ShaydDeGrai

Hello and welcome! I make no claims to being an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I typically don't work in mini-figure scale (mostly just due the subject matter I choose) so I can offer some personal opinions if it would help. I think the biggest thing to remember when building small (whatever your definition of small happens to be) is abstraction. From an artist's perspective, abstraction is the conscious effort to remove details without compromising the essential form of whatever it is you're trying to render. Typically this means breaking things down into simpler forms that _suggest_ rather than depict the original idea. Most people who take, for example, a figure drawing class can't draw a human body on day one, but they can draw an oval or a trapezoid and with a bit of shading those flat shapes can suggest spheres and cylinders. Two of the first lessons given is how to "break down" the human form into the essential masses (a collection of draw-able spheres and cylinders) and how to flow those masses together to capture the critical flow that will trick the viewer into seeing a human in the rough sketch even without the surface detail one would expect from other media like photography. It's no different when your media is LEGO brick. You have a palette of core shapes to draw (in some cases a very extensive palette) and just need to develop an eye for how a model breaks down into those forms. Once you free yourself from the expectation that the model needs to "fit" with mini-figures, the question of scale gets blown with open, and there probably is never a right or wrong answer to it. Personally, I like to start with some sort of reference or model and figure out what it is about that image that 'defines' the piece for me. This feature (or features) represents the heart of the build, it can't be abstracted away and if I get it wrong, the whole effort is going to fail. For example, in my Pillars of the Kings piece, it was all about the statues outstretched hands - people might forgive the flat faces or the cheesy beard, but if the hands didn't say Argonath, I was dead in the water. (The shot below does have mini-figures, but it really is out of scale, the statutes are only about half of what they should be for mini-fig scale). This same concept of "find the essential form and go from there" holds true regardless of scale. When I tackled my Minas Tirith build I was working from a bookend/jewelry box. The first exercise I did in the design/build had nothing to do with LEGO. I put away the reference, picked up a pad of paper and tried to draw the shape from memory in under a minute. When forced to throw together a thumbnail that quickly, one's mind naturally gravitates to the 'key' features. In my case, the first half dozen strokes I put on paper were the curved outer wall, the knife edge of natural rock extenting 700 feet in the air (Denathor's diving board) the tower on the top and the hillside behind. I knew that if I could map those key shapes to bricks, the lion's share of the design was done. Note also that this is a very busy "micro-build", I abstracted away tons of surface detail, but that doesn't mean I had to throw away everything and go super minimalist. Just like when sketching, once you've captured the core form and created the highest level of abstraction that your mind will still believe echos the original, that's when you start putting the detail back in, rounding out shapes, playing with shadow lines, texturing surfaces. You can draw an egg, put it on a neck and shoulders and most people become willing to believe it was intended to be a head. If you then give it eyes or a nose, the viewer doesn't need to _believe_ anymore, now they _know_, they've bought into the illusion you were trying to create. But just as the base forms can be abstract to simple blocks, details themselves are subject to reduction; Perhaps a door is just a brick of a different color or texture, or a window is just a headlamp brick installed backward to expose its open, rectangular hole. It's just a question of know what parts you have, how they combine in non-traditional (SNOT) ways and mentally mapping them to the forms you're trying to suggest. In the case of Minas Tirith, I just fiddled around until I was happy with the look. My reference model had almost no smooth surfaces exposed, so part of my abstraction include the idea that I wanted the surfaces to be irregular, almost