The_Cook

It's been a long while since I last made an update, mostly due to European travel as part of the day job. Finally I've managed to scrape together the right bricks to get a few more bits of Troll Town completed. Maybe I'll be able to find a large enough table to actually set up the whole thing over the next week or two. This particular set is Cattle Poaching. I apologies if the narrative is somewhat disjoint, the initial ideas originally formed about 9months ago whilst building up The Graving Dock and it's had a difficult gestation period both in terms of design and sourcing the relevant bricks. What does Troll Town lack? It's got an Inn and a Feasting Hall, a tower for the sorceress and numerous buildings and mooring spaces for boats, siege engines and dragons. Something keeps drawing me back to animal pens, a menagerie? Think of the 7570 The Ostrich Race fences but between rock outcrops and penning in rock monsters or dinosaurs, at the worst bears or horses. Packs of hounds? Cattle? Use of the plastic wings to create shelters? Does it make a set - not on it's own but if you phrased it a as rescuing the stolen herd of cattle then it might. A more ambiguous title would be Cattle Poaching. Is it The Trolls that have poached the cattle or The Villagers? It means we're veering towards human influences such as cattle and horses rather than the arcane rock monsters or dinosaurs. 4 minifigures, 2 cattle and a dog. That was the idea, from there thoughts moved swiftly on how to arrange the plating? Is the set going to fit into the wall of Troll Town or is it going to be freestanding? Platforms around the rocks so that the trolls can look down into the pens. One end of the pen could be a portcullis that lifts, therefore a dark-brown troll structure (as seen in the cranes of Trolls' Markeplace or Trolls' Graving Dockto lift the portcullis. However having 2 pens side by side would limit the articulation of the wall (ie. no hinges) if it was to be part of the wall. Props of straw bales; should they be yellow or tan? Finally I would have to check parts availability. I probably have enough Ostrich Races to form enough fences, it would be the rocks and upper platforms that are the issue. I tinker with the Cattle Poaching sets in LDD. As first attempts they're reasonable but they're certainly not the finished product. Thinking more about the Cattle Poaching. Architectural consistency would have Trolls using Dark Blue Spindle Fences rather than the current cone and bar design, theoretically the brick count will be less as well, 4 fences rather than the current 9 cones, bars and rounds. How to create the center fence? Offset or on the mid-line using jumper plates. If the fence is mid-line how to get back on system for the top platform? This might also solve the issues with LDD not liking the cone and bar construction technique where it connects with the plate forming the observation platform. Stairs up the middle seemed to work in the first attempt. Can the wall be rearranged so that the French tower forms one edge of the guides for the near fence? A wait at Warsaw airport allowed me to consider a second version of Cattle Poaching. I'm happier with the design but there are still some issues notably that there's not enough colour variation to separate the fences from the rocks; everything is Blue Grey. I'm not entirely convinced about the rock pillars themselves they almost need to stick out of the base-plating more and my repeated use of 1x2x3 slopes makes them same-y. A month passes, I still intend to return to the last few smaller sets such as the Cattle Poaching and build them up. With respect to the cattle poaching there's probably more to do on the desing; recently I was looking at the Power Miners sets and the 8191 Lavatraz one caught my eye as a possible inspiration for Cattle Poaching. To form the walls Lavatraz uses the large Bar 11 x 13 Grille that have previously been used as portcullis'; the technique confers a substantial brick saving from doing it through 2x4 spindle grilles. Another other option that occurred to me would be to use the 1xX plates design of the Troll Gates from 7097 Trolls' Mountain Fortress. One other consideration would be to turn the set around so that the cells open away from the wall rather than parallel to it. Started playing with both turning the set sideways and using the large grille pieces but it' wasn't quite coming together. My conclusion was that I definitely need to investigate