by oils and other substances, so technically they have to be made from specific types of dense concrete or use pavement/ tiling (here in Germany, anyway). Also in the past they used sideways red brick pavement a lot, so at least from that perspective, having some sort of tiling in the set would have made a lot of sense, regardless. In fact I'm pretty sure even in the US there were such regulations even in the 1950 unless we're really talking about some lonely town in the middle of nowhere built directly on the desert sand. In any case, it should have been an included option rather than people having to chase down extra parts to "fix" it after the fact if they so desire. Mylenium
  14. Utterly a moot point. Even many seemingly "live action" movies are so CG heavy, in the end they are CG movies. It's not about dancing dinosaurs or flying super heroes, it's about fundamental stuff like compositing, color grading, wire removal, set extensions and whatnot. Given the fictional nature of most LEGO themes, even something as basic as an adventure-thmed movie would heavily lean at least on some of that, not to speak of re-creating specific buildings, vehicles and sceneries entirely as 3D CG. That aside, I can't see how any LEGO theme could ever be succesfully turned into a reasonably coherent "normal" movie. The premises of most themes are either way too thin or there are better ways to deal with them. This either ends up being generic as "Battleship" or the "Transformers" movies, where the only shared commonality is the name or it ends up a mess like those failed Japanese anime adaptations that nobody likes because it clashes with established canon and lore. Mylenium ...but then again it's also a done-to-death thing found in pretty much any medieval-ish game and there's a lot of terrible movies based on that out there. not sure if I can see the value here. Same point as before - unless you back it up with "LOTR" or "Game of Thrones" level lore and the same quality of screenwriting it's likely goind to end up being just another turd, even with castles' walls in Light Aqua or whatever. *g* Mylenium Though arguably that is the point that could be mined most easily for a "LEGO-themed" movie. The question then would be whether it appeals to broader audiences, though. Mylenium
  15. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    That could be argued both ways, apparently. Citing some sets having a better value doesn't prove or disprove that either. Let's call it a draw?! ;-) Fair enough, but if you have ever been involved with industrial level cost calculation, it's really not that hard to figure out, especially in a day and age where you can design a part in the morning and a CNC machine spits out your production-ready mold in the afternoon, give or take calibration and finetuning issues and on the next day you can produce millions of copies of a part with that new mold. Working with existing molds and parts designs should be even more straightforward. Same for package printing, manuals etc.. Say what you will, unless you seriously believe that e.g. a 4 x 1 Medium Dark Flesh tile is worth even 7 Cents in that mix of small to medium sized parts in that set, there is simply no way for me to see where those 15 Euros are supposed to stem from even if you account for every shred of ancillary cost, profit margins and whatever idealistic value you may add on top. In that regard I maintain my position - LEGO are squeezing the costumer perhaps a bit too hard and prices for some of their products are not justifiable. The latter used to be an occasional occurrance, but lately it seems they have just come to a point where they say "Screw it, we're doing it anyway." and that cannot be a good thing. Mylenium
  16. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    Not really. It's not even the price per piece - which is an utterly inadequate measure, anyway, considering that some of that stuff merely costs fractions of Cents, not what LEGO actually sell it for - but more the "volume of stuff" and the (perceived) return value. Clearly we have completely diametrical opinions here, but this set is nowhere near worth 15 bucks or Euros IMO. It doesn't have any special parts and you could probably rebrick it for less than half the price. Point in case: It would probably be okay as a 10 Euro set (making for 7 Euros with discounts), but at this high asking price I consider it an utter failure, both thematically and in abstract terms of market placement. LEGO are most definitely trying very hard to see what they can get away with - minimal effort, maximum profit. Mylenium Basically yes - the plain manufacturing cost isn't that much different. The rest is merely LEGO attributing some sort of idealistic virtual value to different sets and making a price distinction based on that. Arguably one can live with a one or two Euro/ GPB price difference on some sets and of course some extra licensing fees can't be avoided on some themes, but it feels to me that this is way too often out of proportion or as I like to say, LEGO are pulling those prices out of their derriere/ playing bingo rather than basing them on transparent, rational calculations people can make sense of. There's just no rhyme and reason to it, though that's pretty much true for any price range, not just the low budget sets. Mylenium
  17. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    I wasn't implying a causal relation of lower-end sets suffering because those super sets even exist. More a general decline of quality on the lower end of the spectrum... Mylenium Don't think so. As the "designer" videos show over and over again, actually designing the sets is not the problem. It's more that getting them actually manufactured is. A lot of cool stuff is bound to get stuck and ground up in the decision-making chain for reasons. And let's not be foolish: The profit margin on the 3in1 sets is likely terrible, even if they sell like sliced bread. Therefore understandably LEGO are probably more interested in putting out more sets in other series that net them more cash. Mylenium
  18. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    Allow me to disagree and just point to this: https://www.brickmerge.de/41363-1_lego-friends-mias-outdoor-abenteuer Seriously? Do LEGO really expect anyone to buy this little pile of garbage for 15 Euros MSRP? Other examples sure could be found. I'm clearly seeing a downward trend here. It's subpar in every way and LEGO should feel embarassement and shame over even producing such sets. At those ridiculous prices even your "impulse buy" argument doesn't hold water... Mylenium
  19. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    Just the opposite. Parts count is the least reliable factor in all this. More to the point you'd have to come up with some fancy formula to calculate an abstract actual per-part value and compare that. You'd have to figue in versatility of a part, its actual design, mass and volume, raw material usage, complexity of the molds, printed parts down to tiny things like larger parts cooling off ever so slightly slower, affecting the hourly yield. In addition you'd have to figure in overall market developments for some of that stuff, comparable cost with similar toy products and whatnot. you could spend a lifetime doing that. Therefore it probably suffices to say that perhaps a set with less parts to day may still have a higher value if it uses more sophisticated pieces, difficult to produce colors, complex prints and so on. Using a single part that may have only been introduced a few years ago, today may allow you to do stuff that was impossible back then or at least could eliminate awkward building techniques that required many extraneous parts. In any case, it's a complex matter. Mylenium Sure, though to me it seems that LEGO are heavily shifting towards a specific "high-end" mentality, which makes me think @astral brick is on to something. The number of super expensive sets is growing a bit too rapidly for my taste and small sets are a bit too obviously optimized/ stripped down to maximize profit by reduzing the number of parts. There's always the risk that it furthers this already existing rift between different demographics and then we end up with the analogy of the two LEGOs again - one being solely focussed on expensive collectible stuff, the other churning out lackluster low-end stuff like every other cheap toy company. In that regard I think there's even some value in the original statement of a certain type of mid-range being missing or disappearing - a kind of middleground with a broad mass appeal bridging the two extremesin terms of price, themes and quality of sets. Mylenium
  20. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    I agree that the 3in1 them is painfully underdeveloped and underutilized to cover gaps in LEGO's portfolio in other series, but I'm once more not sure if this is how things actually should be. In my view it still doesn't negate the need and want for consistently designed other series like e.g. a sci-fi/ space theme. Being thrown occasional bits is just as unsatisfying... Mylenium
  21. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    Yes/ no/ perhaps. Not sure. I like a certain kind of stylishness which those sets never seem to have achieved. It's all about a consistent design philosophy and I think it helps if you have a full backstory to go with it, especially when you have longer-term plans for your series... Mylenium
  22. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    I never had. I simply didn't care for LEGO until four years ago. I find this "dark age" talk a strange sign of how conservative and reactionary the AFOL scene can be at times as if in the stuffy mist of nostalgia and past times everything was better. It's also not something I would consider specific to LEGO nor could it be pinned to the attractiveness of sets or whatever you want to blame. It's a normal cycle most hobbyists go through of being tired and fed up with their once beloved favourite obsession or not having time, then coming back after they had a respite or sorted out their "other life"... I don't think so. As I've written in several other threads to me those sets never looked attractive to begin with and I'm a sci-fi nerd as much as the next guy. Unless you fill those fictional worlds with rich stories and lore plus truly spend the money and effort on actually cool designs, they go nowhere. And that LEGO are unwilling or unable to go the full mile with their own story-based lines has been proven more often than not - not just for space-themes. It's really the lack of commitment or resources, not because other series exist. That's why Star Wars, despite no longer being the big hit it once may have been, still sort of works. The crafting of the larger universe and the design work are externalized and cost LEGO nothing but a bit of licensing fees and conversely out of self-interest Disney keep pushing LEGO to produce sets to "feed the machine", as it were... Mylenium
  23. Mylenium

