Oky

"That's him, Hulk! That's the guy who says he's Batman, but he can't be because Batman never smiles! Go get him!"

Thanks. And yes, this would have been better with actual 501st troopers, but even if the 2013 sets were out already, it would be very difficult to amass an army of them since there's only one in two mid-sized sets. I really hope they release a battle pack with them soon, ideally something like this.

They also have the Friends Desk polybag free with any Friends purchase of $20 or more. And the Big Great TRU Book is out and has some deals as well. Many of them simply bring the prices down to MSRP, but there are some actual deals too, such as the Epic Dragon Battle for $40 off (which is just $20 off of MSRP, but still not a bad deal). Click here to see all their promotions.

Moodswim, are you still going to post your entry? I've allowed quite a bit of extra time since yesterday was Halloween and I needed it myself, but if you don't post your entry today I will have to disqualify it. Anyway, here's my entry: March on the Jedi Temple

Kinda shameless of me to be late to my own community build, but here's my entry anyway. It's a bignette representing the scene where newly appointed Sith Lord Darth Vader carries out his new master's first assignment by leading a part of the 501st to the Jedi Temple in order to massacre everyone inside. It's a very simple scene, but also very powerful and one of my favorite parts of the movie. March on the Jedi Temple by Oky - Space Ranger, on Flickr Here's a reference picture of the scene. The bignette is obviously very underscaled, especially the Jedi statues, but I wanted to keep it within 16x16 studs, and it would have been very boring if I wouldn't have included the statues. I hope you like it. C & C welcome.

That New Disney Princess picture is great. You're welcome. I'm glad there are some who still have a sense of humor around here. As for what logo will be shown before the new movies, does it really matter? Sure, the Fox logo went well with the theme song, but who cares what comes before the movie as long as the movie itself is good.

Hear, hear.Either way, good old Vader seems to be pretty happy in his new home. I love how they ride everything but Star Tours.

Another question that opens up is what does this mean for projects that have been in development hell until now, such as Star Wars Underworld or Battlefront 3, due to budget issues? With Disney backing them up, I think these could finally come to fruition, but nothing is for certain.

Well, this is certainly big news. This was unexpected, but I kinda had a feeling something like this would happen eventually seeing as Lucas was retiring. I'll be optimistic about this development as they did a good job with Marvel so far. I'm excited to see new SW movies in the theater, no matter what they will be about. After all, I even liked the prequels, and it can't be worse than the CW movie, right? I think this sequel trilogy will be about the adventures of Luke's or Han and Leia's kids. Because let's face it, the main cast of the OT is too old to star in a new trilogy and there are no actors who could replace them. They could make cameos as the older versions of their characters, but that's about it. And it can't be about the Old Republic because it is said to be a sequel. I also don't think they will make film adaptions of any of the EU books and rather go with a new story. Whatever this means for the future of Star Wars, one thing is for sure: The Lego Star Wars theme is going to continue for a long time.

Thanks guys. Yes, of course. The fact that the character was created in the 60's is proof of that. I think that's why people like this funny so much; it's funny because it's true. Oh come on, I'm sure there's still some hippie/drug related jokes you can do. And thanks, I'm glad somebody liked that one.

Yes, roughly. Since this is not a contest, the deadline is a bit flexible, so I wont deny any entries if they are a little bit late. I will conclude the community build some time the next day, but do try to get it done on the 31st.

I saw Cloud Atlas on opening day. What a great movie! It's one of those Memento/Inception type movies that you have to see several times to completely understand. Great concept, great effects, great acting. It was very entertaining too since it had lots of action, humor, and romance. Therefore it was hardly noticeable that it was nearly 3 hrs long. I can really recommend it!

What's with all the Worst/Best threads again lately? What exactly is the point in pointing out the black sheep in Lego history? Oh well, since I'm already here, I might as well put in my 2 cents. I actually quite like Juno Eclipse. I think she's fairly accurate and I don't know how TLG could have done her better. And she can't possibly be worse than the Aldar Beedo impostor: If I had to pick from non-SW figs I'd have to go for one of the early Nickelodeon figs as TLG obviously didn't put much effort into these. Especially the Fire Nation soldiers were horribly inaccurate. It pains me to think how great these could have turned out if they would have been produced with nearly as much devotion as recent licensed themes such as LOTR and TMNT. As for the best licensed fig, I have to agree with just2good and Gunther. Toy Story had some great and very accurate minifigs, but one in particular stands out to me: Dirty Woody. From the molded head to the elongated arms and legs, Woody is a very accurate minifig, and the dirt detailing on this version along with the adorably desperate looking face take it to a whole new level. He even has printing on his arms! Not only does it make for an incredibly detailed fig, but also represents the character from the scene it's meant to portrait perfectly. Although Wonder Woman comes close, she doesn't have her bracelets printed on her arm, so she's not as accurate. The latest Boba Fett and ARC Trooper are great too, but again, no arm printing.