how Lavatraz secures the grilles. I had slightly more success with the use of plate built fences, although I need to think through how the are going to be secured into the rockwork as currently they're just held in place by two headlamp bricks. LavaTraz didn't help; all the pieces are secured using bottom clips. So I rebuilt the design using plate fences and finally I had a design that I was happy with at 300 bricks, although that feels slightly over budget for what the set is aimed at. I might have to see if there's a way to revise the rock formations to reduce the brick count. I'm finally at the stage where the LDD designs are firm enough that I can start placing Bricklink orders for the parts that are missing; primarily I needed to order a couple of 2x16 Plates in Dark Bley. Even though I've got bricks on order I keep toying with the idea of turning Cattle Poaching into an interior angle rather than a linear stretch of wall. I continue the strand of thought over the next few weeks. The rationale behind this is: when all of the sets built into the wall you end up with a city that has a larger and larger circle of wall and a big empty hole in the center, having a piece with an interior angle allows the building of kidney shaped cities which is turn means less of an empty hole. The next batch of parts to make up Cattle Poaching has arrived, although I'm still tinkering with the design. However build up the model doesn't run smoothly. Halfway through the build I realise that the pillars forming the runners for the lifting gates are too flimsy. A hasty redesign adds a layer of plates midway in order to lock the pillars together and give them stability. Then I realise that my design calls for 3x6 wedge plates in Reddish-Brown, a part which has never been produced so it's back to the drawing board. A tube journey into town meant that I was able to rebuild the set in LDD to utilise 8x3 wedge plates and I need 3 each of both the left- and right-hand variants. Downside is that these parts only exist in 2 sets, the recently released 75059 Sandcrawler and an old Ninjago set 9446 Destiny's Bounty. There are two Bricklink sellers in the UK that have a stock of these typically 2 of each where they've broken a set down. One (Otter bricks) has some of the dinosaur bits that I've been eying up as a means of transport for the Trolls, so I might have to place an order. As part of building up another set, The Dragon Carrier, I've been placing more Bricklink orders and manage to get the relevant parts to complete the build of Cattle Poaching. The build however is still putting up a fight, various colour changes and a redesign of the plating because I can only source 2 each of the 3x8 wedge plates have to be reflected back into the LDD models so that they represent what's actually been built. There are some minor colour substitutions in terms of 1x2 plates which should all be Dark Green, but most people would struggle to spot the changes, the only reason they should be Dark Green is to minimise the number of unique elements in the set. This quest for minimal unique elements also resulted in all of the 1x8 plates in the set being changed to Dark Brown with the exception of one 1x8 plate in black across the front and all the 1x10 plates being standardised on Reddish-Brown with the exception of one 1x10 plate in black across the front. The finished build; suprisingly small for 6months of at times quite painful gestation. Final piece count 310 including Minifigures, cattle and weapons; which isn't bad for it's size. It's got height, especially when the Troll is holds the flag on the tower top. The pens are accessible, just. I can get my hand in to move the cattle in and out but it's too tight for me to sit down and actually play out a "scene" within the pens. The gates work well although they can sometimes stick a little. High angle and overhead looking down into the pens. Seen set into the wall of alongside Troll Training and Trolls' Blacksmith. Consistency looks good. I do realise that I've forgotten to photograph the dog which should go with The Villagers to make them look more menacing. In the end what I most like about the set is the ambiguity. It's obvious that there is conflict, one side against the other but have The Trolls been poaching cattle from The Villagers or are The Villagers poaching cattle from The Trolls. It can be played either way. As always; LDD files can be found here on MOCPages equivalent of this post.