organic, something that would suggest the building and rebuilding that would go on over time in a real city; a barely organized clutter to suggest that this is a microbuild of something _huge_, not just a single building or fortification. I was concerned that if I'd taken too minimalist an approach I'd lose the suggestion of grandeur and age I was shooting for. Now sometimes, minimalist is _exactly_ the look you're after. I'm a big fan of the Architecture line with its clean lines and almost brutal minimalist approaches to some model. You could probably build the Empire State Building from a well stocked PaB wall, there's nothing fancy going on at all and all the needed parts fit in one hand (granted I have rather large hands, but still...) but when you step back and look at that four in tall uber-abstraction of a skyscraper, anyone who has seen the original instantly recognizes it for what it is. When I tackled Helm's Deep, I was going for a minimalist feel. Where I exposed studs, they were meant to suggest shrubs, boulders and uneven ground, everywhere else I wanted smooth walls and tiled tops. I don't have a recent photo (as I revised it to smooth the ramp a bit more and narrow the culvert to scale) but here's an old one to give you a sense of what I mean. BTW, I've seen an even better micro-abstraction of Helm's Deep by George G. that further illustrates the idea of abstracting to essential forms then adding back surface detail to help sell the finished product. Again, the image below is NOT my creation, I just include it here because it shows how two different designers can approach the same subject matter while making entirely different implementation choices in micro (that and the fact that seeing his encouraged me to dust off mine and revise it a bit). Now sometimes, as you suggest, abstraction and minimalism can be taken too far. I think good examples of this in actual kits (both from the Architecture line) are Rockefeller Center 21007 and Big Ben 21013. Rockefeller Center, to me, looks like a bunch of tan brick stacked on a plate - it's been cleaned up and scaled down to the point where it no longer suggested the scale of the original, unlike the Guggenheim Museum 21004 which has fewer pieces (but they're the right ones) yet suggests a much grander structure. Big Ben, in my opinion, lost its way when it embraced the idea of the clock face at the expense of the basic form of the tower. The tower is too narrow and the clock faces stick out way too far, in effect the _form_ of the clock and the _image_ of the clock were insistent with the essential _feel_ of the tower and the design suffers as a result. I've MOD'ed this kit and I've seen plenty of fine examples of others who have done likewise to tweak the proportions. You'd be amazed what difference the thickness of a plate here or there does for sustaining the illusion when working in Microscale. While the concept of identifying the essential forms and mapping those forms to the right piece is pretty core, sometimes inspiration works exactly backwards. I recall one trip to the LEGO store where I picked up a ridiculous number of 2x4 left plate w/angle: My wife asked me what what on Earth I was going to build with an entire cup of those and at first I didn't have a very good answer. Then it dawned on me that I'd seen that shape before, not on Earth, but on Middle Earth. It reminded me of the corrugated flair on the Black Gate of Mordor. Mapping this one piece to that one feature set the scale for the rest of the model. The end result came out like this: So to recap, when _I_ build in micro (other's mileage may vary) I find the tricks are: 1) Know where you're going before you start - Reference photos, sketches or large models are a great resource 2) Figure out what the _essence_ of the model really is - Abstraction is all about throwing away _extraneous_ details while keeping what really matters 3) Break the model down into key masses - Be mindful that you'll actually need to build these shapes, so... 3a) Know what parts you have available and what they look like from odd perspectives or partially obscured - Learn to love cheese wedges, plates, tiles, hinges, clips, tiny technic bits and all manner of odd little part you never thought you'd use in quantity. 4) Once you have the core form, decide how much detail you need to put back to satisfy the look you're going after - The only person who has to like what you produce is you Good luck and have fun.

