Shadows

Mostly I see these as useful in part. Primarily the torsos, but sometimes the heads work as well (and the legs rarely matter). Obviously some are later era than others, and some are more military than anything, but we seem to get a lot of military crossover in the theme. I'd forgotten that a Paradisa figure used a Pirates torso, and that there was a non-Pirates Paradisa torso that is so close to a real one (the blue/white without the belt). In some cases, other figures exist with the same torso, and would be equally useful.

It's just the abbreviated name thing, not that he specifically can't stand you or something. :-P I figure it won't matter, we'll be referred to by our character names. I know that once I'm on set, I absolutely refuse to leave character. *phone rings* That's unusual. *phone rings again* Hello? Oh, hey. No, we're not doing a show right now, you can't be on. *angry chatter* Really, we aren't, I'm just here commenting on an unrelated subject. The show doesn't go on until Monday, you know that. *relieved chatter* No, of course I'm not mad at you, and you did a nice job dancing with the girls. *hopeful chatter* Yeah, sure, stop by anytime, you still have your copy of the backstage key. I've got to run now, thanks for calling! *hangs up phone* *picks up phone* Phil's Locks? I need you to come out and change all the locks in the studio before Monday. Thanks! *hangs up phone* *camera fades* ;-)

I like it, it looks very true to the original and would serve well as a scene in an imaginary jungle adventure. ;-) Only thing I would add are some green whips to serve as vines, especially on the left burps. Oh, and in the Playmobile version, what are the red things at the adventurer's feet? It almost looks like a frog... Overall, excellent job! *y*

I'd buy that set. *sweet* Count me in, this looks like a great little contest. *y*

Thanks! The health code violations were a crime of opportunity, things I had handy and couldn't resist. :-D I'm not sure about the interior, I kind of burned out on this project and only kept it together so I could eventually take these pics. Now that I look at it, I remember some of what I liked and didn't like and might put some more effort into it eventually, so it could happen. Since it is a plane engine, that's probably a fair criticism. ;-) It really was a last minute detail, so I didn't put a lot of thought into it and it shows. :-$ My defense of the train windows is that I had a lot of them and since I don't build trains, they ended up here. Not a great defense, really. :-/ I need to explore window possibilities these days. I'll always be a smartass, first and foremost. >:-) I own a total of two of the Orient Adventurers sets, one of them is a red gate. It was demolished so that this project could live and was definitely part of my inspiration. I wish I had that whole line. I really regret missing them. :'-( Another last minute detail that didn't end up planned out well. Initially I wanted to put a garden out there with a small pagoda or some form of statue. When I decided on a fountain, those facets were all I had in white. It would definitely look a lot better with proper curved bricks, and if I keep it assembled, it will definitely get that improvement. It felt Chinese and I had it available in dark red. I have no idea if it's authentic, but I've seen something similar in real life, so I went with it. I'm thrilled that it worked! *sweet* Definitely a possibility. ;-) I've been considering either an antique store, a music store, or an Italian restaurant. Whatever it is, it'll have a detective agency on the second floor and not have quite as large of a footprint as this one did (or if so, it'll be in a much easier colour |-/). Thanks for all the kind words, both of you! *y*

*considers changing the title of the thread to: "Imaginary Jungle Adventure Signup Here!"* ;-)

B-OV-3C Many months ago, our very own Hinckley hosted a fun contest that I intended to build a Chinese restaurant for. I'd already done it in MLCAD, but ultimately couldn't get enough dark red to build that exact model in time. Instead, I made a smaller version, that I never got to enter because of a dead camera. Well, I have a new camera, but the same old photographic skills, so here it is, just overlook the poor pictures please. I'm working on improving, it's just taking time. It's a fairly straightforward design, in a mix of dark red and standard. The main entrance in the front where we see the owner, Mr. Wong, and a customer. A Chinese gate entrance on the side leads to the garden with decorative lanterns, birds, a lucky cat, and a fish fountain with coins. There you see another customer and her daughter at the fountain, while the hostess prepares to welcome them in through the side entrance. The delivery boy has parked his bike next to the building. I completely forgot to put him back when I took these pics. :-$ On the roof are a variety of health code violations that we'll just ignore, and a nice tower with dragon top. The tower windows are all vintage 60's parts I picked up cheap on eBay, and wish LEGO would have reintroduced instead of the new ones. Oh well. The roof is actually removable and takes the tower with it, but is unfinished inside. The final shot shows my idea of a good distribution of minifigs for a set of this type, 2 men, 2 women, and a child (daughter in this case). All pics are thumbnails, click away. Be kind, it's been a long time since I really built anything. This could literally be my first adult town MOC.

