Medzomorak

Haha, I'm not sure but you just might! :D

Okay, these are surely the more grandiose ones. With building kits I meant a fair amount of generic bricks to boost children's options to build...well, general stuff. Under 'model' I mean more specific parts. Neither is better than the other, it is just the matter of perspective. If I had a kid who just starts with Lego, I'd buy him all the generic creator sets in the blink of an eye instead of a Nasa 'model' kit or even a Ninjago set for example.

This might yet turn out to be good. My only fear is that it is going to be more like a child's building kit instead of a more refined actual ship model.

I think the best way is to do it as a hobby. Value is created in the long-run, like the BrotherhoodWorkshop dude. He started it for his own fun, thats why value was created. I myself plan to do classic pirates dioramas similar to old catalog ones in the future for sure, only I need to collect more items for it. If Lego would find to like later on that's just a bonus.

Well, I still have a ton of things to collect from the classic Pirates series anyway. The two previous - personally disappointing - Pirates reboot burnt me out slowly already. Technically I'm waiting for a big hit Pirates line for 20 years now. Something that holds for 3-4 years at least, something worthwhile to collect. In the meantime my classic pirate fanatism went so extreme I even discovered a growing hate in myself for the newer color combinations, like reddish brown and blueish grey. Yikes. So yeah, this creator ship should better be good :D

Is there any elaborated information about current stud.io rights things?

The first thing popped into my mind is the vintage 398 USS Constellation It may well have a similar model-like feeling with modern colors and curves. I also like BLUSER's solution for sails in studio, sadly cloth sails are not yet implemented there: I'd definitely love to see similar tile-ish sails.

Wow, the price implicates higher piece count for a Creator set. Is the hull also brick built?

Gosh, I love how colorful it is, you managed to get out great angles with the available pieces. Reminds me the old days when I had to use all my spare parts to create the shape I wanted. Builds like this have real soul. Congrats

Everything is perfect about it. My only concern is whether Lego wants to rake up the past by contrasting too many old themes to newer 'fancy' ones. I hope after Pirate Bay we may be let to have something castle based unqie as well. I'm getting a bit annoyed how IDEAS turned out to be a license fest as well. But let's get it to 10.000 first I guess.

yes, yes, YES. This is the most compact, most authentic, charming and breathtaking homage to the forestmen theme. If this is not going to happen we rebel.

Agree. This is already somewhat revisionist considering that Lego made similar stop motion commercials with dioramas and I still think those were the best. Not so often Lego still creates commercials like this, there was a Ninjago thing where kids were playing outside in the garden. I think these are the better ones for kids I mean present day animations are just truly cheap and low-quality, unlike the cinema movie versions. But those are very expensive again so my opinion would chose dioramas as a winner again.

Corporations can also be quite waterheaded as the management grows itself but it is very true that Lego has always had a hard time to get along with the changes in the world. This Hidden Side Application stuff is just another example. Outsourcing is actually not a bad idea if you really have a talented fanatic doing the job. For example Lego animations were always cringey and simply low level in quality, until they've outsourced advertistments to BrotherhoodWorkshop. All the better stop-motion Lego videos are made by him if you check the official Lego YT channel as well. These are 100% better than those digital animation ones. Just like old dioramas compared to new catalogs. Of course all of your arguments about set counts and spacing was true, but I think creating emotions and feelings are more important. But that's just me talking. I think a similar approach would be profitable for Lego if someone would take the time to create up-to-date dioramas for a hobby until Lego recognizes the potential for some albums or even extended catalogs.