Ooh, a surprise entry! And a very nice one at that! I'll add you to the sign-ups right away. There are only about 3 days left and many of you who signed up haven't posted any entry yet, so please get them finished asap!

INTERVIEW: Rufus Today we're interviewing Rufus, the special themes mod, as well as a Reviewers Academy Teacher. EBSWF: Thanks for doing this, Rufus. Firstly, how did you get started with the LEGO hobby, and how great is your interest in LEGO Star Wars, as opposed to other themes? I’ve been a LEGO fan since I was about 5. I inherited a number of rather beaten-up 1970s sets from my brother, and started my own collection with some of the beautiful Classic Town sets from the early 80s. My first true love though was Classic Space, and I built up quite a sizeable space base from these amazing sets. Of course, being a child of the late 70s/early 80s, I was also a Star Wars fan. I remember trying – and failing, miserably – to build a Millennium Falcon from some Classic Space grey wedge plates! I never dreamed that, 20 years later, it would be Star Wars that got me back into LEGO. You can blame the original Snowspeeder 7130 for that! I’ve been collecting LEGO Star Wars ever since. For a loooong time, it was ONLY Star Wars, and initially only the UCS sets – I have nearly all of them. Then in about 2006, I was at a conference and a little bored in the evening, so I bought two sets – the A-Wing and the Tie Interceptor – and that got my into System Star Wars and the minifigure addiction caught hold! Recently, my LEGO interests have broadened greatly and Star Wars is no longer my over-riding passion, mainly because the Clone Wars and Expanded Universe sets don’t appeal to me that much; also I have got into MOCing in a big way and it’s difficult to MOC Star Wars without falling foul of the accuracy fiends! But I still collect the OT and PT sets and will continue to review them. It amazes me that after 13 years of the SW Licence, TLG are still putting out great sets; even though they are nowadays mostly improvements on previous ones. EBSWF: How did you find this site? I spent many years thinking I was the only AFOL in the world! Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was a whole community of people like me out there. I first discovered From Bricks to Bothans, but I kept following links to this ‘Eurobricks’ site, and it seemed a much more lively and interesting place, so I figured Eurobricks was for me. Like most people, I lurked here for a long time before finally signing up; what convinced me to join in the end was that I was working on my MOC of the Lambda Shuttle (which still doesn’t have a good System version), and wanted to show it off. EBSWF: What do the people around you think of you being an AFOL? Not many people know, and those that do don’t know the true extent of it! Close family and friends know, of course, and I think they look at my LEGO hobby as an eccentricity – an image I don’t try to refute! My wife also being an AFOL is both a blessing and a curse – it’s great to share the same hobby, but we don’t have anyone to moderate our spending. LEGO is inexorably taking over the house! EBSWF: Aside from LEGO, do you have any other hobbies? I’m a little bit of a musician. I play the guitar (reasonably well) and the saxophone (extremely badly). Till recently I played in a band doing rock covers in a variety of pubs around London – it was great fun until the usual ‘musical differences’ got in the way! Oh well, I have more time for LEGO now. EBSWF: How much time do you spend on LEGO related activities? Too much! Unfortunately, as the collection grows, so does the amount of time required to sort all the parts. Like most, we’ve been through every permutation of sorting technique and still haven’t found the best way. I probably spend equal amounts of time MOCing, reviewing, sorting, and doing online stuff like moderating. Keeping the variety is important as doing exclusively any one of these things can leave you a bit stale. I have a bajillion things I mean to do – particularly on Eurobricks – but rarely the time to bring them all to fruition. EBSWF: Has the LEGO hobby changed/impacted your life? Do you have any practical use of LEGO in your daily life? It has thoroughly taken over! Sometimes at the expense of real life things like mowing the lawn. Mostly, it’s a positive influence – we’ve made a load of great friends around the world through Eurobricks, who started as virtual friends and thanks to the things like the Eurobricks Event and Brickworld have become real friends. Otherwise, I’ve learned a lot through the hobby – particularly with regard to photography and photograph editing with Photoshop. I did consider building a life-size set of furniture from LEGO, but decided that was a step too far. So no, I don’t really have a practical use for all the LEGO! EBSWF: Have your moderator duties on EB effected how you relate to LEGO? Why or why not? Yes and no. How's that for an answer? Mostly no, because it hasn't changed my LEGO interests much; though I've probably focused more