Thanks to everyone for their input. I've decided I'm going to give BrickFair New England a shot. Now all I have to figure out is which pieces to bring and how to package them to avoid damage in transit. Thanks again.

I'm pretty sure my oldest (and very first) set was the 336 fire engine. But the coolest set I remember from those days (so wonderful I had to have two of them) was the 603 Vintage Car. I remember being quite taken with the new, smaller wheels and the macaroni pieces putting a little curve into the body and the crude SNOT (not that I knew what that was in those days) technique for the headlights. My how far we've come in the past 40+ years...

I think the core truth of that statement is really "to attract attention." In the end, CuuSoo, like ReBrick, seems to be more about drawing attention to the LEGO brand more so than to any one idea or creation. Even if they only release a token set per year with no new parts, we still spend man-years of time and effort proposing projects, writing blogs, hotly debating issues in forums, etc. We're volunteering content that, for better or worse, helps TLG increase their Internet footprint. As a google search term "Lego" becomes a hot item and right next to a list of search results for people arguing over Zelda, MLP and Perdue Pete are a dozen advertisements for, guess what, buying Lego kits! I don't know if this sort of guerrilla marketing is intentional or simply emergent, nor do I know if impacts their bottom line; but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that all of CuuSoo ultimately answered to marketing rather than new product development. As for new parts on CuuSoo, I speak with no authority whatsoever but my read of their latest posting seems to say that if you want to propose a new part it should be a standalone new part proposal, not part of a kit. If you want to propose a new kit, it should be build-able with existing parts give or take color changes, stickers and print jobs. If your existing kit relies on new parts, they might not ask you to take it down or modify it but your chances are pretty slim that it'll sail come review time. I haven't heard of anyone complaining that their new (post Zelda rejection) proposal was denied a public posting due to reliance on new molds, but I also haven't noticed any new proposals going up lately that required such so I don't know if anyone has tried to push the envelope on that front.

I don't know if this belongs in General Discussions or somewhere in Community, but... In the past year I've gotten numerous queries by people wanting to see some of my MOCs in person. They ask if I'm going to be at this show or that expo and, up to now, my answer has always been 'no' because attending would involve air travel and trusting my MOCs to either postal services or baggage handlers. This year, however, there's going to be a show (Brickfair New England) happening about an hours drive from my house so the question of getting me or my MOCs there really isn't an issue. It did, however, get me thinking about all the other issues of attending such an event as an exhibitor. I'm not a member of any LUG and, while I've dropped in on a couple events from time to time, I've never been on the other side of the table before. I'm trying to decide if I should give it a go, but I don't even know if I'm asking myself the right questions. SO, I thought I'd see if there were any experienced exhibitors out there willing to share their war stories. What is it like behind the scenes? Have you had issues with damage or theft? Are there (general) logistical issues to consider when planning to attend a show as an exhibitor? Have you ever regretted bringing (or not bringing) MOCs to an event? Did you have fun? I'll probably be _attending_ the event in any case, I could just use a bit more insight to help me decide if I want to be more than just a spectator.

Great review! Thank you for taking the time to do such an excellent job. As for the model, I'm not thrilled about the blank backside but otherwise I think this is awesome. A great addition to the line which I shall be picking up as soon as I can.

Welcome! I think you'll find no shortage of LOTR fans here (and a fair number of related MOCs as well).

Welcome, Kim! I'm not sure there is a "typical" Lego enthusiast, everyone embraces their little (or not so little) brick collections in their own way. That's part of the fun, something for everyone. Now go rummage through that childhood collection of yours, maybe add a few things to it, build something and share it with the rest of us

Welcome! I, too, come from the land of frigid winters, sweltering summers and weather that changes faster than you can dress for it. I think it says something about us that only in New England do people go out in a blizzard to buy ice cream. Personally, I live just outside of Boston, but I have extended family up on MDI in Maine and like to vacation in Vermont, so I'm all over the map.