No need to cross our, you are not alone, we all have our own personal memories about them. Happily I had some friends whose religion was also oldshool Lego. I always brought to school my brother's catalog the gaze upon them together. I've lost contact with them many many years ago after I've moved to the capital with my parents. No one liked Legos here, everything was going about hanging out, 'ganging' the streets and being the coolest guy, slowly I got pushed into my dark ages. I remember coming across again old catalogs when I've started university and I dreamt about being a little kid again for many days. Started to collect and create ever since, even my girlfriend tends to sit down and build stuff occasionally. Now that we don't want to be the coolest gangstas on the streets it is much easier to accept that we just love Lego, it is in our very souls. Also about the diorama idea I agree as well. Lego has just enough resources today to make a little more heartwarming adveristment with their new sets. A catalog has become truly like a catalog, a brief list of products. Maybe another type of yearly poster album could expand every theme into an oldschool diorama to boost imagination, I'm sure the same effect would chain kids to the company forever as well.

Haha, did not expect such an emotional response :D Going a bit offtopic here: I'm not sure I'm the biggest help in the issue but as I see it the best start is to not take it too seriously and start building simple things like a child. I always get ideas while creating just silly stuff without any huge expectations from myself. To be honest I am in a similar situation. You've mentioned stud.io. I'm currently working on this classic Armada Fortress with it. I was always kind of sad that they had never served them right in 1996 so I'm satisfying the 8 years old in myself with the project. My goal is to create strictly vintage vibes, with mostly old parts while still trying to make something original. Now I'm stuck with the idea for months as I don't want it to be too much of an Eldorado Fortress copy however I want the same feeling. So I feel for you, haha. My problem with stud.io is that it needs a lot of patience for the simplest things as well, it has some minor bugs with baseplates and big unique pieces like ship hulls. It is so much easier to build back and start again with physical prototyping but the infinite digital resources are sometimes even more encouraging for trying out things. For example building this half made tower took me long long hours as I was continously checking out bricklink for valid color availability on every part, but least I had all the piece counts I wanted. Anyway it's a great program, much easier and comfortable than LDD in my opinion. So again try not to think too much, you'll never know how is it going to turn out at the end. I also suggest not to try to copy the most complex building technics at first (I pile bricks upon themselves as far as my building ability goes at the moment), lot of the MOCs we see have decades of experience in them and a lot of them are not even the most legal build technics either (which is acceptable but hard to use in stud.io).

I only have experience with the hungarian situation. Catalogs are still everywhere and while I don't visit stores very often, every time I there I see kids and parents taking one copy with them all the time. The funny thing is that while I've always hated catalogs for the lack of dioramas my 62 years old parents still grab one every time they magically get there. Even my sister from San Diego brings me US versions since I'm the 'Lego guy' in the family. Never tried to explain to them how bad I have hated catalogs for years as I'm just happy to check out Legos again at that moment. Only to realise again how I miss the vintage style.

So true, as a kid I've always thought the big islander lagoon to be B.I.G. when I was looking at the catalog. Funny to realise it is actually just 393 pieces. For a 'Lego poor' kid baseplates were a great tool to create higher battle scenes without using all the bricks. For nostalgic reason I completely adore old 3D baseplates. I was always checking out the different forts and castles and comparing the color combinations of the bases. I love how the 90s was so diverse yet so uniform with them.

Found myself on this brickset thread and got very excited. I thought it would be interesting if we could gather as many old photos from old stores full of vintage sets as we can. So if you have anything, please share it with us. From this century: Of course these are just taken from the internet. Back in the days as a kid I did not have any chance to start documenting but some of you maybe still have a couple photos taken as adults. It's a pity though, I clearly have memories from 1998 Tesco visits, when the shelves were full of the Egypt Adventurer and Batlord sets. Not my favorite era but I would still love to go back just to awe at the displays again. P.S. Also don't forget to apply for the Toys R Us Credit Card!!

