anothergol

I think you're overthinking what "should" be on Lego Ideas. I mean, let's face it, Lego Ideas is a place: -to suggest & vote for things that you wish Lego would produce, officially -to browse for nice MOCs. Not officially, but that's what I & many people use it for. It's a place to see & to be seen, & it actually looks nicer than MOCPages, doesn't overcompress images, and actually brings more views (MOCPages & others still being great options because they don't censor anything). Entries may be too big or have no chance for other reasons, but who cares? They're not really the source of "pollution" there. -(& for Lego, it's nice advertisement - people basically work for Lego plugging their MOCs in social media) But what's the real problem with Lego Ideas? The majority of entries, and those are ugly stuff made by kids. You certainly can't blame Lego for not rejecting stuff made by their #1 target, and I don't think they should. But it's the way it is, the vast majority of Lego Ideas entries are ugly pointless builds (-probably-) made by 10 year olds. I don't enjoy browsing them but imagine yourself as a 10 year old who's proud of his build, you don't want to see it rejected because it's crap. I don't even remember what I was building when I was 10, but it was probably crap. I do remember entering a little Lego contest in a local toy store, though. It wasn't really different from this, and the store accepted & displayed my (probably) crap build, and I was happy. Hey even my first entry at Lego Ideas blows (no way to remove it btw, that sucks) - I was back to Lego after over 20 years and had everything to rediscover. yeah, it is. Plus, if it was a small website with the only 50 entries who really stand a chance, WHO would waste his time browsing it regularly? Not even 10k people..

I own one exo-suit, and I was definitely waiting for discounts to get more. And they happened.. everywhere around me.. but not in my country. That's why I hate the Lego store, you can live like 10km from a neighbor country and not be allowed to buy from the Lego online store there. In contrast, I can buy from Amazon of different countries without a problem, same thing with ToysRUs simply because there is no ToysRUs in my country. So if Lego simply ditched the store in my (small - Belgium) country, it would actually be much better.

My latest entry went weird as well - it got rejected supposedly because not every word in the title started with an uppercase, which is weird considered it could be made automatic if that's really a requirement.

pretty interesting I can well understand the special colors that cost nothing for Lego to test, but all those unknown parts? That's crazy - many seem very useful, what's wrong with those parts?

It's funny how the pic makes it look like a small thing at the first sight, then you wonder what's going on when you see the size of some parts. That thing is massive and it's amazing that it transforms. I think you could improve the head, though. Looks a bit goofy, something in the eyes (or the space in-between).

I've been sending people to this thread if they want the LDD files, but apparently new members can't use the messaging system (which I can understand, but it's weird that I can't send you a message either). Drop me an email at gol.plays.lego@gmail.com and I'll send it (but I'm not checking that email address frequently).

I've finally made pics of this MOC I had finished weeks ago. I eventually went for the rotary assemblies, works well. And the "motorized" cockpit works well as well, I should make a video, even though it's a fast & short anim. Yeah, the 61100c01 motor -can- be used for doors & stuff. http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/417995

That part is a very important one, I've bought many in black. Is it really in dark grey here? Cool!

Looking great & nicely flat. Is it really holding well without any technics structure? That's surprising, but I think you took a big risk. As for joints, you can totally trust the technics rotary joints, especially since you can double or triple them here, there's no doubt they will hold the weight (divided by 4 on top of it).

It's up on Lego Ideas now, plz consider supporting: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/112665

Pretty nice. Have you tried this part, for the helmets? Might be a little too big, but they look more in the spirit of the original.

Thanks. Problem is that I need those 2 special wedges that make the roof, and a working hatch would require classic wedge plates & thus the ugly staircase effect again. I have several test builds of a "working" hatch, but one that opens to nothing (the rotary plate). I didn't keep it because it was troubles and not very lego-legal. But it's interesting that a 3x3 inverted radar fits well up there, if only there was a proper way to attach it. (it's of course always possible to put a minifig up there, removing the legs)

Ah, so that's how an actuator works, turning rotation into unidirectional motion? And it's then locked in place? If I had known.. a few days ago I built this. It locks in place using a simple gear.

I'm trying to play with the background color to render a model on a transparent (PNG transparency) background, but it doesn't seem possible, is it?

