Jump to content

shiftaltcmd

Eurobricks Vassals
  • Posts

    22
  • Joined

  • Last visited

1 Follower

About shiftaltcmd

Spam Prevention

  • What is favorite LEGO theme? (we need this info to prevent spam)
    knights

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male

Extra

  • Country
    Sweden

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Swebrick has a timeline, is this what you're looking for? Page 9 in their Magazine. https://www.swebrick.se/infoblad/2018/swebrick2018_high_a4.pdf
  2. Don't spend too much time on it. Many of the lego colors are impossible to match with traditional four-color CMYK. You need to use a professional photo-printer with more colors to stand a chance. They come in different versions from 6 to 12 colors. I haven't been able to find correct color values on the net, so for me it's a lot of trial and error. People might have guessed the color values and then published them as the "truth". Even if you get the correct values, no one has published what color space they have been using. European CMYK differs from American CMYK. sRGB differs from Adobe RGB and so on. Some websites uses Pantone color values. That could work but so far I have not been able to trust them because of errors. And they don't provide any information if it is correct information from Lego or guess work.
  3. What's the difference between Brick Fanatics mag and Blocks mag? More than the size, Blocks ≈ A4. Brick Fanatics ≈ A5. Some of the people involved are the same. Which one would be the best for an AFOL?
  4. The best part is to find the perfect tree (and not to be discovered stealing it). The most dangerous animal in the deep dark forest is the snow-snake.
  5. Can you hear mommy calling? Don't eat yellow snow! Don't lick the lamp posts!
  6. Really nice trains! Glad that I could help with the stickers. For the first version of the signs on the sides I used a photo and only changed the numbers. It looks ok in a larger format but it's a little bit messy in small scale like Lego. For the second version I found a better photo and an original drawing. I drew the lines and replaced the colors with a dark grey and brass. It looks better, cleaner, in a smaller scale. The fonts I found were quite good but the distance between the characters had to be adjusted. Especially for the numbers. For example "G" and "R" are not spot on but close enough. The stickers are made on a professional UV-printer on transparent vinyl. First I put a layer of white, that way the sticker can be placed on any colored surface. The transparent vinyl makes it easy to cut and trim. Sometimes I print directly onto the lego-pieces but here stickers were better. Fonts, colors, logotypes are usually not that hard to find. Many companies have some kind of graphic manual and with a little bit of research you can usually find it. www.brandsoftheworld.com, www.logotypes.ru and wikipedia have a lot of resources. On wikipedia I always choose the svg-file if possible. With SVG it's very easy to scale and change the colors. Sweden is a very open country and a lot of information is in the public domain, free to use. The railways used to belong to the state but now we have a lot of private companies that makes it more difficult to find good information. For car traffic it's still possible. Fonts, colors, signs … all is available to download. Now I have all of the swedish traffic signs in Lego-versions. https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/Trafikregler/Om-vagmarken/Teckensnitt/ https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/Vagmarken/
  7. Most inks are waterbased. Dont soak the prints more than necessary. Right paper is essential.
  8. They can handle a lot of abuse. The smaller ones can handle almost anything. I have put five on top of each other, I could stack them higher, but then I need some side-support. I don't want them to fall down because someone/something bumped into them. The big one for storing cc-buildings or mocs on baseplates is quite sturdy. The one that I have for the Monster house I put a 30 pound / 15 kg computer on top of that. No problem. I wouldn't hesitate to put one on top of another. But not more than so, it will be to high. Forces from the top is no problem. It's forces from the side, a push or a bad road. Put the storage next to a corner or a wall to give it some support from the side. And it can handle a lot of abuse. There are no places to buy them at the moment. If there is interest I will look into the possibilities of (mass)producing. Or I could publish the drawings and anyone can make their own.
  9. A medium-sized one. 3 x 2 feet, 90 x 60 cm.
  10. Thank you. Depends on the interest. I don't want to cut them all manually. With a machine doing the cutting a minimum series is about 200-300 of the same box.
  11. I made them myself
  12. Loose elements I store mostly in plastic trays. These ones are for storing and transporting sets and mocs. Getting an overview of minifigs etc. Great for armybuilders, put the army on a baseplate instead of ziplock bags.
  13. My serie of Lego-storage made with corrugated cardboard I like working with corrugated cardboard, cheap, strong, light-weight, easy to work with, recycable. I used a special one with a white and brown side. Putting the storage together you can choose which side will be the outside. No glue or staples. The storage is lasercut to a perfect shape and snap together by itself. (But with the laser you will have a burnt smell for a couple of days.) Minifig and landscape storage Four versions of minifig storage. Could also work for low landscape modules. The storage has a perfect fit for a 32 x 32 baseplate. During transport there is nothing inside the storage that can move. Strong enough to stack them on top of each other. I have had 5 boxes full with minifigs stored on top of each other. It's possible to choose between front and top opening. A high version that will fit a mounted knight or a cave troll, and low version that fit a minifig with a spear (not halberd). If you want to see what's inside the box it's possible to make a cut-out and put in a plastic-window. Vehicles I have made two versions so far, both versions fit two vehicles. 6-wide or 8-wide. The height and length is enough to house large trains. The same principle as above. Corrugated cardboard with a tight fit. During transportation the content should not be able to move inside the storage. Building instructions Once again, an exact fit. It's better for most instructions to lay down instead of standing. The corrugated cardboard is strong enough so you can put boxes on top of each other. CC and Moc storage An exact fit, no movement during transportation. You slide your build on to the bottom half, no need for lifting. Close the front. Put the top in position. The top half can be cut to almost any height. It is possible to put the storage on top of each other. But then the bottom one has to contain something that gives a little bit of side-support, or put storage in a corner. A CC-house is ideal (not like the Monster house below, which is 32 x 24), the walls of the house will support the storage so it doesn't skew. The Town Hall was really impressive to put inside the storage. The storage can be unfolded to save space if it's not in use. I'm also trying out a larger version that can house 48 x 48 baseplates. It will need a thicker and stronger corrugated cardboard to support the extra area/volume/weight.
