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sparkart

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Everything posted by sparkart

  1. sparkart
    Thanks for the kind words. I did get around to fitting the ball and pylons to a couple of out-of-the-box UCS TIE panels: LEGO UCS TIE Fighter by SPARKART!, on Flickr. I think the TIE Interceptor is a classic, too: TIE Interceptor by SPARKART!, on Flickr.
  2. sparkart
    Wow, this really makes me regret throwing out the Cardboards I had (I took them apart for the magnets in them). I'm not a big fan of 3D anything, games, movies, or theme park rides, and haven't put on the 3D glasses that came with my TV for, literally, years. But today, I can not wait for those 3D glasses to charge so I can try this out on my TV! This looks amazing! Thank you for this demo!
  3. sparkart
    Very interesting! The small compact size belies how cleverly the parts are used to make these.
  4. sparkart
    Looks great! I hope you're bringing these to Star Wars Days at Legoland California this weekend. I'd like to see you fixed red's bad motivator. :)
  5. sparkart
    Fantastic!
  6. sparkart
    RAD. Amazing how you can fit that monster engine with all those details in there. I've passed over the stock LEGO Mystery Machine many times at the retail store and assembled versions at LEGO swap meet tables, never seeing the potential in hot-rodding it. You've opened my eyes. WIDE. Thanks for sharing this wonderful creation.
  7. sparkart
    You can make very crudely animated scenes with LDD, but it's a manual, tedious process. But let's stop hijacking my thread. ;) I know there are purely digital builders who don't aim to ever buy any brick, or can't possibly acquire the brick to make their models, and are content building in the computer, and/or sharing 2-D renderings. For those that do build in real-life and design in LDD, I'm trying to push the just-in-time inventory idea of leaving bricks in Bricklink, and only buying what you need to build, not hoarding physical brick in your collection, unused. Isn't it more economical in terms of storage and management? I actually prefer buying the elements for a model from a few stores, and letting them pick through their inventory for the parts, rather than me trying to find parts in my "sorted" collection, which isn't as well sorted and organized. And not all of my LDD models make it into the real world, just the ones that I think deserve to be (or can be) built.
  8. sparkart
    'zactly, MB seems to be doing all the right things, wresting TMNT from LEGO, getting interesting licenses, making Kubros figures that riff like LEGO + Funko Pops, leveraging the old favorite Mattel character lines...If I was MB, I would be wondering how we're not outright killin' it. But then, when you get into the LEGO fandom, the tools and support that the fans have created on their own, and the history of quality products, you understand...MB will always be 2nd fiddle to LEGO. But then, LEGO was at the brink of going out of business before the big comeback. You never know what's going to happen in the world. You know, I'm sure there IS an alternate universe where MB rules the building block industry, and Star Wars MegaBloks characters appear in the MegaBloks Movie.
  9. sparkart
    LEGO is many things to many people, but I see digital building as a means to an end - a planning tool to get to a real-brick end-product. Seeing 2-D rendering and photos of LEGO is akin to looking at pictures of sculptures, IMHO. There's nothing wrong with appreciating photos and paintings of majestic landscapes, but it's not the same as actually being there, out in nature. I know LEGO uses digital rendering for almost all of its commercial print assets, and these can look better than anything photographed, but it's a preference - I'd rather see LEGO in real-life with my two eyes in stereo vision.
  10. sparkart
    Someone brought MegaBloks Minions mini-figures to our last LUG meeting, and somehow walked out unscathed. I have to admit, that I when I check out the MegaBloks products lately, I like them. MegaBloks have a collector corner and forum on their web-site. In Pasadena this weekend, there's a MegaBloks affiliated show being put on, Brick Boutique. They have generous gift bags w/admission and you get to keep the MegaBloks you play with in the play area, but there's not a large contingent of LEGO enthusiasts that show up.
  11. sparkart
    I got back into LEGO right before I hit 40-years-old, after more than 25 years in the dark ages. So, I didn't (and still don't) have a large LEGO collection (relatively speaking). I started building a collection of physical LEGO, but got a lot of enjoyment virtually building with LDD. For me, the electronic style of construction was (and still is) more economical (in terms of money and storage space) and more satisfying because I had access to a larger number and variety of parts via Bricklink. I started thinking, I should run my LEGO hobby like a production business, limiting inventory to the minimum required to make the product (LEGO MOCs) and using the cheapest labor (me) and tools (LDD) to design the products. So, now, I'm trying more and more to use Bricklink to outsource my LEGO inventory. I think I have a HUGE collection on Bricklink, it's just separated from me by money and time. Of course, I'll never refuse free or gifted LEGO, and hoard hard-to-find or very useful parts, but I generally view physical LEGO inventory as a burden to be maintained, sorted, and stored. To me, it's worth the money to send to Bricklink stores to buy their inventory on an as-needed basis, you know, just-in-time inventory. I'm curious if I'm the only cheap, nickle-nursing AFOL who does this. When I talk to my LUG mates about this philosophy and practice, I can tell by their looks that they are thinking, "Yeah...he's as weird as I've heard." But sometimes, I get the comment, "Huh...that's smart." I don't know if that person is being patronizing or honest. But this is the internet, we can all be honest here, right? What's your opinion? Do you actively limit physical LEGO storage because you can use LDD?
