EamonnMR

Whelp, time to put my money where my mouth is. Lego done did a spaceship, and now I suppose I need to pony up and preorder it. Ok Lego. Ya got me.

Brick Link notes: "The box for this set was produced in two versions: a color version used for sets sold in retail stores, and a black and white version used for the sets sold directly by the LEGO Company."

Those vehicles look nice and rough, befitting a tough mining crew. Nice!

I only know where to find US scans online, but hey, thanks for doing this. Digitizing this stuff is really helpful. People have discovered all kinds of cool lore and stuff from these.

Probably the most charismatic design from expanse, nice pick!

I was going to scan my collection of magazines, but this person has already scanned most if not all of them: https://emilyinternet.zone/realm/scans.html I'll check this out later!

The contemporary part choices are mint. Great work on the background too. And of course the configuration fits the UFO theme. The detail work on the turrets is also reminiscent of the Alien Avenger but nicer and more articulated.

Nick From Planet Ripple has consistently good takes. He produced a series called Lego Rewind where he discusses a bunch of old themes, but having run out of those he's started to talk about modern themes. His big recap of the Bionicle series is pretty impressive.

Did you brick build that Blacktron Logo and arrows on the Eye? It looks great. Would definitely appreciate more shots of it!

Gotta appreciate those interior details like the ejectable warp core thing (very important feature if it's overloading!) the bridge with the consoles (gotta use as many different prints as possible! I know that impulse!) and the hanger in the back.The size has to give the new Titanic a run for its money too...

Nails the hexagonal shape and keeps the lines clean, well done. Yeah I missed the Mako in subsequent games, I think some people had trouble driving it but I thought it was great fun with all of the crazy off-world off-roading opportunities. I think it might have been a disconnect between mouse/keyboard players and controller players...

The bricks tend to be slightly wonky and the designs aren't exactly inspiring but there are a few neat scifi models on AliExpress called something like Star Contend The Hegemony that I got when I was stingier. But the quality wasn't great so even though they made the rock raider helmet in tons of colors I wouldn't dream of using those parts in builds.

It's funny that you mention the internet driving Lego out, because for me, since I didn't have google-fu Lego.com was one of the sites I visited most. Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident, Stormrunner, Mata Nui Online Game... those where some great games. There was also a game for Insectoids (boy did I ever love those bugs) but I haven't found that one online anywhere. You had to navigate a Beta Buzzer around magnetic fields that would attract and repel you. And the Throwbots game was a fairly unique mechanic (though incredibly awkward, honestly. I just loved the graphics.) I lost a lot of interest in System when it became clear that we weren't getting any more space after Life On Mars and all of the System stuff was getting <insert that tiresome argument> and reskinned in muted, drab colors. Bionicle bridged the gap; it's deep lore and worldbuilding and just overall goodness made it The Story of 2001. I started to lose the Bionicle thread after they made 12 figures with the same design (Bohrok) and then soft-rebooted into a prequel. Really, the further Bionicle got from Templar Studios' vision, the further I got from it. Part of my interest in Lego, especially Space and Castle, had always been this mystique that there was a continuity between the barely-remembered old themes of the past and the themes of the present. Seeing the instructions to the Mega Core Magnetizer, or old minifigs in an Idea Book, or shredded promo booklets at school... so the replacement of house themes by licensed themes also kinda made me lose interest (I know that's a common refrain here, yeesh.) I came back to the hobby really through collecting old sets on ebay and bricklink, but also sometime TLG started putting out really good sets, even with my nostalgia goggles I can see that. I'll still die on my angles-look-better-than-curves hill but compare sets from 2003 to 2013 or 2020 and it's crazy how much better they are. And they've picked up that they can slap the Black Falcon or Space logo on an already-great set and make it a buy for a fan like me. I probably would have liked the original Star Wars run a lot more if they'd looked half as good as the star wars sets we get now. Though I will die on the hill that Star War's "battleship gray everything" look is better expressed in Warm gray than Cold gray.

I like how it's crisp and modern but still uses a bunch of classic space parts.

Best element: 3475 Instantly turn anything into a spacecraft/aircraft/jet powered land vehicle. Cruise control for cool!

Something I noticed back in the day was that 6977- Arachnoid-Star-Base's product photograph/box art shows robots with the smiling Spyrius robot head instead of the crosshair-eyed Insectoids robot head. Another example from a few years later is 7180 B wing at rebel control center which shows a classic eyebrow-less head for the pilot, but shipped with an eye browed head. Anyone have any other examples where the official box photo has a mistake?

That rail mounted arm is awesome, and the level of detail is really cool, even down to the mud guards.

That looks a lot like 6835. I wonder how many alternate builds ended up getting released as proper sets later.

So someone made vector versions of classic theme logos http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=205547 Wondering if anyone did the same for classic 2x1 tiles, like the Spyrius control panel. It would be cool as hell to make that into a phone lock screen. I figure it might exist as an asset for stud.io or some such, but if that's a pain to extract I might try scanning it and cleaning up the resulting image.

This is kinda off-topic but care to share your method for rendering that light grid in the background? It looks great.

Awesome, I have 2152 on my shelf! Roboforce is an underrated theme with lots of potential, especially with the new ball joints we get now. You really captured the feel of the original hands while keeping it to modern pieces. My only suggestion would be to articulate the head more; if you're playing with a dinosaur you'll want to be able to pose the head for biting action. Might be hard with the hoses and keeping the exact part count though.

Sleek but not slippery, imposing but not evil. Listening to Pulsewidth and it definitely fits!

Cool color scheme!

I'm a fan of Mars 2019 even though it's not the exact aesthetic I like. My only problem with 60226 is that canopy-print white is very different from brick white and as of this writing it only comes in that one print. I'd probably get the big rocket sets but they'd take up a lot more display space than I have.

60226 included a helicopter and a car-sized rover, probably based on the Perseverance mission.