  14. My new Lego-storage in the updated Lego-room I'm combining storage with a surface to build on. It will fit most of my building pieces. Bricks and plates will be stored separately, there are too many of them. It's made from fibre-board, the same kind as Ikea uses but without the outer coat. I will paint it later. Inspiration comes from Ikea Trofast. I let the hardware store cut the fibreboard to the exact size and put it together myself at home. I got some left-overs of the fibreboard, I cut them to thin stripes and let the storage containers glide on them instead of buying special ones. The table-top is an Ikea work-top. Fibre-board ≈ 30€ Cutting ≈ 10€ Work-top ≈ 45€ Screws ≈ 3€ Cross-brace ≈ 2€ Total ≈ 90€ Storage-containers 0-5 € each depending on size and brand. I'm also using plastic trays that used to contain candy. I get them for free from the local shop. Above there is a small shelf. It's supposed to house pictures but I'm using it for minifigs. The depth is 8 studs. I'm using the collectible minifig stand so I can only have two rows of minifigs. Maybe change that in the future to be able to have three rows. And a couple of small Lego inspired containers. The room itself is about 3 x 4 meters.
  15. Reading the discussion I believe there are still some things to consider and to look at. Sorry for the big images but it's easier to see the details. The look and feel will be different between pad printing and inkjet. See images below. Inkjet will give a blurry, rasterised look. Pad printing have a cleaner solid look. Compare the print on the scarecrow and the flower. A inkjet print is made by millions of tiny drops of ink. Pad printing is more like the old potato print that you might tried out at school. Inkjet mixes 4 colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black to get the whole range of colors. Pad printing uses one specific color for each pad (spotcolor). The torso of the scarecrow have five colors, black, green, yellow, brown and tan.) It's possible to get close enough with inkjet. The apple is good enough at a small distance. Only at close-up like this you can see the imperfections. The solid black prints that I made works the best. Only one color is needed which minimizes the need of mixing colors. In pad printing each color that you add, will also make the total cost higher. Not only that you have to make more pads, there will also be more errors and more copies that you have to throw away, simply because they are not good enough. Inkjet, you have millions of colors to choose from, no extra cost. But it is difficult to exactly match colors. With pad-printing you can choose special colors like metallic. You can also have colors that are more saturated than CMYK-colors. CMYK-colors are transparent, light passes through the ink and reflects from the surface beneath the ink, that's why you will always have the best result while printing on something white. (Some inkjet printers have solved this by adding white to the traditional CMYK-colors. First you print a white layer, and afterwards the CMYK-colors on top of that.) With pad-printing the colors doesn't have the be transparent, so you can print on darker materials. It is almost impossible for an outsider to exactly match Legos colors. Every website I have visited have been useless. There are many websites that presents RGB and CMYK values for Lego colors but they make no sense. There are different kinds of RGB and CMYK, so without telling which one the numbers are pointless. It's like saying that I caught a fish that was 25. 25 what? 25 inches, 25 centimeters, 25 pounds, 25 kilogram … ? I used the Pantone values from the Peeron color list. I don't know if those values are the correct ones from Lego or if someone else tried to estimate the correct values. Anyway I took the Pantone values and converted them into CMYK according to the ISO-standard (Europe). I discovered that many colors are impossible to reproduce correctly with traditional CMYK-print. Mostly they are too saturated or too bright. Compare the image below. The upper row is colors created with RGB-values (RGB are for example the colors that a digital camera can capture or a screen can show.) The lower row is how these colors will look like in CMYK-print. If you try to print that image the upper and lower row will come out as identical. You can see that it's mostly the bright saturated colors that are impossible to match. Green and orange are among the most difficult. Other colors like browns, greys, sands are a delicate mix of all four CMYK-colors. Very difficult to keep the balance. That's why Lego uses spotcolors like Pantone (there are other industry-standards, RAL is common for cars and architecture, NCS is popular in Sweden …). You use spotcolors to be more consistent in production. It's better than CMYK (but still not perfect, Lego have problems being consistent with some colors.) Yes, I know there are photoprinters that has a wider color-range. For example Epson and Canon makes brilliant photo-printers with 6-8-10-12 colors instead of the usual 4. But I haven't seen any flatbed UV inkjet printers with photoquality like that. But maybe in the future. I would choose pad print to large runs. Inkjet for small runs. Anyone that has any good closeups on the Comicon special minifigures, they might be borderline then it comes to economy. Many of the comicon minifigs seems to use 2-3 colors. Cheaper and easier to produce compared to the Scarecrow below. I also do prints on vinyl. In many cases that's easier and better, especially with transparent vinyl. Transparent, no white paper edge and I don't have to match the background-color with Legos color. Even Lego themselves do this on their stickers. And no bricks are hurt in the process.
×
×
  • Create New...