    Thoughts on Eurobricks Name

    It's probably now considered more as a geographical reference as in "bricks from (a cewrtain country in) Europe". Considering how many users from the US and elswhere are here, I don't get the impression it would be off-putting. Sure, there could be more generic names, but it's really going to be a "What's in a name?" game. Someone is always bound to not get it, be offended or just don't care. After all, that's why there are experts in the marketing and advertising industry, that come up with fancy brand and product names... Personally I think this forum has bigger fish to fry, anyway, so which domain name it comes under is secondary to me. Mylenium
  24. Mylenium

    The disappearance of the mid-range sets

    Not sure I share your definition of "mid-range" or some of your other points. These models do exist, the problem is just that a lot of them tend to be extremely unattractive and then of course it becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy - nobody buys, so LEGO do even less of them and instead focus on the higher priced items or the lower end. Quite generally, though, I think one must get away from "the good old times" thinking. The trend of producing more specialized, topical sets is nothing new and the "universal" sets you seem to hint at have long been in decline. In contrast to you I also don't think that today's kids are that much into that kit-bashing stuff of dissolving their models and re-assembling them in ever new forms. That may be true for some, but from my personal experiences it's not really the majority. most kids will be just as happy building based on premade instructions and then play with thse stuff, only incorporating minor modifications and customizations. So while certainly some things with LEGO must be seen from a critical POV such as indeed the ever more exprensive large sets, I think the layer of the market your post aims at is probably really not particularly relevant anymore. Mylenium
  25. Mylenium

    2019 Friends Sets - Rumors and Discussion

    It looks like a cross between an infantile Orca and a Beluga indeed.... Mylenium