Great design, too many colours... Some research that I've been doing as part of a project over in the Pirates Forum leads me to believe that the machines at TLG are only capable of printing 4 colours onto the base plastic. Your design has: Dark Blue : The base plastic Black : Outlines and hip inserts Yellow : Neck Silver : Buckles and brooches Dark Tan : Neckline and Sleeves Light Tan : Bones Brown : Belt You could probably loose the yellow at the neckline (which will keep the Fleshie lovers happy) and change the buckles and brooches to light tan that way you're down to 4 colours on-top of the dark blue plastic.

That TLG manage to get so many small parts right 99.999% of the time is really quite amazing given the millions of individual parts that they package on a daily basis. I believe that it's all done with very sophisticated and sensitive scales to check that each bag weighs exactly the right amount. However the one thing that the scales can't check is the colour, someone must have put a box of printed horses into the packing line instead of a box of white horses.

Yes, those ends are hugely increasing the part count at the moment, but as you say they form an important part of the aesthetic so it would be wrong to take them away. If we were TLG we could try putting in a request to have a new mould produced... Ah, I didn't spot that when I made my original comments. I'll have a think. There is precedent for extending the hinge line out away from the wall, look at the Mill in the Mill Village Raid. Third pillar also works for me, could use either the white plate or the orange plate. The logic seems to be same colour around a thin band of alternating colour then the brown on-top. If we assume that dark blue is our base colour, then the choice of the alternate colour for the thin band should be white as it's the opposite of dark, or orange as that's opposite blue on the colour wheel; which happen to be the choices you've already made whether you understood the theory behind those choices or not. Working up the stack I would also suggest trying Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, Brown Brick and also Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, White Brick. I think there's merit in trying some alternative options with the white capping the column but there needs to be a sufficient amount of brown in the column to offset the other colours and that's lacking when it's just the barrel.

A slight aside, but useful none-the-less. Here is a Reddit thread in which TLG designer Mark Stafford (writing as lego_nabii) talks about the design process for the Lego Ideas Exo-Suit. http://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/29tas5/lego_ideas_exosuit_finally_revealed/?sort=old Due to the way Reddit works the conversation is somewhat fragmented, but he reveals that when designing sets he has a limited budget for getting parts produced in different colours; what he refers to as colour changes. Which is something we will have to bear in mind. He also says that they often have price points in mind already and he has to work towards those price points. Reading between the lines they must have some means of calculating the production costs of a set both in terms of unique numbers of elements, numbers of printed pieces, unusual colours, minifig assembly, new moulding, etc... and that the leeway is very different for mass-market sets like Chima compared to niche sets like Ideas. I suggest we err on the side of caution and limit ourselves to the minimum number of colour changes, etc.. rather than walking in trying to demand new moulds!

Eventually, yes; but I still think there might be more suggestions out there rather than just creating a poll around the first idea. We've got crossed anchors but what else might represent the merchants of The Haven? Perhaps a monogram, although that might not translate to all languages? Perhaps something representing their trade or the goods that they trade? Let's get couple more ideas on the table before we launch into voting.