on Architecture than I might have, and it leaves a little less time for other interests like SW. In some ways it has broadened my interests, because sometimes as a moderator you have to go into forums you wouldn't normally visit, so come across things you wouldn't normally see; in Special Themes I've come to appreciate some of the amazing Arty and Military MOCs out there which I might not have looked at before. Mostly it leaves a little less time for my own interests within EB; for example, I do less in the Reviewers Academy (and less reviewing) than I'd like to. EBSWF: Why did you choose 'Rufus' for a username? This has been a secret since I joined EB – do you really want me to reveal it? Prepare to be disappointed! I’d like to say I’m named after the character Rufus in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, or after my Fabuland sigfig, but the truth is rather more mundane. Around the time I joined EB, I was playing an Xbox RPG called Fable II. You run around with a cute dog who finds stuff to dig up while you shoot bandits. My dog was called Rufus. Told you. EBSWF: Do you have a favorite Star Wars character? That’s a toughie. I imagine everyone picks Han Solo, but Han is far too obvious a maverick hero. I think for the Rebels I’d pick Lando – he makes the best of a difficult situation, and works hard to make up for his deal with the Empire. For the bad guys, I always really liked Admiral Piett. He has a quiet, calm dignity so often lacking in the stereotypically English-accented baddies. You won’t hear him cackling maniacally, or prematurely celebrating his moment of triumph. And he utters the immortal line, ‘Bounty hunters – we don’t need that scum.’ Shame his LEGO figure isn’t so great. EBSWF: You always make excellent reviews, but how do you go about making them? And how do you decide which sets to review? Thank you! This question is best answered the other way round. Generally, I buy sets I like, and review the ones that I feel would benefit from an in-depth look, or which haven’t had a quality review done before. Sometimes I get sent a preview copy of a set to review, which hopefully removes some of the bias inherent in only buying sets I like, but this isn’t likely to happen with Star Wars sets any time soon. Reviewing is a time-consuming process. For a mint set, I first take pictures of the box, then the contents, then spend far too much time arranging parts neatly. I think this is an important step though: the parts selection may be a factor in many people’s decision to buy one set over another. Then there’s the build process: shooting every few steps of the build, whilst keeping the nascent model and camera in the same positions is a painstaking process, but it does force you to think about the build as you do it. Once the model is complete, I take pictures from every conceivable angle, and show every feature of the set; for Star Wars sets in particular the minifigure selection is often at least as important as the model itself. I probably only end up using about a quarter of the pictures I take. Finally, there’s writing the review: for me this can be the hardest part, and writers’ block strikes more often that I’d like to admit. There’s a limit to the number of different ways you can describe the box art of a series! EBSWF: What was your favorite review? Oooh, that’s a tricky one. I’m very fond of the UCS R2-D2 review, and indeed some of my earlier UCS reviews (the Snowspeeder was my favourite for a long time, but I think I’ve improved since then. On balance, I’d have to say the 8129 AT-AT review – I went a little over the top, perhaps, but I had great fun posing the AT-AT. EBSWF: How do you make such great pictures for your reviews? (What's your setup; what camera do you use; what picture editing software do you use; etc.) Again, thank you! Mostly it’s down to practice. A reasonable camera is essential – you can’t do it with a webcam or a mobile phone. I use a bottom-of-the-range Canon 1000D, with the basic lens that came with it, but the equipment I really swear by is the tripod. With a tripod, you can use the best ISO setting and a narrow aperture, and just leave the shutter open for ages (never use the flash!) My ‘studio’ is simply the dining room table, with some white posterboard and the overhead lighting in the room. It’s really simple, but it did take quite some time to find a setup which produces consistent results every time. This produces a rather yellow raw image: For the processing, I use Photoshop Elements. I always recommend it (and I promise I get no commission from Adobe for this!) With Elements, you can do about 90% of what you can do with the full Photoshop for about a sixth of the price. About 30 seconds of editing turns it into this:

Well, as I've already said, that particular version is the one that comes in the exclusive polybag that you get with preorders of the game (except it seems to come with dark orange hair for some reason ). The other version with the dark blue pants, as you can see in the first post, comes in 60007 High Speed Chase.