My older brother only had a small impulse set left to me used, the 6237 Pirates Plunder. Ohh man, these two had so many adventures with only regular colored bricks I had back in the days. As a '95 kid I was devastated to see Star Wars and Bionicles on the shelves instead of these so I held the figures - 2 years older than myself - in the highest regards. I still have these guys now serving aboard the Schooner and the Flagship. Anyway, he also had all the catalogs from 89 to 96 so that's how I knew about old sets back in the day. My favorite were the indigo islanders, I still think their vibes is one of the best Lego has ever released. I remember looking at the crumpled pages for hours being mesmerized how cool old Lego was. The first thing I had done after my parents got us internet access in 2004 is to check local hungarian Lego forums to buy them used. Had to keep looking while getting enough pocket money. The hungarian market is quite good for used pirates sets considering that a lot of grown-ups now always sell them and fanatics as my humble myself can take them for pretty good bargains. Still, I had to wait for more than a year (for some reason I did not consider buying from other countries, I was a bit afraid of scams). By 2006 Christmas I've managed to buy the two largest Islander sets toghether in pretty good shape only for 15000 Forints which was the equivalent of 75 USD. Don't think ever going to find such a great deal again. My favorite thing to do with them was to combine the sets into a whole lagoon, creating that evil master plan for years before managing to buy them. Still got some old low-res photos:

That sounds super interesting. Have you made any progress with the idea?

I would say they use some kind of blender plugin. I've been working on this lately using the free stud.io and there is already an option to create very high resouliton renders. With more professional software solutions and a couple of skilled dudes a diorama would be quite 'cheap'. I think the marketing experts of Lego just decided that this is not the best way to sell stuff as you guys have suggested. Either way I'm still hoping this practice will come back in the future.

Technically it started ~20 years ago, when the first horrible examples have emerged. This one is the worst I've ever seen and quite and old one (1998 if I'm correct): I think you are right, it is cheaper and easier. I'm just not sure why is it such a great expenditure these days when any Lego museum has several workers to create dioramas every week, while the catalog is going to be seen by the whole world.

I've mentioned this in a previous topic of mine half a years ago and started to ask the same question again after checking the new 2020 catalog. I'm not 10 anymore of course thus I'm sure my over-nostalgic attitude is not enough for a rightful outcry. I am really interested in your different opinions. First of all I have to say new catalogs are an improvement compared to the last decade ones (I actually meant the 2000s, forgot we're in a new decade, yikes)*. They are well ordered, the sets fill more space. All in all would not call it a disaster. Also true that pseudo and fully made dioramas were present from time to time: Nowadays they are mostly in their own cells with some low-detailed digital design as a background, check the late 2019 catalog for an example. My main issue that these digital surroundings somewhat takes the whole Lego feeling out of the picture, makes it more like a cereal cover. They show some action but have no organic connection to each other. We all remember the oldschool dioramas from the 80s and 90s we all gazed upon for hours as little kids. Painted backgrounds, hybrid model kit and Lego parts as an environment. Also using digital tools but only to give a more realistic display scene that a child or an adult builder would imagine while creating stuff with Lego. So what do you think, which approach was better? My choice is obvious but I'm strongly biassed by nostalgia. I remember being 10 in 2005 and I hated the catalogs at that time, I've always borrowerd the '89, '92... ones from my older brother. Is the new simpler design much more marketable? Would kids love the old ones better? They were obviously more complex and expensive but catalogs are still in every brand store, I figured it would still make a difference. Also The Lego House has a lot of dioramas presented as well, like the Tree of Creativity: So I'm not sure why is it not an approach in catalogs again. I was searching a little bit and found Pixel Fox's creations. I think with today's advanced photo editing tools this direction would be the proper improvement:

By the way, thank you for the great effort for keeping this post updated. I've found myself coming here all the time I'm hoping to see some nice pirates idea started. Anyway I'm just so hyped for the pirate bay atm, we can honestly feel lucky that Lego has answered our prayers :)

Was thinking the same. Asked directly whether he is talking about the new ideas set. He told me he meant an actual new theme. But I was holding a 25kg UCS Falcon he brought me so I was not very keen on getting into details at that moment. Still might be only the Pirate Bay, we will see :D