I'd stick to yellow. TLG rules are fleshies to represent characters played by real actors, yellow for TLG's own ideas. They are rigorous at sticking to that, look at the recent Exo-Suit from Ideas; submission was a fleshie, became classic yellow en-route. That is the rule, so we might as well stick to it! What is the piece count at the moment? Are there any areas where you think you're using too many bricks? Share them here and the wider group might be able to find a way to reduce the build complexity for you. A nice little hut. But... Does it really need 4 barrels? could you get away with 1 maybe 2. This would be a saving of 4 to 6 bricks. Same for carrot stalks? Could you get away with 1 knowing that a second will be included as a spare? This would be a saving of 2 or 3 bricks. The 2x2 45degree slope and 1x2 cheese wedge within the structure, are they actually doing anything? Could you swap those 4 bricks for a single plate or hook at the top that both roof halves can rest on? Saving another 2 or 3 bricks. The official sets designed by TLG go through many revisions before they're fit for production, critiques such as the above help make a better set at the right price point. I would also reconsider the decision to drop the prison. As you've already noted it ticks the action feature box, but more importantly it provides a key play point. A prison represents a rescue or an escape; ie. conflict, and it's conflict that helps drive play. All sets need some degree of conflict or storyline. I don't think that those curved beams would pass a technical review at TLG, they're just too flimsy. Smaller ones might be more appropriate and would involve less bricks! Again, do you need quite so many barrels and boxes on the upper half of the building. Reducing those down to 2 barrels and a crate would reduce the brick count significantly whilst retaining enough pieces to enable play. I think the roof structure itself could do with a bit more work. You've got a mix of 2,4 and 6 wide plates to form a roof whose width is a clean mulitple of 6, why not just use a line of plates 6 wide? The strapping underneath using big plates is a bit naive, perhaps using a 2x16 plate across the top and a similar one across the bottom might be more appropriate. On the outside there are 21 pieces (on each side, so 42 total) to form the snow effect! I like the snow effect but could it be done with a quarter of those pieces? Rather than utilising two new elements, the 1x8 tile and the 2x2x round tile could you re-use elements that are already present in the build such as the 3x8 wedge plates? Another thing that TLG would be looking to do is to reduce the number of unique elements in a build. I've just spotted that you've got chests in brown, grey and black, could you standardise on a single colour and reduce it to just the two chests either side of the throne? There's a stray black barrel too, lose it or change it to brown. On both side walls I notice that 2/3rds of the wall (nearest the throne) is built from pallisade panels and the last 1/3rd (nearest the front) is brick built from pallisade bricks. Fix that and you've saved a huge number of bricks. I suspect that that will cause plating issues below making it difficult to attach the front white wedge plates, however that's the sort of challenge that TLG designers face on a daily basis and that forces them to be creative and inventive. I would also suggest that the stack of 1x4 pallisade bricks either side of the door become a single pallisade panel; the doorway would still sit infront of the pallisade panel but it would push the corner columns forward; although in turn that might help the plating problem that we've caused ourselves by changing the sides to panels. You'd lose the printed tiles but those could in turn be moved up to be either just above or just below the blue plate that runs horizontal; it keeps that part of the theme whilst allowing a simpler build below. I'd even suggest adding two more tiles to form a band 8 wide; unless of course there is a suitable 8 wide tile in which case we should use that or maybe consider stickers. Does the shield on the front need a grey circular back? What is it adding? If it doesn't have that backing would it be possible to build a simpler attachment mechanism on the back rather than the layering of 1x4 plates around a bracket? The columns are nice but they involve 4 circular plates, could this be simplified to a plate and a 2x2 round? To do so would be to lose an interesting part of the design aesthetic; personally I'd build a couple of columns of differing designs and numbers of bricks to look at them and see whether the look justifies the additional 12 bricks that it requires. Why the 2x4 in the fire? Is it a light brick? Either way lose it. More expense and it looks odd. The construction of the fire on the long plate attached only at one end probably wouldn't pass technical review, the build will be just too unstable. You could also shorten the fire-pit by half which would help reduce the number of trans-red, orange and yellow rounds that you need to make up the coals. Lots there. It's all intended as constructive criticism. I think you've got a great starting point that's pretty close to a real set and that with a bit more effort and refinement you could have something that truly does look like a real set. Hopefully the members of the forum also recognise that designing sets is very, very different from designing the intricate MOC's which are more common around here. To all those that want to complain that I'm suggesting that all the parts be taken away, I have to point out that you wouldn't get those extra parts for free, you'd be paying another $20 for all those extras!

I think the crossed anchors, barrel and crown design is a little small against the Saltire, they need to be about half as big again. Also, the same as with the torsos, 4 printed colours maximum on top of the underlying plastic colour. If your plastic is grey, then you've got orange, white and black (for the outlines), which leaves you with just one other color for the crown or barrel. If you lengthen the anchors then the barrel can be larger and sit central, also try moving the crown to the center of the triangle up in the upper quadrant of the Saltire. I think if you play around with the sizing and positioning a bit more you'll find something even better than you've already got.

It should be said that the Hydrogen-Peroxide trick only works on bricks where the Bromine fire retardent that they contain has caused dicolouration. Where bricks have been left in bright sunlight the intensity of the sunlight will often have had a bleaching effect on the dies within the brick discolouring them permanently.

