ApophisV

Hmm..... Could be worth a shot.... ;-)

Actually this WAS a building shot! :-P The sorting was done by me before and she was building the small heart that is lying in front of her for me at this point! Yes, for ME! She is MINE! >:-)

That's my girlfriend! *wub*

Or you could snake in! (Okay, this gets probably the worst-joke-award 2006... :-$ )

Damn, losing a keychain is understandable, but losing a whole planet?!! X-O

Whoaw, how many 1x1 clear slopes did you get with this big baby??? X-O

This set isn't meant as a starter set for people that don't have any train sets yet. It's more meant like some sort of huge train part expansion set...

I cropped the ball, copied it to a new layer and moved it to the side (and blurred it). Then I edited the background where the cannonball was missing now with the standard brush tool (don't forget to blur the edited section afterwards!). Finally I created a third layer between the background and the layer with the ball. In this layer I copied the ball again and used the motion blur filter and set the transparence of the layer to 50%. Finally I placed the motion blurred selection under the cannon ball. Those things are hard to describe (and probably even harder to understand when I am describing ;-) ), I would give you the following advice: Take your graphic program and keep creating lots of different images. Experiment with all those filters, tools, layers and so on! I'm pretty sure most of us that are familiar with graphic programs didn't visit any courses or read any tutorial books! Best way to learn to use such programs is experimenting and learning-by-doing! And another advice: Show your creations to other people (e.g. post them here) and listen to their comments, you can learn from your mistakes and you will get new ideas and solutions this way! *y*

I am not sure about the crown, but some of my lightsaber hilts are made from a greyish plastic.

But this might also lead to some baaaad happenings: Imagine, a collector has 70 troopers waiting for weapons. So he buys 10 army builder sets. He has now 70 troopers with blasters, but 70 new ones sitting around without of any! So he goes and buys another bunch of ten sets! And - guess what - once again there are 70 left over without of their weapons! So he will have to buy ANOTHER bunch! And then.... Finally he will be completely broke and have to sell his house and maybe even his wifes and children and he will become criminal and take drugs and finally commit suicide!!!! X-O X-O X-O What a luck that I am not an army builder.... *sweet*

Im am not either, I am just annoyed by TLC acting weird the whole time. On the one hand they have their "strict" no-violence policy, but then they give us weapons all over the palce with ridicolous excuses like "it has a storyline", "the weapons belong to the theme" or "these are only for defense"... Dear TLC people: Please, PLEASE think about the weapon usage and if you are clear if and which weapons are okay for you please KEEP UP YOUR GUIDELINE! :-| PS: I am looking forward to blasters and more droids! ;-)

I LOVE THEM!!!! At least the first sets! You know, the yellow/trans blue ones and the first Aquasharks.... *wub*

Hope this helps!

Nobody at TLC can tell me that Exo-Force is about anything else than (futuristic) violence. In this line their is not a single vehicle, fig or anything else that has NOT the purpose to attack, defend or just fight. Therefore it IS a military theme, futuristic but nonetheless military.

Thanks for the nice comments! Maybe I'll use Tony's face for creating my first custom fig, a close-to-original Iron Man. Yes, I never was tempted to modify my LEGO parts because it would hurt me too much. But I am currently thinking about getting some extra torsos and heads from Bricklink to start creating custom figs. But that has to wait till I passed my tests this semester... ;-) Yeah, I agree with you on this point, he is looking somewhat weak due to his body size and his facial expression. But since this small project wasn't meant to copy the Avengers 1:1 I think the fig is enough to have a team member that is more or less clearly inspired by the Hulk. I thought about this too, but due to my tests at the university all my bricks are currently packed away, only the Minifig related parts are lying around. So a brickbuild Hulk has to wait till I passed my tests.

Here is the rest of the bunch of heroes I build a few days ago: Deconstructor This guy actually is a villain, he uses his immense power to fight with his special created weapon (consisting of 8 axe blades from the vikings). Samara the Witch Slightly inspired by the Scarlet Witch this Heroine is able to shoot magic arrows and to stun enemies by touching them with her staff. Super Markus While building my heroes I felt the need to create a clich

THis is probably the dull silver tone, not the real chrome... :-(

Over the last four or five years we have definitively noticed a slow but constant change away from their "no violence" agenda. They started introducing shooting mechanisms (SW,Bionicle) and continued developing them (Dino Attack, Vikings). The Dino sets suddenly were featuring futuristic looking big weapons, some were even close to existant ones (miniguns). They continued to carry these weapons into the Exo Force line where they became bigger and bigger. Finally realistic shaped 20th century guns in the Batman line. Now tell me: Why can't they produce Laser guns for SW sets when they didn't give their Batman characters standard western colts? IMO a Batman gangster with a western gun looks much more realistic than a SW trooper with a megaphon... *wacko* I think this developement will lead to many new weapons in the future and probably to more violence within their sets.