That's really the point, "gatekeeper" comments are none of the above. Constructive criticism is not an ego-stroke, it's on-topic and aimed at improving the project. "Gatekeeper comments" are, by definition, aimed not at improving a project but killing it off (or in the case of CuuSoo undermining the support for it and the moral of the creator). No one is saying that every comment should be "hey great job!" (in fact if that's the sort of feedback you're after, post to MOCPages or Flicker). Yes, it's nice to get those comments, but they don't really give you much guidance on how to make the project better. Crowd sourcing is a form of brainstorming, and the first rule of brainstorming (like improve comedy) is keep it positive and roll with it. The second rule (and I'm paraphrasing a text I used to teach software engineering from), anyone who breaks rule #1 undermines the entire process; the session will be more productive without any input from them at all. The gatekeeper isn't the voice of reason in the crowd (though he often seems himself that way), it's the guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room and assumes he can do no wrong - he's the guy who intimidates others into silence, insults others out of envy, and seeks empowerment at the expense of others. Often the gatekeeper is the person who is so convinced of his or her own infallibility that s/he doesn't even realize how little s/he understands the brainstorming process while at the same time is (intentionally or not) actively derailing it. There is certainly a time and a place for a strong, critical assessment; a time when cold facts and cruel realities outweigh neat ideas and wishful thinking. That time, however, comes in the REVIEW stage, just as in brainstorming; until then ideas should have the luxury of existing in a bubble until they have matured enough to stand or fall on their own. At the end of the process, you look at what has evolved in the incubator of positive feedback and constructive criticisms to see if some concept, which may have started as a hare-brained idea or even a joke, has become something worth vesting real time and money in. If people waste time playing gatekeeper ( discouraging others from supporting, commenting on, or even simply acknowledging the potential of projects), ideas never evolve, they just wither and die. And for those who don't follow CuuSoo projects here are a couple examples I've cut and pasted to file from time to time (at CuuSoo and various blogs that write about CuuSoo) of what I consider to be Gate Keeper comments: "People, don't waste your vote on this [a proposal for a Witch King with Fellbeast] Lego is coming out with LOTR sets this summer and they're sure to be better than this one [the proposed model]" "What a waste of time! There's no way Lego could sell that for under $35. It's too big, nobody wants a CuuSoo set with more that 400 pieces and anyone who votes for this is an idiot. It'll never happen." "I built one that was much cooler than this. If you're thinking about supporting this, check out mine instead." "Cathedrals are churches, Lego doesn't do religious stuff. They should delete this project before it draws of votes from something that might actually get made." "Are you people all crazy or just stupid? Hasbro invented that IP and they'll never give Lego the time of day." [The IP in question was MyLittlePony] As you can see, I'm not talking about the person who says "I think the tree needs to be a little bulkier," "The facade needs more detail," "Nice idea, but the colors on the model are too bland," or "Have you considered adding a projection booth at the back of the theatre?" The "fans" I refer to as "gate keepers" are the ones who aren't trying to improve a given project, they are the ones trying to hi-jack the process itself. And yes - quite often the nay-sayers are right - but brainstorming isn't about being right (or even viable), it's about fostering ideas, not filtering them (the voting system does that automatically) And staying positive doesn't mean forming a mutual admiration society to pay empty complements and overlook obvious flaws, it means checking your ego at the door, respecting the ideas of others and making a commitment, not to point out the flaws in an idea and wash your hands of it, but to identify and share potential remedies for those weaknesses.

