Shadows

Congratulations to all of the winners and a special word of thanks to everyone who participated in this fine contest from Captain Klootzak (I just really wanted to say that :-P ). Win or lose, everyone who entered is a winner to me! It's events like this that have helped make this the wonderful community that it is. Thanks again! *y*

I'd buy that, but honestly, it would be more like 30,000 bricks to manage all that and twice the price. It would be a bargain at under $2k, though I don't want to think about the shipping and how much of it they would either leave out or damage on the way... :-| Ultimate City On! :-P *y*

Not bad at all. Not my area of interest but definitely has the right look. Now he just needs a wristwatch. ;-) And he's openly handling his oddly round scutum. ;-)

*wub*'d the torso before, still do. So, let's get right to the heart of the matter here: Two ways I know of: A darker outline colour to indicate where the bottom curve is supposed to be and a shadow under that. If necessary, I'll be more than happy to google image up some examples, just ask. Please. *sweet* ;-)

Welcome to EB! Always glad to see another Pirates, Star Wars and minifig fan join up! *y* Be sure to check out the Big Billboard o' Doom

Did you just call Tau a big fat slob? He's so going to kick your megablocks... :-P Hope one of you is named Raph. :-/ Happy Birthday On! *y*

I bought two at $25 when I had the chance. Haven't built either, but it's a great black parts pack. I'll keep one to build as intended and one for parts. I'd say yes. *y*

Thanks! Sort of. I found that trying to work from an actual minifig was difficult because of the size, so I found a picture of the torso I was doing, resized it to the approximate size I wanted as a result, put the image next to the blank I was making and just started drawing. I didn't use any particularly fancy techniques because I didn't want the lines to be smoothed by the software or it would be difficult to change colours later (I can't explain that well enough). So I ended up working in solid colours and going back and making small single pixel adjustments to make it as much like the original as I could. That's also why I chose the size/resolution I did, since I believe it will look much smoother when printed. Thanks! Just as a note, I still haven't printed any of these and I have no idea how they would turn out, so it could be a disaster waiting to happen. 8-

Looks great, as long as I don't pay attention to the hundred dismembered hands making up that thatched roof! :-X :-P As for the second floor, I'd turn it into a storehouse for barrels, crates, and chests, so your crane idea might be useful there. For the downstairs that needs filling, a pub is always a good choice, and a great place for potential accidents and disasters, mostly resulting in waking up in the morning, looking over and thinking, "WHO IS THAT?" ;-) Keep us updated, it's a very nice project so far! *y*

Thanks! *y* Meanest thing I've ever seen you say. X-D :-D ;-)

Now I'll admit, I have no love in my heart for the design of the Crapship Dropship, but even I would give it a 37.5/50. For me, the parts are all useful enough to warrant a reasonable score there. I dock it the rest of it's points for stickers and .5 for making me keep calling it a crapship. :-/ To put it in perspective: I gave the Rebel Speeder a 42/50, and I *wub* it. The lesson here? Battlepacks are all about army building, and LEGO knows it. They provided that here, and did it with a reasonably interesting group of spare parts (which they call a dropship). Thanks for the reviews, even if you are a viscious scorer. ;-)

Fun little contest, light and fluffy with plenty of freedom on the one hand and devastating restrictions on the other. Plus at least one entry had a cool flick-fire missile story that went along with it. 8-

I like my themes lacking in formal story and chock full of creativity. Well, I'll just hope the stories contain a lot of female minifigs and cool new parts... :-/

