Merlo

Words haven't been invented to describe how amazing this looks :)

I don't mind how much I've paid for them, but would be a waste of an epic opportunity if it didn't connect :)

Amazing details. Someone should make a space medical drama in this ship :)

Supported. This is tremendous work... super detailed, cute, and opens too, what more can one want! I second the opinion about the great interplay of colors.

Wait, how do we know that? :)

Looks small next to the Barracuda, but much more appropriately sized compared to the Barracuda Bay :)

I love how lush this feels :)

So... LEGO Ideas seems to have so little value at this point that it's mostly a waste of time for anyone except LEGO themselves. The designers put their heart and soul into amazing creations, almost none of them get picked and we're left with safe, boring choices that might end up nerfed before the final release. It's almost as the "idea" in the ideas was to antagonize your fans and continually deteriorate what little trust remains. The 25 ideas that got rejected had so many great sets that I wouldn't mind too much if none of my favorites got picked as they were really in some fierce competition. So what? Pick 5 sets... hell, pick 4, pick 3... there's bound to be at least 1 I'll think looks good enough to want to display it, that brings that sense of wonder only LEGO can that would elicit a: "whoa man is that a LEGO castle/spaceship/rocket/pirate whatchamcallit!?" Instead we got a globe. Which looks cool. And I'm interested in how it's built. It's a really cool idea by itself. Which I would never buy. Nor do I know anyone that would. Why? You probably either already have a badass globe of some kind or you're not interested in them. And what kind of reaction could you hope to get out of that? "My dear sir, may I enquire if the globe on the shelf behind you really is made out of LEGO as it seems from where I am standing? -Indeed it is, my old chap. -Splendid. -Let us drink to that and all future globes to come. -Oh surely not more? -Yessiree. For, you see, the globe is not just a plain model, it is symbolic. It speaks of our desire to learn, explore, even conquer, if you will. -Yeah, but it's a bit ****, innit?"

“By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. . . . We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. —CHARLES V. WILLIE”

The way to disagree is to bring actual insight or do as objective as possible analysis that would reveal the situation not to be as clear cut as it might have seemed inside a particular bubble, not to have your argument seem absurd from the get go :) SW has had many more sets than classic space, they have come many years after and had many years and iterations through which they could improve. SW in general has pretty much taken our entire culture hostage at this point and countless man hours and millions of dollars have been spent into making it a meme and a part of our lives as ordinary and expected as washing our teeth in the morning, yet so many people, given the circumstances, are talking about roughly made sets a few folks made starting more than 40 years ago. That says something.

This is sufficiently far from the truth, especially considering, for example, how weird some Space looked right from the start and how long it took for Castle to try anything that could be considered even a bit crazy, that it can only be construed as trolling :)

Why? I'm guesstimating 2016 or so. I mean... why not? :)

Alien was just an example, just like Predator is. We're hardly lacking Sci-Fi property that adult fans could jump at. And the fact I've never seen Mega Construx in a store in my life probably has something to do with it as well ☺ I did see this amazing Jie Star though

Why would they have to drop SW to pick up Alien? Or drop SW at all?

Nailed the atmosphere!

Lego has fantasy space covered with Star Wars and semi-realistic space covered with City. Why would they detract from that with additional space themes with factions unknown to the buyers? From their point of view, that probably wouldn't make financial sense. From my point of view, and I loved SW decades before it was cool, I'm sick of it... give me any other fantasy space property and I'll be very interested. Exo Suit was great... how cool would it be to have a few Alien Lego sets, for example? We're now well into the period where both weapons and horror elements abound, and with literally black boxes labeled 18+ I can't imagine there aren't more properties out there worth exploiting than what we've got so far.

Shouldn't be too difficult to order the parts and have the space camper van in some exciting color scheme. As an adult my biggest desire for castle/pirates/space would be a string of different sized sets that you can connect (in case of buildings physically, like with old castle or modulars) into a big amazing diorama.