I have to say that I think I prefer the Dark Blue or Dark Green facings to the Dark Red. This probably stems from the fact that Green and Blue are opposite orange on the colour wheel where-as Red is adjacent and therefore the former colours stand out against it more.

Perhaps more than 4 colours is possible but I've not seen evidence of it. From my investigations I've only found one torso where there are more than 4 colours; the caveat there is that there were 4 colours on the front and 4 different colours on the back which might well be printed in a separate passes and therefore could utilise a different set of colours. The conclusions that I was drawing from my investigation is that the printing machines that they currently have are set up to handle 4 colours. As Yooha has already observed the base colour (the plastic) is separate from the 4 printed colours. Every time we add more printing it's more cost, either the set price has to go up or the number of parts has to go down. This is the trade-off that the TLG design team face on a daily basis and we will also have to face up to. I will be holding the participants accountable to the rules being drawn up in the definition of design constraints because the truer to the TLG style that we make our designs the more chance we have of TLG considering them as they stand; the more fanciful they are the more likely they will receive a IDEAS (nee CUSOO) style redesign.

Key thing to remember is: "No more than 4 printed colours; and the black lines count as one of those 4!"

Correct it's the 12 values needed to produce an affine transformations in 3d space. As an aside: theoretically there should be 16 numbers, the last 4 are used to skew and shear the geometry but since physical plastic bricks can't be skewed those additional numbers aren't required in LDD. Whilst there are many tutorials on-line that describe the affine transformations my personal preference is for: 3d Computer Graphics by Alan Watt who I always felt presented a fairly readable introduction to the topic.

Yes, but probably in moderation. I'll do a quick trawl of the past sets to see how many new fabric elements were in each wave and also in each set.

Ah, much better for being readable. Thanks

[quote name='ManInATopHat' timestamp='1402174483' post='1910484' Thoughts? Could you possibly sort out your formatting you've got a white background that's clashing with the standard pirates skin. Thanks. Other than that it's a couple of good suggestions in the 3/4/5 categories which is where the primary market lies. We'll soon be collating all the suggestions together, merging close matches and trying to work out a good way of fitting them across the various price bands; going out to a poll if or where necessary.

Would such a solution have the structural strength of a model to picked up and handled by a 6yr old child? Those big hull parts bring rigidity to a ship to allow it to be played with. The big problem with any variable width concept s how do you handle he bow and stern. Each of width is likely to require a fresh piece to curve around for the bow. Could your concept be realised with existing bricks using SNOT techniques. Requesting existing part designs in new colours is more of a possibility than new moulds,

You have to separate your eventual play possibilities from what we need to create a marketable product. For a marketable product we need a coherent storyline to assemble the theme around that communicates easily across language barriers. That choice happened to be historic smuggling. As with all Lego you would be free to turn those smugglers into whatever your mind is capable of dreaming up if the sets ever get produced.

Just like the Vikings show it's sometimes necessary to sacrifice historical accuracy for visual effect. In the case of your stockade the longhouse probably should be attached to the wall, if someone wants to be more historically accuracte then they can rebuild it in whatever form they like; it is Lego after all! Whilst I think it's a very nice design the first thing that would be levelled at it is "There's a lot of bricks; where can we reduce the brick count?". Whilst as xFOLs we're always looking to maximise the number of bricks for our pennies TLG's design office is always thinking "how can we build this with as few bricks as possible?" since that affects their price point and profit and if we want more Lego sets from them then we need them to turn a profit. The modularity is good, it allows you to have additional sets that can be inserted into the stockade, the articulation on the corners helps greatly with that; a flaw in the current castle range is that it's corners are all set at right angles making expansion of the castle difficult. What other Viking occupations could you create a smaller sets; a blacksmith is the obvious choice, are there any other norse occupations that make an immediate impression? In terms of your minifigs, some research that I did for the Pirates forum indicates that TLG can do a maximum of 4 printed colours (the black of the lines being one of these colours) on-top of a single base colour that comes from the plastic. You might want to re-think your designs to reduce the number of colour accordingly. From a personal perspective I think that the round eye-patch on the first figure in your previous post is too precise, it stands out as a perfect circle when I'm sure that a patch would be shaped to the wearers face a little more.