Wrong, McCain is still the exclusive preorder fig. The one that comes in the city sets is slightly different. Here's a picture of it, courtesy of Brickset. Just one question: Why in the world does he have earth orange hair?

Ah, thanks. Hm, you're right. I guess this is the exclusive fig that comes with the game preorders? Seems a bit pointless to make an exclusive fig that merely has some slightly different printing and a different color of pants.

Just saw these close ups of Chase McCain on Brickipedia. Don't know where they originate, but I thought I'd share them. Looks pretty good, especially with that arm printing! These pics seem to have been taken at some kind of modular buildings display. He's standing on the roof of Town Hall in the first pic, and in front of the Grand Emporium in the second.

Yes. Yes I am. But this is the last one to feature him for a while.

I completely agree. The incompetence of the droids is what really drags this story down, and judging by this clip it's only going to get worse. I was hoping he would say Hondo, and he did! However, I have a feeling he wont have a big role in the episode. A large battle + droid gunships + Hondo sounds like the formula for an epic episode. The previews for this episode have been less than impressive, but I hope it will still be good.

Not bad! I like the grand scale of it and the ruins certainly look great! There's just two things that bother me: Why did the clones and droids team up, and what is a yellow tricycle doing in a Star Wars MOC? None of those things have ever been seen in Star Wars (at least not in any canon material), so they're very confusing to me. I think it would be better if you would replace the droids with more clones and the tricycle with a speederbike.

My thoughts: Looks pretty good so far. I like how they're delving a bit more into the serious side of Tony Stark while still keeping the epic action scenes. I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the new suits either, neither Tony's nor Rhodey's. They're not terrible, I just prefer the classic versions. And as Sam pointed out, what's up with Rhodey's arc reactor? Why did it have to be a small square instead of a star shaped one? It looks so weak (even weaker than the star one would have been), and the star points look like they were lazily added on as an afterthought. They could have at least kept it a circle, that would have still looked good. But I digress. So what do you think are the Mandarin's powers gonna be? Magic? Technology? Or just manipulating people? Magic is obviously unlikely, but I could imagine his rings to be highly advanced alien technology like they are sometimes portrayed to be. I guess people have a point in saying that it wouldn't make sense for him to be using a gun and a fleet of highly armed helicopters if he had superpowers, but maybe that's before he gets the rings. Note that he doesn't wear them when he cocks his gun. I think it would be pretty lame if they made him an ordinary terrorist leader with his rings only being symbolic of his power or something. Sure, it would be more realistic, but every sense of realism has been thrown out the window with The Avengers. Heck, Stark himself says that everything is different now since those events. I gotta admit that the Mandarin always did seem overpowered compared to a guy in a suit of armor, but making him a normal terrorist would make him too underpowered in my opinion, especially now that Tony has Extremis. Also:

Well, what do you want us to call him then? War Patriot? Sure, he's not the "real" Iron Patriot, but I think it's a nice nickname to distinguish him from regular War Machine.I really hope we get War Machine. He's the third most interesting character in the Iron Man trilogy (after Stark and Mandarin), so it would be stupid of TLG not to make him. I would prefer the classic gray IM2 variant, but I wont complain if we get the patriotic version. I dunno, interchange them? It's a play feature that they can include, albeit a rather lame one. I'm not saying this is what's gonna happen, just that if TLG should decide to include the rings somehow, this is the only way I can see them doing it. Who ya calling a kid? I don't think so. From what I've heard, the rings will be some sort of highly advanced technology, much like in the Iron Man: Armored Adventures cartoon. I would prefer that because otherwise he would be a pretty lame villain. When did they ever make Superwoman? I agree with the others. I don't see why they couldn't include Pepper as a damsel in distress. With movie based sets, they have to stay at least somewhat true to the scene they're portraying, and Pepper seems to be playing a big role in this one. It's the same reason why we're getting JJJ in the Spider-Man set. By the way,

Thanks Santaduckz. Have some more! King of Atlantis by Oky - Space Ranger, on Flickr U JELLY FISH? by Oky - Space Ranger, on Flickr Poison Hippie by Oky - Space Ranger, on Flickr