I don't have an eloquent answer but they're different enough in their execution that the end results are easily different enough to be unequally pleasing aesthetically, as if they were made by differently skilled designers. My "Space Rover" association was the city set, albeit more detailed. What we got was closer to the imagination of classic space, even if the colors are a bit of a let down. My "Pirate Ship" association right after Barracuda Bay was something more striking or unique in it's own way, or hell.. a small version of that painted differently. What we got was worse in almost every way. This is also seen in the alternate models. The B model of 31107, which I don't care for on account of it being a small completely open structure showcases a tasteful and imaginative use of elements that evokes the feeling of another world, the way Lego often did with classic space. (for example the amazing look or those sliding doors or looking out into "space" through those windscreen greenhouses) The 31107 C model, which I care for even less, I must admit looks rather good except for the thick rear fin, perhaps just a tad too plain. The 31109 C and B model (which is theoretically right up my alley!) sadly suffer from the same problems that plague the A model. The shaping is good! These do not look dull. The ship's hull, the design of the shark and the menacing looking skull on the island are just some of the highlights. The choice of colors, number of colors and color composition in general are way off. I can usually understand why that is the case in 3-in-1 sets (31052 pulls this off with great skill), but in this case the chosen ship colors are not ideal even in B and C models. The execution of B and C models is simply inadequate, showcasing a suboptimal use of colors and elements very familiar to anyone who's ever had an idea for a MOC without having access to bricks of right shapes and colors. Even the A model itself looks half-finished because of this. It looks like they've nailed the shape and now they have to choose the right color scheme and improve the decorations, by a lot. The whole part in the attached image is an atrocity and can easily be fixed without requiring much skill, just a little bit more taste. The blocky and messy transitions, the weird splotches of colors... even the decorative stripe that suddenly jumps by 1 plate height closer to the bow. As i said before, some proven approaches that work with Lego are to keep the colors simple and go crazy with the shape or to balance them where the end result still looks elegant. There is also the MOC approach of using all the colors and shapes you can think of, but compensating with sheer brick count and allowing the exquisite details to shine. You can still do both, use all the colors and try to hint at details despite the limited brick count but this is by far the most difficult approach of all of them and where sets like Ninjago City do a good job of it, this fails hard. The end result is akin to a high resolution image that has been pixelized down to the point where most of the fine detailing has been lost and the remaining rough transitions and occasional splashes of contrasting colors simply look like errors. It's almost as if the designers were 85% finished with shaping the ship when they got the news all three models must be done in 3 days time and this is the best they could do given the extreme restrictions. It's almost as if the ship has been dropped and in part hastily reconstructed from memory without any of the lost bricks. Joking aside, I still mantain the ship shape is great, meaning the difficult part is done and done rather well (easily the best ship hull we've seen?) and that it could rather easily be modded to look stunning. But until somebody does it it will remain partially hidden behind my Barracuda Bay, while the Space Rover is on my desk as I type, supposedly at work. Unless my wife takes it home, since she like the whole scene and expressed interest in it ending up on her shelf instead :)

I get that Lego won't make more interesting and engaging sets because Star Wars sells, but you can hardly fault them for that. They're a company and exist to make money. And the new cantina looks perfectly fine from a Lego stand point, it's not their point it was not particularly interesting in the movie. I guess it's because of that that I find 75052 more appropriate size-wise. You know what it is and can have all the recognizable elements without a sea of monotonous bricks that add not much but size.

Except space rover was a much better designed set :) Other than that it would've been awesome if it had more interesting colors or was a throwback to any of the old space themes. I want to say they went with motor-home stripes for realism, but then again an alien is not adding to that. Or maybe it is? What do Lego knows that we don't know?

I wanted to address these points as well, but the post was too long as it is. I don't feel my creations were great for today's standards at all and they weren't any good for the standards of the time either. Only after quite a few years of practice did they start looking good and I was quite an "old kid" by then. I could theoretically do the same today as well, just like any half-decent MOC-er has, but I find today it would require a much greater effort which I'm not willing to put in as there is far too many different/small/advanced parts and techniques that they brought forward. And, to be frank, I don't have that joy of playing/creating problem with older sets. I can buy a set I've never had or perhaps even seen as it came out during my dark ages and still fool around with it. Nowadays those sets are in the age 6-8 group :)

As someone who has never played with the old gray and blue classic space sets and found them weird and outdated looking whenever I'd see what seemed like ancient catalogues in my childhood, I now a see a lot of qualities those sets had that Lego doesn't have anymore, which is exactly why I don't spend nearly as much on Lego as I could. The baseplates were gorgeous for the time and I can't even imagine how awesome a modern rendition would be. Even simple baseplates that allowed you to physically connect different parts of your settlement felt priceless, felt like you're creating a Lego world, instead of just plopping the models on the floor or a sad mat with an image of a world you cannot have. The unusual colors and designs really awaken the sense of wonder and creativity. And the different factions that showed up really spiced things up, each with it's own interesting and unique color scheme, encouraging you to collect them all and marvel at the wonder of a distant advanced civilization sprawling out in front of you. The story and the look of your base and fleet were always whatever you want them to be! Star Wars looks great, but doesn't have most of that. The characters and the story are well known and unless you've never seen a movie in your life mashing up one famous ship with another or changing character roles will always feel wrong. And the comment that Lego is about bricks that can be assembled in any way you want to build whatever you want has never been less valid. Lego sets use to come with alternate ideas right there on the box. And boy oh boy did I mash up my space and castle and pirate sets as a kid. You got one more? Time to combine them! Tried that combination? Here's another one. How about a megaship/fortress!? The bricks were conducive to playing and creating. You had chunkier parts to make a rough shell or outline and then smaller, but not too small, parts for finer detail and embellishment. I used to play so much I'd eventually create stuff that looks better than what I bought, or at least as good. I can't do that today, at all! I have a collection of some 20,000 Lego bricks that only has a few handfuls of actual bricks. The number of small and specialized parts is overwhelming! And it's overwhelming for me, a 40+ yo with 35 years of Lego experience. Any MOC I can make today is 'meh' at best and those that excel at it are true artists who have put countless hours in their craft. And that's why my perception of Lego has completely changed over the years from something that felt amazing to play with to something that's a bit of a pain to build, but looks awesome on the shelf.

Ooh I'm a sucker for these lake builds. The water and the vegetation give it a whole extra dimension.

I love this! This is just how I imagined castle sets of my childhood would evolve: more detail but still looking elegant. I'd never stop buying them if that alternate history took place :)

Better! Now someone needs to mod out the weird non matching plates sticking out and too many colors on the interior paltes and it'll look very tasteful :)