Brickshelf allows pdf's, doesn't it?

Pick-a-Brick has been perfect for me, so far. I tend to place a $20 PaB order in every regular order, just because they have a few things cheaper than Bricklink. Legs, torsos, and lamp posts last time, nothing spectacular. I didn't realise they shipped out of Denmark though, and I'm not sure that's possible. I've had a PaB order arrive in 3 days. I've never had a replacement part (they definitely come from Billund) in less than a week, usually 2 weeks. Comparing the two, I've also had mistakes from the replacement parts service, even using the online system which should be fairly foolproof. I'll add that they're always nice though and never question sending parts again to make up for mistakes. S@H isn't always so nice (especially recently). What was I saying again? :-$ Oh yeah, no problems so far. I haven't placed an order in 2 months though, and that didn't include and PaB (same old crap at the time). So that makes it 3 months since I've gotten anything from them. With all the changes in the company, there's no telling what could be going on. Not that I think about it, there was one little problem. My first 3 PaB orders didn't include itemized invoices, so I had to rely on my memory to check that they'd included everything. To the best of my knowledge, they did, and subsequent orders have included a full invoice, all perfect so far.

*puts his name on the list, before the list even exists* I always regretted missing the chance to be in the last one. :'-( Please please please! *sweet*

I like the concept here but not the execution. I don't need every house in town to have a red roof. I would have been thrilled to see this done in the parts pack style with a few colour options. Make it a choice of colours and it's a winner, but as it is, I don't really need it (I'll buy one anyway, I guess). Those click hinges look hideous. I've never been a fan of that style of window pane (I like the lattice) so that was a strike against it, but the hinges seal the deal. I don't expect to buy one of those. Wheels. Whee. :-| That said, if they are cheap enough, I'll end up with one of each for the heck of it, but I can't see any of them inspiring a large purchase. I'll call this a misstep in the right direction. :-/

Well sure, and then I could give her boobies *sweet* and get rid of that silly belt and next thing you know, you've got a torso that would be good for lots of things (um... :-$). It could end a little like this ... The green is the outside area of the decal. It's my official "this isn't going to stay this colour, colour" so I don't usually leave it in, but without it the boobies looked wrong. Why are we still saying boobies? I blame Hinckley, without who's boobies we'd all just be giggling but not saying anything. X-D *y* As always, colours can be adjusted easily, and one could fill the white with something else, but I didn't really know what as black would be too much. Maybe a gradient of dark greys. I also kicked around a slightly different idea for this one, but I'm not satisfied with the result. Not that it's ever stopped me before ... :-P Like I say, not completely satisfied there. :-/ Can't really expect much, I'm not an artist, but I like experimenting with ideas. That one isn't a complete idea yet.

Which reminded me of something I wrote once in a fit of streaming consciousness. :-$ "What an odd place to put one of those!" was the last thought to enter Bob's mind that day, not because of anything that would happen to him, but simply because he was on Flargulon 12, a planet which made its orbital rotation once per second, thus placing his next thought squarely in the middle of the next day, short as it was; a situation that Bob neither cared about, nor was aware of as he pushed the glowing red button marked 'do not press' and waited to see what he had done, which, as it turned out, was to spell doom for all those inhabiting Flargulon 12; about 11 people and a sheep who were all quite surprised to hear the voice of the Announce-a-con 7200b literally spelling the word 'doom' though it's massive speakers, just as Bob requested when he pushed the button he thought was marked 'do not press', but which actually said 'spell Canadian bacon' in Flargulian, a language he didn't recognise and for which he could have used a translator, a situation unfortunately not addressed by the makers of the Announce-a-con 7200b since they considered it more important to translate from Flargulian to English, which, even more confusingly, fails to explain why their word for Canadian bacon would coincide with the English word for doom, though we have theories about that, mostly having to do with the fact that it is commonly accepted that Canadian bacon is the source of most of the evil in the known and some of the unknown universe, but I digress from my real point, which is, simply, people tend to push big red buttons with wanton disregard for the impending result far too often, something that should perhaps be addressed in the form of a public service announcement, a task perfectly suited for the Announce-a-con 7200c, the long anticipated replacement to the aforementioned model.