  12. sparkart
    As the great poet, J. Geils once wrote, "Love stinks. Yeah, yeah." Nice diorama with an effective story.
  13. sparkart
    Beautiful job on this model! Are there any lights on it? Just a few blinking lights on it would really make it come alive. It's already a spectacle, but lighting could make it even more spectacular, IMHO.
  14. sparkart
    About 90% done. It's still missing a few pieces, and I'd like to make some markings with label maker tape, but this is pretty much the way it's going to look overall. I put one bazooka on the top booster tank (there should be three). It looked a little blank with nothing, but with one, there's at least the outline (in profile) of the mounted weapons on top of the booster tank.
  15. sparkart
    Very cool!
  16. sparkart
    The great philosopher, The Tick, once observed that, "Gravity is a harsh mistress." This model is an example of that. I'm dialing back plans to mount three bazookas on the top booster tank (as it is often depicted), and just putting one up there. The LEGO is being stressed quite a bit by that long cantilever construction. I don't want to put more structure on the rear to support the booster tanks. The existing stand (that looks like scaffolding under the robot) already ruins the zero-G floating effect enough, I don't want to add more structure and take focus away from the model itself. The rulers in the above photo are 12 inches long (300mm). The finished model should be about 1.5 feet tall at the tallest point in the rear and 1.5 feet long (450 mm tall and 450 mm long).
  17. sparkart
    I agree with DaveE, that a reasonable range of scales is, ironically, if not precise, the most accurate description. The real world works with tolerances, why not the play world of LEGO? I've played around with just using minifig headgear to establish scale: I know the heads are a little undersized, but these turn out to be very close to 3.75" action figure scale, about 1:18 ~ 1:20.
  18. sparkart
    Kunio Okawara designed the Zaku Mobile Suit, but he credits Gundam director Yoshiyuki Tomino with the "mono-eye” idea, https://vanishingtro...nkei-newspaper/ For a later iteration of this LEGO model, I'm hoping to light that eye up from the inside. The chest is big enough, I think, to house one of the aftermarket lighting kits. Kinda odd that an optical sensor, like the mono-eye supposedly absorbs light radiation to detect it, but often times, it's depicted as lighting up in model kit builds and anime, kinda signifying the machine is powered on. Maybe, rather than a passive sensor, it's an active sensor that also emits some kind of photonic radiation that bounces back that the eye can see. Man, I'm really a nerd-geek sometimes.
  19. sparkart
    Pieced together the hands, to try out ideas for gripping the weapons. I thought the big axe was called a "heat axe", but apparently, it's a "heat hawk", the heat part meaning the blade is energized, the hawk part coming from the word "tomahawk" In the palm of the hands, there are a couple of studs, so that the hands can clutch the weapons better: With the weight of the big bazooka guns, this connection is tenuous. But hey, it's not a kid's toy. It's not for 8-year-olds. This is an adult toy. Hmph. :)
  20. sparkart
    These look awesome, just a fantastic scale size to them. Such an elegant and economic use of parts, too. Super nice, thank you very much for sharing them! I've got to recreate these builds for my shelf collection. The only things I plan to change are adding the striped sticker to the front (cutting it to fit) and affixing a boat stud to the bottom front of the bike body.
  21. sparkart
    Wonderful! It would be nice to see the rest of your incredible collection of these classic super robots.
  22. sparkart
    I like these! They're all wonderfully terrifying, but the hammering doom of those up and down mashers appeals to me the most. Nice job.
  23. sparkart
    I was trying to say that erasing history can make it all the more conspicuous.. Maybe that's what he wanted, I don't know. The irony is, bublible wanted to remove his name, and made a big fuss over it, so his fame went to infamy. That's the kind of behavior that inspires people to track you down on reddit and YouTube and downvote and dislike all your content. Not that anyone should ever do that. It's not satisfying. Really. Don't do it. Don't. That's just immature. Please. C'mon, now. Obviously, this forum meant a lot to the poor guy, he got pretty worked up over it, but my real sympathies go to the moderators and staff. They did and do a fine job of keeping the peace. Thanks, guys. P.S. Someday, I hope to be as wise as Actor Builder.
  24. sparkart
    Hey remember in that documentary film, The Ten Commandments (1956)? "Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time." How'd THAT work out for the Egyptians?
  25. sparkart
    I think it looks ridiculously back heavy. :) I'm curious myself if those long tank extensions that jut out the back of the backpack will work without too much sag in real life, and if the Technic joiners that connect them to the backpack will support them, at all.
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