YellowFrog

Thanks, I try my best. Thankyou. Perhaps I should submit it to Lego Ideas...

Recently, I remade 6193 Castle Building Set, which I like to call 'Lego's worst castle'. Here is a MOC I made, in an attempt to fix it. This MOC was originally built with the dual purpose of serving as an entry for the Pirate subforum's Steve contest (when in its pirate form), and to be a build showcase for my Youtube channel (when its in its castle form). See here for the pirate version: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/199659-entry-small-sneaking-steve/

I was not a lurker. I had heard of Eurobricks before but had never been on it, and I think I was searching for pirate MOCs for inspiration, and I came across classicpirates.com? I don't quite know, it was late at night and I don't really remember, but it was just through search results in my browser.

If anyone wants to see how I built this, and then adapted it to be a castle MOC, see here: It was actually based on a castle set, originally.

I'd like to add my 'thank you' to the mix. Your hard work makes this arguably the most involved subforum on Eurobricks. Fun fact: The poll for the Steve contest, asking which contest it should be, was what convinced me to sign up for Eurobricks in the first place. I must confess, I did not vote for the Steve option.

I think the public count adds to the suspense of the race, and I think if you didn't count it, I would've. Occasionally, I come across polls on this forum, where you vote by clicking an option, and then it shows you the results once you've voted. This could be a good idea for the larger contests, but I don't know how that could scale, unless a shortlist was announced first. It would decrease bandwagoning at least.

Do you know any? If so, ask them. If not, I can try asking a few and we can encourage other members to do the same.

To me, an expert means: A winner of some prestigious competition A set designer Someone who works for the Lego company Someone whose job is to build models Someone who has written a book etc. on Lego building Someone whose career is to build Lego. Someone who is simply exceptional at Lego building Someone who is great at judging Lego A moderator or very prolific member of the forum who is confident in their ability to critique builds. I guess when it comes down to it, an expert is someone who can make a decision on the winners, and we can all be confident that they have made the right decision. I did start with 16 or so posts before I signed up to be a critic, and now this is my 184th post... (and I have only posted 10 or so things outside the pirate MOCs subforum) I've just managed to check, the link was there, but it wasn't obvious (I guess I am just incompetent). I guess the only feedback would be next time, make it more obvious (but I guess most people found it, judging by the format of the votes)

I think the main barrier stopping people voting is the effort required to do so. To have a fair and accurate vote, you have to look through a fair few pages to see your favourites. Because of this, I nearly didn't vote (but of course the bonus points persuaded me). I guess the entries index solves this, but as a fairly new member to Eurobricks, I couldn't always find it. If we had a shortlist of good builds, or if the entries index was linked in the voting topic, it might make things easier. (I tried to check if this was the case, as I'm not sure if it was already, but I couldn't find the voting topics either. I'm not sure if they've been removed, or I'm just incompetent.) I think a panel of judges who have additional votes (maybe they can award up to 10 votes each) would be good. A panel of experts could be asked to vote, and I'm sure they would. The only question is, who here has contact with a Lego expert?

I like how this has become a very Australian conversation. I got my S26 figs from Target for 4 bucks each, and I scanned them. The only downside was one of the minifigs wasn't able to scan, even across multiple boxes. To this day, I'm not sure which one it was as I didn't buy it.

What I meant is that I only want to do it if there is a chance it will be used. I'll wait for some more feedback, and I'll potentially get started with it.

Sounds good, I'll add a landing strip to the list of ideas, which already includes an Arabian desert town.

I think it's looks old, messy, and outdated. The minifigures look juxtaposed on the background image, and its an unappealing composition. I agree that the colour scheme is fine, although a more neutral pallet would look better. Also, I would never try and lobby for a change unless the community supported it. In this case, I think the community would, as the current banner is not to everyone's taste (or mine, at least). Furthermore, the castles in the background aren't even made of Lego, and the editing makes the image look fake with different lighting on every layer.

That's perfectly understandable. I think the contest is a success as is, there is no need to further expand your workload. Exactly. I am not on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc., and this is why I don't want these challenges to be limited to social media. I support using it in conjunction with the forum, as long as the forum facet is maintained and users like myself can participate.

Hi all, I've been looking at the Historic Themes Banner recently, and I must say, I'm not a big fan of it. I mean this one here: I have a solution: I create what I imagine will be a better image. The only problem is that if I put in the work, I want to make sure it is used. Whoever has experience on this forum, I'm asking: would the higher-ups be open to change the banner if a popular and suitable alternative was proposed? I'm thinking something like a microscale landscape with castles dotted throughout, and some minifigs in the foreground. My plan for this is an ongoing project where I draft ideas, receive feedback from those who use this forum, and change the plan to match those ideas. I then would build, photograph, and pitch my alternative to the community on this forum. Should the majority support it, I would ask the higher-ups to make change. This whole process could take quite a while, bit hopefully we would get an inspiring and modern banner for the forum.

I would highly recommend you don't run contests through social media (or using it as a medium for entries), especially when that limits it to people that are on social media. Instead, social media can be used to direct people to the site, where they can vote etc.. Perhaps a way to get more engagement with the voting would be a 'promoter prize', where a small prize is awarded to whoever best promotes the contest on other platforms. I don't know exactly how this would work, but I think it is worth some thought. Or, voting could be conducted on social media as well, and then collated with the voting on here to produce a final tally.

I see what you're saying here, but they are there for the structural integrity of the build. I'll see what I can do, but I won't do much, as the Steve contest is over now anyway (well, the submissions are).

While I agree on the whole, certain ones such as Majisto's magical workshop, the Forestmen's Hideout, and more have exclusive minifigures, shields, printed parts...

Thanks for the feedback, @Math Wizard. This is my first time building angled walls, but I still don't quite understand what you're saying here. Do you mean the 1x4 wedge plates should be replaced with longer ones, such as 1x6? All this would do it make these plates not line up with the angled wall below it, due to the different angle.

Lego should stop making GWPs, and instead release them as cheap sets. The bargains can be replaced with actual sales.

I can see the yellow frog you mentioned in the post under my MOC. Well done on the MOC, it looks very authentic to the original sets.

Great build. One improvement would be to make it seem like part of a larger castle instead of a single building, but that would be hard to achieve. The water looks great, well done!

Good job, but what's the green thing on the wall?

It's a great build, the rockwork is terrific and the floating islands look like they really are floating. One thing is, I feel a more organic base shape would look better but that makes it even harder to achieve the rounded edges that you have here.

Thanks for the feedback. Brick-built animals are not my strong suit, and molded elephants are expansive, but I will see what I can come up with. I'm trying to stick to real-world animals instead of some of the more mythical characters from the sets, but I might feature a regular tiger at some point. Thanks. I've been thinking for months now about how to build a brick-built blimp, but I never considered hot air balloons. I was planning on adding a plane at some stage, and now a hot air balloon too due to your suggestion. I've been thinking the same, I want to allude to the original adventurers without directly recreating anything. Buying old parts is not within my budget, and I prefer the modernised look anyway. Thanks for the feedback, though. I couldn't agree more, and I've been thinking about getting some Prince of Persia camels too but they are expensive. I've also been thinking about trying to differentiate the different areas whilst making one cohesive world that I can display as a layout. I'm getting inspiration from the Lego Minecraft MOCs on the YouTube channel Cheesey Studios, where different biomes transition into each other.