This is certainly true and I don't think anyone, in theory, is arguing against such feedback. Indeed, I've seen several projects get improved/refined as a result of such comments and the end result was a stronger proposal. As for plagiarism, I wouldn't waste my time commenting on the project at all; I'd go straight to the moderators to make sure that the powers-that-be are made aware of the situation and take the project (and possibly the user) down. For legitimate proposals, however, the tricky part is figuring out where to draw the lines between constructive critic, nay sayer, self-appointed moderator and lord-god-king of all things LEGO. Personally, I don't consider pointing out the "rules" to someone to be a criticism. They are what they are and if we want to play in the CuuSoo arena, abiding by them is the price of doing business. Some people may have missed the fine print here or there so doing something like telling an author not to mock-up the logo or they risk getting pulled for purely bureaucratic reasons is a 'helpful' thing to do (provided it's done nicely). Likewise asking for clearer photos, a different angle, pointing out that an image has been cropped badly by the system, or that this feature should be more prominent, etc. are all, in my mind positive feedback. Such comments tell the author that someone cares enough about his/her project that the poster wants the proposal to succeed and is offering (often cosmetic and clerical) suggestions that will help others to find the idea appealing. Where things start to cross the line is when the comment isn't there to support/improve the project, but to either lower the author's expectations or to give others who might be on the fence about supporting something a reason not to. For example: New part proposals. The facts are nobody gets excited about a new plate for the top of a macaroni brick ( well, some of us do, but not "My Little Pony" sort of excited) and if you add up ALL the support for ALL the parts proposals ever posted on CuuSoo you still don't even come close to getting 10,000 votes. People who post parts proposals know this (or figure it out on their own very quickly) and yet others still feel compelled to post comments along the lines of 'you may as well delete this, CuuSoo will never make a new mold' While this may well prove true, how are such comments helpful? The project author already knows this and there's nothing he/she can do about it. The only impact such comments have is to dissuade potential supporters and to become a self fulfilling prophesy. Now new parts take this to the extreme, but I've lost count of the number of comments I've read that fall into the "hey people, don't vote for this and here's why" category. Usually the poster is someone with some knowledge of upcoming sets or licensing details that speak to the chances of the proposal getting past the REVIEW stage. Again, often the rational for the post is based in facts, but the post itself contributes nothing positive to the conversation at hand and can negatively impact the success of the project overall. If you don't want to vote for a project, that's fine it's your choice. But when it comes to offering public comment on a project I think the litmus test we each need to ask ourselves is "Is what I'm about to say going to A) improve this project's chances of getting to the review stage, or B) encourage this designer to share more ideas here?" If you can't answer yes to at least one of those two criteria, chances are pretty good that your comment would be saying more about _you_ than the project. Yes, there are sloppy projects on CuuSoo (a lot of them actually). Yes, there are projects that are unrealistic, impractical, mired in IP legal issues, etc., etc., etc. but it's not OUR job to sort that out. In a crowd-sourcing/brainstorming activity like CuuSoo, we are supposed to be playing the role of enablers, not gate keepers. TLG has paid professionals to reject ideas (even good ideas - I'm going to miss that Modular Western Town) both before proposals get publicly posted and after a select few make it to 10,000 votes. If we, as informed AFOLs, devote our time, energy and creativity to playing gate keeper instead of proposing, supporting, complementing and offering positive suggestions on CuuSoo I think we effectively forfeit our right to complain when Purdue Pete or My Little Pony or [insert pop franchise of your choice here] flies through the support stage while quality (but perhaps not perfect) MOCs from people we know (at least on-line) languish in obscurity. We are too quick play the critic, to ready to share knowledge that the masses consider trivia, and too quick to take offense when our sage pontifications are ignored - and then we wonder why project A only managed to get 300 votes in a year while project B (that we that we just know will get rejected) got 3000 in a day. It reminds me of something my grandmother told me: "If you can't say something nice, then shut your damned mouth and get back to work!" (Gram always was a little feisty...)

I haven't met very many AFOLs in person and never one under unexpected circumstances (i.e. outside of a LEGO store or toy show) but I did have an interesting exchange with a coworker once. We were chatting about the Lord of the Rings and, when the discussion turned to fan art, she got all excited about this "really cool" model of the Argonath that "someone" built entirely from "Legos" [sic - I didn't bother correcting her]. She brought up her Pinterest page. I started smiling when I saw my own Pillars of the Kings MOC staring back at me. When I told her that I'd not only seen it before but that I'd actually built it, at first she didn't believe me. Fortunately, I happened to have WIP photos on my phone to prove that I actually was "ShaydDeGrai" I still haven't managed t convert her to a full blown AFOL, but she does consult with me for gift ideas for her nephew and her husband from time to time and I've noticed a couple small Star Wars models showing up in her office bookcase so there's hope for her yet

5. toorayay - 1 6. srdrnet - 1 7. ShaydDeGrai - 2 21. Kristel - 1

I love that those new pieces are generic building elements with lots of reuse potential, unlike a decade ago when so many of the new molds were specialized or "macro" pieces.

I can't say that I'm particularly taken with the style of the actual building (just not to my tastes) but I think your model of it is absolutely wonderful. It's a tight build and a nice adaptation that captures the 'feel' of the original quite nicely.

Welcome from a fellow New Englander. I spend most of the year just outside of Boston myself, but I have a few relatives up on MDI in Maine (mostly boat builders and fishermen who give directions based on historical events and landmarks that burned down 50+ years ago - I guess stereotypes have to start somewhere...) What part of Maine are you from? I, too, decided that LEGO was the way to go with my train hobby (used to be an HO fan so LEGO was a major change in scale but a lot more fun) They pretty much won me over with the My Own Train series back in 2002 and the only regret I've had is that I don't have room for a "permanent" set-up. Welcome aboard and good luck in the Winter Village contest.

I hope these show up in a lot of sets. I can think of several of MOCs around my office that are crying for that piece, not to mention designs I haven't even built yet. I'll take several dozen in just about any color they come in...