I'm proud to present: While trying to build something for the Hero Contest I ended with several figs, and these are some of them. Actually the Captain America fig on the left side was supposed to be my contest entry, but it came out too close to the original Cap America costume idea, that's why I skipped it and build another fig (The Void) Nonetheless I wasn't able to get this Avenger fig idea out of my head, that's why I started building more figs for that team. The idea behind it was to create alternate designs for the original team, including Cap, Iron Man, Thor and Hulk. And voila, here we go! Captain America: Actually his outfit is more based on Patriot from the Young Avengers than on the original Cap costume. Biggest changes were the red cape, the vibranium staff instead a vibranium shield and my version got a real helmet. Iron Man: My version has almost nothing to do with the current Iron Man design, the only similarities are the color scheme and the head which looks sooooo exactly like Tony... :-D The armor itself looks more like the old style armor he had decades ago. The jetpack is mine, I thought it would give the fig a more armorish look. Thor: I didn't pay too much attention to this character, first of all I'm not really familiar with him and then I don't think that he looks that cool. My version is mainly a 1:1 translation of a picture I found at Google using standard parts I had available. Except the cape, I hadn't a red one left. Hulk: What shall I say? It's Hulk... Using the only sandgreen head and the only sandgreen torso I had (It has the Snape-Grandma-printing on the back :-$) I hadn't much possibilities to modify his look. I gave him the HP hair to make him look somewhat neglected and a club to make him look more agressive. That's it for now, the next four figs are sitting on my shelf and wait for the photosession, I'll show them as soon as I got the time to make the pictures! As always: Comments and critiques welcome! :-)

The Void Hero Name: The Void Secret Identity: none Powers/Weapons/Abilities: Can communicate with and influence most electronic machines and computers | High strength level due to his bionic implants, especially his left arm is able to lift weights up to 15 tons | The Void is able to load his staff with electric energy and unload it into the environement in mulitple forms, e.g. as lightening Other Details: The Void hasn't any longer any human face. Also his memory was deleted and he doesn'tknow anything about his past. Origin Story: The past of The Void is unknown, he was the only survivor of an alien attack at an oil rig. Like The Void most of the workers from the rig were abducted by the alien attackers and the whole rig were destroyed. While most of the abducted men were killed or transformed into cyborgs without of any personality The Void managed to escape from their mothership while his own transformation was still in process. He hijacked a small exploration vessel from the aliens and forced it's A.I. to fly him back to earth. Within the flight both the ship's highly developed A.I. and the man that should become The Void later realised thatboth of them had to die. Reasons were that both the man and the ship wouldn't have much chances to survice seperated from the aliens, the mans transformation process was only half finished and therefor his health was very unstable. The ship's hull would almost completely melt down at the atmospheric flight, that's why the A.I. wouldn't have any chance to stay at life after the ship's landing. So they decided to melt together and become one being. Most of the ship's systems were integrated into The Voids body, the A.I. created a force field to save his half-removed face from infections and other damage, that's why The Void seems to have only a yellow glowing surface instead of a face under his visor. The A.I. also added many other features into his cyborg body, especially the power to control electronic fields and to communicate with machines. Finally it transfered his own memories and program into him, so they finally became one. A short time span after this process was finished the ship entered the athmosphere. While the ship was destroyed The Void was able to rescue himself. Back at earth The Void realised that the loss of his memory and the transformation process made him a stranger whereever he would go, but keeping in mind that the alien attackers still were somewhere close to earth ready for attacking he decided to use his powers to fight for the humans whenever any alien invader would come to earth. Gallery after moderation

I wish the Wachowskis had listened to their own movie characters instead of trying to get richer and richer... Boy: Do not try and bend the movie. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Boy: There is no trilogy. Neo: There is no trilogy? Boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the movie that bends, it is only your bank account.

P.P.S. Am I the only one who thinks we are slowly becoming more complex than Lugnet? ;-)

Korben Dallas collects Leon's gun (pun intended!) "That's a very nice hat." - "You like it? God!"

X-O I knew there were a reason why Walmart sold all of their stores here in Germany... They had to take the money for compensating their LEGO clearances in the USA!!! :-P

And once again I'm tempted to post an Iron Man picture... :-P