That bugged me too, but every reference pic I could find showed it filled in a very dark blue. Peeron actually calls it a black choker, which would make it go all the way up like that, but even though they call it black, only the edge is, the rest is definitely dark blue.

Exactly! So for a train contest, I'd like to see "build a train in your favourite theme, even if it isn't appropriate." That would produce some interesting results and include everyone, since even the term 'train' is loosely defined and could be anything from a minecar to a hovertrain, with all the basic steam, coal and electric stops along the way.

Not sure why I did these, except that they seem potentially useful. As always, they're done at 600dpi so I don't have to smooth them, which means you can simply load one in any paint program and change the colours to whatever you want. Unlike always, I actually provided the background colours as they originally appear. I did this mostly because of the Katara torso, which uses an area of unbordered white. I haven't a clue how to do the printed legs for Aang or Sokka, if anyone has some suggestions on that. The part I can't wrap my mind around is how to properly compensate for the curve of the upper leg surface. Whatever the case, here we go. Let me know what you think. UPDATED: Added Sokka's back decal. I own the whole line (2 sets, haha), but have never opened them, so these are based on online images. If anything is majorly wrong, let me know (I'm not at all sure about the dark red triangles, for example, but it's the best I can tell). Similarly, it was tempting to slightly improve them, but I didn't (I don't like the back strap on Sokka at all, but it seems to be as intended).

Someone put a lot of effort into adapting that. Before: After: Looks like a winner to me! *y*

Helloooo Random Boobies Lady! *wub* I don't recall her being official, but she's very very nice *sweet* *y* I've had that same problem with reference pics not being quite right. Even moreso, I've started noticing that where multiple colours are used on a torso, TLG often prints them with less-than-brilliant allignment, leading to colours drifting outside of their intended boundary. Mr. Cunningham was a good example of that. Every example I found online had areas of white shirt outside the bordering line. Who would have guessed that in the process of doing these, we'd actually end up making slight improvements? *wacko* Keep up the great work! *y*

That's what he requested, perhaps for just such a project. Hopefully we'll see some MOC pics later and see one of these in action. Doing these makes me think how easy it would be for LEGO to produce 'new' figures without any real effort, simply by printing old designs on new colours. I'll never understand why they don't go for this easy way to make a quick buck.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. This is a great example of how well an interview can go when you have a guest who is willing to provide in-depth answers. *y* Thanks! This was the first interview since I picked up a new camera, so I took a few minutes (didn't think of it until after I posted the interview itself) and threw together a sort of desert set out of parts I had handy. It made me realise just how lacking my WW parts assortment is (I came out of my dark ages after they were pretty much gone). That is something I need to correct at some point. On the other hand, you can always tell a Staudie set because it includes a tank and I have the scariest red cape in history. :-| ;-)

Seems like something that belongs in the normal "What Did You Buy Today" with a note about finding a deal. Still, a good deal. Maybe they were having some kind of buy one get one and you just didn't know it. I'd go back and see if I could scan more sets looking for another bargain.

Interview With Lego Space Disigner, !!!NOT A EB NEWS INTERVIEW!!! I knew that... those EB News guys always make sure they spell their titles properly. :-P Oh, and thanks for sharing this. I'd seen it, but it's a neat article and worth seeing again. *y*

Done! *y* http://eurobricks.hosting.ipsyn.com/eurofo...showtopic=15903

Done! *y* All at 600dpi, just print and trim. The white one had to have a shirt colour since it's normally white, so I chose green. You can load these into your own paint program to easily change a colour. The first one is the original style, just in case someone needs it. Enjoy, and please let me know how these work out for you (I'd love to see a picture). *sweet*