Well now that this particular beaten dead horse has been resurrected, died again and continued to the beaten. I figured I'd re-read the past few pages and add a few lashes of my own to the carcass. It seems that there are three basic camps driving arguments for and against: Legal; Civil; and, Grammatical. The Legal argument is simple. TLG has a trademark for the use of a hieroglyph that resembles the word LEGO (written in all caps) that may be used (atomically) in place of an adjective to describe their products. IP law on trademarks refer to icons, logos and symbols used in place of words, that is to say rules of grammar do not apply with respect to the actual trademarked item. Legally 'LEGO' is not a word, it is a picture that just happens to include graphics that resemble the capital letters L,E,G and O. 'LEGOs' is a different symbol, as is 'Lego' or 'lEgOs' or any other permutation thereof and while a given audience might make the association with TLG products, there is no legally binding protections or assurances that such associations are valid. Anything other than "LEGO' used as an adjective is invalid (legally speaking) and using it as a noun (singular or plural) or using anything all caps, might get you're point across, but it is undermining TLG's claim the trademark and hastening in the day when companies like Mega-blocks can (legally) refer to themselves as 'legos' to further confuse well meaning but under educated grandmothers shopping for gifts. The Civil argument is related to the legal one. As has been pointed out, TLG does not dictate the linguistic practices of the consumers, reporter, bloggers, etc. They can exercise their trademark to force someone from using their 'icon' without their permission, but if I refer to my bricks as 'legos' they can't stop me. I'm not using their trademarked symbol, I'm using a made up word that owes its etymology to their brand name, much the same as 'trekie' stems from the fan culture of 'Star Trek' but is entirely outside the domain of Paramount Picture's control. The Civil argument again sides against 'LEGOs' simply because TLG has asked people not to promote popular usage of words that would undermine their trademark. The Grammatical argument is the most muddled of all and, speaking as someone who has studied English, Linguistics, and IP law, shows more how people can loose sight of the big picture while latching onto one isolated aspect of the issue than it does about the 'correctness' of how one should refer to one's LEGO collection. First, as has been pointed out, TLG does not control language and the purpose of language is to communicate. When a plurality of people agree to associate a given sound or symbol with a shared idea, a new word is coined. New words are created all the time, just as old words get redefined or go extinct. For example SCUBA started as an acronym and was used grammatically as a noun. Over time it became 'Scuba' and then 'scuba' and is now an adjective. No one person or organization decided this, people working and writing is the field just did what felt 'natural' (no doubt some people felt compelled to lecture others on their "misuse' of the term) and dictionaries documented the majority opinion. Linguistically speaking, that's all we ever have - majority opinion. Reference books, classes, and prior examples can try to impose yesterday's rules and vocabulary, but language will drift and evolve with the needs and will of the majority (if you doubt this, try reading a few text messages from a teenager with a cell phone) So given that language is what individual ethnologies declare it to be, where does that leave the "LEGOs' grammar argument? First there is the issue of 'LEGO' the trademarked adjective versus 'lego' the noun. Popular language drift (which nearly always begins acoustically) lets us declare the sound "leg-oh" to change parts of speech, but in doing so there is nothing "proper' about it. That is to say that it is both legally and grammatically incorrect (by current standards) to type "Lego' as a proper noun because, capitalized it violates the use of the brand. Writing it, as a noun, in all lower case however, is within generally accepted bounds of language drift, just as Xerox refered to a company, but when using the word to refer to a generic photocopy it is 'xerox' ( all lower-case due to the dilution of trademark). Grammatically, you could write 'lego' as a noun, simply because the majority of your audience will understand to what you refer; and once you've written 'lego' you might as well write 'legos' ('legoes' or 'legii' whatever). It's a made up word to begin with, so what the plural should be, again goes back to majority opinion. The risk of course is that in making the term more generic, you are opening the door for non-LEGO products to be referred to as 'lego(s)'; you are playing a game of majority rules and the majority have already decided that all adhesive bandages are band-aids, all cotton swabs are q-tips, and all photocopies are xeroxes so why shouldn't all interlocking toy bricks be legos? (My spell checker already accepts it.) So in summary, if you subscribe to the legal argument, you should write LEGO (all caps) and use it only as an adjective. If you subscribe to the Civil argument and respect TLG desire to maintain its brand distinction, you should follow the legal argument. If you want to go with the grammatical argument, you certainly can write "lego" or "legos" as a noun, but if you're going to take this argument to heart, never write "Legos" or "LEGOs" as, grammatically and linguistically, those capitalizations don't hold water - you can't make a grammatical argument on one front while ignoring several other rules at the same time (well, English is so convolved that you probably could, but you shouldn't it just makes a bad situation worse.)