The texture on the opaque slopes doesn't look rough enough; there should be a fairly distinct stipple pattern. Some form of bump/normal mapping on those faces should be enough.

Lots of suggestions coming in at the lower end and even more at the higher end. Any ideas for the mid-sized sets?

Faefrost responded in the Historic forums. It would appear that the raised baseplate in the latest chess set is indeed a vacuum formed piece rather than injection moulded. However is should be noted that said baseplate does not contain any studs, it's merely a receptacle for a standard baseplate that fits within; therefore it does not need to be made to the same tolerances as a true baseplate. The last set with a baseplate was Scorpion Pyramid in 2011 as part of the Pharoah's Quest, so TLG must still have the machinery to produce them. Therefore I supposed we can utilise them.

To a certain extent we don't need to over-analyse the problem. We have three factions "identified", we need to ensure that it is easy to differentiate between them and that they have an obvious role, but beyond that a child's imagination can take over. The differentiation is likely to come through in the design of each factions clothes, ships and buildings. The role, the factions purpose is harder but it needs to be simple, clear and obvious. Think good-vs-bad (cops-vs-robbers), rich-vs-poor (Robin Hood-vs-King John), black and white storylines that a child can latch onto and create their own. As xFOLs we probably want to create more deeper intricate storylines, to blur the lines or precisely recreate episodes from history. Our task here isn't to create that depth but to create a very basic palette from which each person can create their own unique deep and intricate storyline. A palette of figures and sets that appeals to and is understandable by children but with enough scope that xFOLs can be more inventive with it. Too much depth and detail will constrain the stories that can be invented around the factions and we want to create as much scope for inventiveness as possible.

I think that we're starting to get somewhere. I'll remind everyone that this was never a discussion that was going to be resolved instantly it was always something that would take time and eventually will be a compromise that the majority of us agree on. Whatever we decide someone, somewhere, will prefer the other option. Always approach this from the standpoint of what are we going to be able to sell not what do I want personally. Looking towards the colours has been a great help. We're not trying to recreate the past (apologies to all army builder who wantted more of their particular favourite for their army). The consideration of earth tones for smugglers, bright colours for the merchants and sombre militaristic dark reds, greens or blues for the guard seems to make sense. In terms of what are they smuggling we probably don't even have to name it. It will probably be chests of 1x1 plates or rounds. Let the kids imagination work out what it's for. For the purposes of international translation, the less we name the better. I think the OCTAN idea is quite clever, although it only translates in English. In which case the smuggling could well be around yellow cheese wedges.

The day job gets in the way... The more recent sets all appear to have used a higher density injection molded plastic, eg. the loot island base or the baseplates in the Bionicle sets; this differs from the blow molded thin plastic baseplates of the 90's. I've posed a question in the Historic forums to find out if the recent baseplate for the Kingdoms Chess set is blow or injection molded. My gut feeling is that Lego have moved away from baseplates; even flat baseplates are rare these days the preference being for large 8x16 or 16x16 plates since they are more rigid and more flexible. Smaller plates require smaller boxes which saves on packaging and transportation costs; the exception is the larger creator expert sets (the modular buildings series and the Sydney Opera house) which utilise baseplates but have sufficiently large boxes that it doesn't matter. My research hasn't been exhaustive, someone might be able to prove me wrong. If the old baseplates are no longer being produced and we've already said no to new parts then we'll have to work to that constraint. I would urge the designers to look towards the castle sets like 8877 and 7094, 7097 to see how large panels can be utilised to quickly build height and bulk in a set. BURPs might just be your friend!