The joint is actually pretty visible, only it's a 1-direction one (either other directions are somewhere else, or it was just not designed with realism in mind, I don't know). But still, it nearly looks like a ball too: This is also why I chose a vertical ball cup, because it looks just like on the pic, even though it's a ball inside.

But the feet is where ball joints are absolutely needed. Anything on legs (even yourself :)) needs all-direction rotation on its feet, because they flatten all of the rotations above them, to the ground. But visually I don't mind them (only I didn't attach high-friction extenders to them because they would have been ugly), it's more the big joints on the lower-legs that stand out too much, but it's that, or no joint at all, like most AT-ST models do.

After weeks of edits in over 400 LDD files (while waiting for orders), it's 99.99% done (only have to replace some ugly blue axle pins by black ones). It doesn't require a stand anymore, what I was missing is that this part is not just an extender, it's a high-friction one: http://bricker.info/parts/98613/ And it works, the hip joints are very strong now. Feet don't really need it, though. Will have to make proper pics for a Lego Ideas entry.

but the LDD is already missing most (even if there's a lot) of those parts. & I can understand why they wouldn't bother adding masks & stuff that's made in short burts.

nice model I wonder what's the story behind it, btw. I can understand when one BL store gets a few pieces of a prototype color, but here it's not hundreds, but thousands of them sold in several BL stores and on ebay, and for very cheap. Doesn't that scream fake? But if they have a normal clutch power, I might get a couple, they seem useful (but nasty injection mark - while normally there should be a second Lego logo there)

Well, the Sandcrawler (which was certainly nice) & Invisible hand suffered from the same oversize problem as the AT-AT, and I can understand why Lego wouldn't bother trying to sell packs of the 100 same minifigures (& that's not even an "idea", nor a concept IMHO). Yeah the hilts, they could have done that, I imagine. There isn't much that's worth it, SW-related. The UCS Landspeeder is great & on its way to gather 10k. I can imagine it passing, but it seems to be high in the piece count again. The probe droid probably won't be voted, but it's nice, and something Lego never did (I think?) The Venator thing, looks great, but too gigantic again, and maybe not iconic enough. The posable AT-ST, would be a shame if it didn't happen, because Lego never made a good version of it. And I plan to put my own on Lego ideas as well, when it's finished. (damn, I just saw that the good-looking DeLorean had gathered 10k as well)

cute reminds of me the 6040 set which I owned 30 years ago.

I was gonna write exactly that :) Totally in the MASK spirit. When I was a kid & playing Lego, MASK was still around, and tweakable vehicles (transformers as well) was all we were doing.

Question is, is Lego Ideas really about the ideas, or the models? I see people voting more for ideas, which is sad because it lead to ugly things like the BTTF DeLorean. I'm all for the IDEA of a BTTF DeLorean, but I didn't buy it because there are much (much!) better other MOCS out there. Worse, after it passed on Lego Ideas, Lego didn't improve it, it made it even worse. What's SW-based that hasn't passed on Lego Ideas btw? Sure, the AT-AT, but I can think of many other reasons for Lego not to produce it. It would have been Lego's largest release (I think?), that alone makes you think twice. Could also be a matter of children safety issues (a 8kg toy on legs). I'd have bought it, though. People now seem to be voting for things that are hardly more than minifig packs (why not..). But I wish there were more like the exo-suit. That was NOT an idea. Had it been a crap robot made by a child, no one would have voted, no one would have bought. The model alone sold itself. (and yes, Lego messed with it a lot, but this time they improved it, and it's also understandable that a model full of retired pieces and illegal techniques can't pass untouched) I find it interesting how it's licenses that Lego didn't have, that pass. At first, I thought the total opposite would happen. Not only I was surprised that Lego wasn't scared by copyright infrigement when "ideas" based on licenses kept stacking, I was assuming that Lego would never bother acquiring licenses for them (I mean, that's heavy work too), and that things based on what Lego already owned, would have more chances.

It's actually not too "wrong" to me, it's just different. In fact, the reason it's usually the object that rotates (in the real world), is that it's easier to rotate the object that the camera around it, BUT there are rolling camera gadgets to do just that too, not counting that in movies it's also the camera that's on rails (but here it's also because it's easier to move the camera than the whole scene). Both look good IMHO (especially since the light is good from all angles, otherwise moving the camera would have sucked), is it optional or fixed to object rotation now?

perfect! I'm sure this will change the way (LDD) MOCs are shared online. It's worth a thousand (well, 30) pics :)