I decided to take my first step into a much larger world by trying out some decal creation. I read the guides and still didn't know what I was doing, so I did what I always do... did it anyway. :-| I present, for your customizing pleasure, or general amusement as you point and laugh, my first few torso efforts. I made these with the idea that they could be applied to any colour torso (except black, really) by printing them on water-slide decals. If you are using something paper based, you will need to fill in the white area with the colour you wish. To make that easier, I chose a high resolution and didn't smooth the edges at all (so filling is simply click and go, not a complicated process involving anti-aliasing). All of the colours are easily replaced, if you want something similar but different. All are ideally suited for printing at 600dpi, without the need to resize. I don't know how well any of them would resize, I leave that to more capable hands, but I would change any colours before resizing, it'll be a lot easier. I use the figures that these are based on in various Tatooine/Mos Eisley displays as farmers, smugglers, etc. I also use one as my sigfig torso, and intend to use a couple of them for future pirate customs. I have also used one as a Castle peasant and one as a wizard. I think these could be useful in a variety of themes and would love to see your ideas. The first 3 are based on the Uncle Owen torso from the Sandcrawler. From left to right, original style, open collar (flesh) with new belt, open collar (yellow) with new belt: The next 2 are adapted from the Qui-Gon torso, with a slightly less detailed belt (I may improve this in time). Flesh and yellow varieties. The next 2 are the same torso, but using a simple Pirates style belt that I drew. The one on the right gets rid of the sash and adds a more detailed bottom edge to the robe. I am toying around with using this to make some form of martial arts style robe. The final 2 are from everyone's favourite whiny farmboy, looking to score some power converters at Tosche Station (70's hair not included). Flesh/yellow varieties. Any torso that is in one skin colour can easily be converted to another. I didn't do any in dark flesh, simply because I only thought about it now. It would be easy for you to do, or request it here and I'll post it. I'll add a colour patch to that folder eventually, but for now the whole thing is unmoderated anyway. Please let me know what you think and suggestions/requests are certainly welcome.

7714 Golden Guardian Duplicates of the two smallest Indy sets at like 15% off. Oh, and a new camera. Finally. Cheap and simple, I'll be experimenting with it shortly.

Good point, plus both good and bad guys will be human, so they have a lot more potential use outside of the theme. I mean, they're borderline 'normal' people by LEGO standards. This theme might be shaping up after all.

From those pics, this really is the spiritual successor to Exo-Force for me. Some new hair, a few decent minifig parts and such, nothing exciting at full price, but some decent things to pick up cheap. I can deal with that. I didn't need another big winner of a theme.

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Stormtroopers can also have plain flesh heads. Though you didn't ask, I'll add that Clones, Royal Guards, and Shadow Troopers have solid black ones, and TIE Pilots have either brown, reddish-brown, or black.

I have no experience with either, sadly, but they do seem to share a lot of parts, including the rails. http://peeron.com/inv/parts/2671 http://peeron.com/inv/parts/2672 To be absolutely certain, compare set inventories. #6399 Airport Shuttle #6991 Monorail Transport Base

Nice to see that things are going reasonably well in these financially challenging days. Trim back a bit more waste, refocus a line or two, and next year could be even better. Just as an example of a way to refocus a line, dump the Mars jellies. Seriously, if you can figure out how to launch a new Castle line that harkens back to days of old and then keep adding new factions to it, take a cue from that and do it to Space. Treat the jellies like the skellies (I rhymed, heh) and cut back on them, adding a new alien race, or some evil humans, or even some decent robots. Figure out a way to make them appeal to the Star Wars fans and you'll definitely see the line perk up. Do it right, and you might even reclaim some of the EF fans who are sad to see their line go. I'm betting that both Star Wars and the vastly improved Castle line took up the slack for the sagging EF sales. I think the slow release schedules for Spongebob and Batman probably bode poorly for their futures, but LEGO seems to want to hold on to them (and I hope they do, I don't have a problem with either line even though I don't buy SB). The online PAB is consistantly in the top 25 sellers here in the US, and is frequently #1. I think a lot of people add a few parts on to every order they make (I usually find something to pick up). Just hard to gauge how much actual money that amounts to.

Exactly, and especially since the minifigs here all seem to have particularly common faces and hair. I don't even consider the snowman builder to be female since it's just the hair, and old hair at that. If we're going by that standard, here's another recent 'female': Come on LEGO, give us some female faces and use those new hair molds. THEN I'll pay for overpriced sets, because they'll actually be worth it.

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All of the classic Mummy movies, and obviously the Indiana Jones series. Problem is, I've never (well, since my dark ages) had room to MOC much, so it's all just in my head. On a similar but more complicated level, the original Zorro merges my interest in Adventurers, Pirates, and Wild West into a new theme that sadly, we'll never see.