Elysiumfountain

@anothergol Lol no, I was contacted beforehand. I was just told not to tell until they presented it! ;) And for sure, some of the pieces I think weren't put on securely for the photos, which is why some of it looks wonky! It's definitely not for everyone, you're right! Of course that's part of the awesome challenge of trying to make it to the finish! ?

@Digger of Bricks Thank you! :)

Yeah why are they so fragile?! Had a shard chip off of a tile being used on a balcony last week while moving it around!

I'm a finalist! My entry, the Clovershire Castle, just got posted on the landing page :) https://studio.bricklink.com/v2/build/afoldesigner_winner_model.page?id=57599 It's not the best out there, but I hope it makes it! :)

Wow! Such a loss, though, with the destruction of most of the collection at the museum. Apparently the estimates, as with most fires, will take about ten years to rebuild. If it doesn't get slowed down by any number of factors. Still, best of luck to the designer as the idea moves on to the next phase!

Wow! This one really flew past me, I saw it when it was at 500 or so supporters, congratulations to the builder! A little basic on the architectural elements, perhaps, but I suppose that could be remedied if it passes review :)

@Blondie-Wan Thank you! :)

I am happy to say that I finally had a success on LEGO Ideas! None of my projects made it, but the prizes from the Harry Potter contest for my basilisk entry just arrived in the mail today! I've never seen so many sets together in all my life! Outside of stores that is ;)

@icm Apparently only the finalists who make the $10,000 crowdfunding goal will be approved as sets, because people who "vote" for them are placing pre-orders for the sets. So some of the finalists might make it, or none at all! We'll just have to see. I want to know what the other twelve look like.

Well, the first four out of the 16 finalists have been announced on the landing page! Sneak peeks only, as the pricing and details don't get announced until February 1 when the crowdfunding begins. I can't wait to see all of them!

@TeriXeri Oh no, I was not implying that you were one of those people! It was definitely meant as a generic statement! (Most of the people I've met, which number very little, were not on EB)

I like both formats, for me it's always helpful to build in digital first and then build in physical, unless they don't have parts in that color. (Otherwise I'm stuck halfway through a build after four to five hours of building having to undo the whole thing just to fix one piece that could easily be fixed digitally before the physical build). But that's just me. I've just never understood the people who REFUSE to support a decent or exceptional Ideas project solely because it is built with physical bricks or digitally rendered. Nevermind how artfully put together and coherent and feasible the project is, good lord it's a render, the world is ending! Believe me, those people exist! Similarly, the people who believe that what's on the Ideas page is the final design, that that's how it's going to arrive in finished set form, no modifications or changes necessary. I realize people have standards, but TLG has a say in the final product too! (Speaking from the viewpoint that my builds will always have room for modification and improvement). Rant over :)

@Modeltrainman thank you! :)

I remember supporting it the first time it came out! Glad it got resubmitted, I'll have to pop over and support again :)

@icm THIS. So much this. I'm in the same boat as the in-between builds. I think the most I ever got was in the 3000s for one project, but I finally had to stop because Ideas was consuming so much of my life! Constantly taking time to support others and update and such, I think takes time. I mean it's meant to, if it were easy everyone's projects would be at 10,000! So I'm letting all my projects die a slow painful death. However, I do notice for those that seem to have less of a "fanbase" or easy connections it's harder. Like the top builders on Ideas I think have a certain number of people who will vote for whatever they put up no matter what, which will always contribute the initial push of around 1000 supporters or so. Either that or they have massive twitter followings ;) Is it just me or has the Ideas site become more confusing and cluttered? I love the contests and such, but if anything finding new projects and supporting seems to be a slower process than it used to be. The hardest thing is drawing people to the site, which because most people don't usually go there on a regular basis or are only one time supporters is hard. And there's that fine line of self-promotion and spam that I'm too polite to try to cross lol. Maybe making the Ideas site more visible for people?

The only modular building I purchased was the Town Hall, back in 2011-2012. Back then I was still in school so $200 USD was the biggest I'd ever paid for anything in the history of ever. Then I haven't bought any modulars since. I was really really REALLY tempted by Parisian Restaurant and Brick Bank. This year though I figured that if the new modular was better than those two I would buy it. The Garage is okay, I like the overall design, but it's not something I could afford to spend so much money on. Although it would be interesting to see if someone mods the ground floor gas pump into a cute little corner store with food and everything! tl;dr: I'll pass on this one this year, and watch a speed build video of it instead when it comes out ;)

In the regrettable absence of my physical bricks until the end of the year, I've had to occupy myself with rendered builds. I present to you my newest build, The Centennial Building! Unlike a lot of my previous builds, this one is based on an actual building. It's heavily influenced by the design of the Old Nassau County Courthouse in Fernandina Beach Florida. I lived there for a year long ago and found some of the architecture there to be fascinating! As one of my friends pointed out, you can tell it's a digital model because half of those sand green roof pieces don't exist in real life! An interior shot of the upstairs of the building. I reused my chandelier design from the Glacier Falls Lodge here. My favorite part about this build is that it hinges open, allowing for ease of access into the build itself. The total piece count for this build is 2,960. Originally, when I put it all together, it was around 3,590, so a lot of the exterior cladding and some of the smaller parts had to be sacrificed. This is because this build is now active and gathering support on LEGO Ideas! If you would like to pop over and lend your support to it I would be very grateful! The link is below: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/8e81a710-684f-4c0f-962c-62c52c7c2c00 So there you have it, everyone! The Centennial Building! Thanks for looking and brick on!

@Digger of Bricks I saw those too! I really hope they're official, because some of those food tiles looked pretty sweet! And the minifig printing as well

@anothergol I didn't notice that the first time I looked at the graph, but on second glance I did. I wonder what they'll do about them? I'm best when working with buildings and landscapes so the palette worked pretty well for my entries. I did include a couple minifigs, but most of them were statues.

And maybe sure some people got frustrated with the palette and didn't bother? I know there were some complaints about people finding it to be too limited.

I think most of my submissions turned out to be buildings or landscapes lol! (Not that great with animals or objects), finished the last yesterday. And now we wait! :)

True but even among the (up to potentially) 20 finalists how many of those are people are going to make it? Hard to say lol! It's always the 'up to' that is the fine print. They might only select one!

I think in some ways for the finalists it might be harder than Ideas to make it through the crowdfunding stage. Because unlike Ideas, people have to actually commit to buy the sets if they make it through (even though it says if the set doesn't make it the funder doesn't have to pay). I wonder if that's going to discourage some people who like the set but don't really want to pay lots of money

Ooh good luck! I still have to submit my design, there's a couple more photos I have to render. They take so long on my computer, it's at least 1-2 hours per photo!

Also the mini figure parts are quite limited too! Which made me sad. But I'll enter anyways! Another thing to watch out for if you do import something from LDD is the conflicts that you'll come up with regarding the different palettes. But it is kind of nice because it tells you which parts aren't allowed. (I had to manually replace 400+ parts so it was a pain)