Great article. It really speaks to my 10-15 cents per brick "value gauge" that I've been carrying around in my head since the days when gasoline was $2.50 a gallon but always questioned "has the price _really_ not changed that much?" Well, now I know. I, for one, find LEGO sets more affordable than ever, but I know my opinion is heavily biased from personal experience. I DID grow up knowing the value of money because my family didn't have much of it. When I managed to earn a dollar here or there (raking leaves, shoveling snow, dropping flyers in peoples mail boxes, etc) I was expected to contribute at least half of what I made to the house fund to help pay for groceries. Back in those days a 25 piece stocking stuffer from LEGO _was_ the Taj Mahal to me. I've come a long way in the intervening decades and I'm very happy to know that LEGO is still with us and, now that I can afford them, is offering me plenty of excellent options.

While very interesting architecturally, Sagrada Famillia is Catholic church and as such would probably be a tough sell given TLG resistance/opposition to sets that could be construed to be promoting modern religions (they lump that in with sex, drug use and realistic depictions of war on their non-starters list). I've wanted a big D2C Notre Dame for some time, but I doubt I'll ever see one (for exactly the same reason). Still, I share your desire to see what next "big landmark' will arise to join my Statue of Liberty, TB, ET and TM collection. A Castle Neuschwanstein might make a nice neutral subject.

They didn't get much screen time in the movie (a bit more on DVD but still underplayed). The Corsairs of Umbar were privateers acting as the unofficial navy of Umbar, a rival of Gondor. The books describe them as having over fifty capital ships, nearly a thousand other large vessels and smaller ships 'beyond number.' Their primary mission (as far as Umbar was conserned) was to ruin Gondors water based trade routes to erode the kingdom economically since Gondor's defenses and standing army had proven itself too strong for Umbar to defeat in open (land-based) battle. The fleet included genuine warships that were paid a bounty from the state for sinking any armed escort craft, and many smaller craft that were allowed to keep anything they could plunder from ships and ports in Gondor's waters. In addition to attacking ships and convoys, they also raided Gondor's navy yards, destroying ships under construction or sinking them as soon as they were launched to prevent Gondor from being able to amass a fleet capable of repelling them. In the books, a major contributor to Denathor's madness comes from his looking into the palantir and seeing a vision of the corsairs invading en masse. The movie glosses over a lot of this and makes it seem like it's nearly all about the death of Boromir and his failed relationship with Faramir - which was certainly a tipping point, but it was the vision of thousands of the enemy black sailed ships arriving with reinforcements at a time when Minas Tirith was already being battered by the forces of Mordor that caused Denethor to lose all hope and ultimately go mad. (His vision doesn't include the discovery that Aragorn has already defeated/scattered the privateers with the help of the Oathbreakers and that the 'reinforcements' he is bringing are there to save Minas Tirith, not destroy it - Denethor just sees the black sails and assumes the worst. My take on one of the Corsairs' capital ship can be found here but I'm certain TLG's offering will be more of a mini-figure centric, 'tubbier' version. Still, we should get an official lanteen-rigged boat out of the deal.

A play set is fine and I'll pick it up even if it ends up with a tiny molded eagle. But for the record, I'd readily embrace a Black Gate model on the order of a Taj Mahal set (i.e. big ('gazillion peice'), detailed, no mini-figures) and wouldn't quibble about the price so long as they kept it under the 15 cents/part threshold. An 'accurate' minifigure scale Morannon Set (Black Gate with both Towers of the Teeth) would be out of the question, however. According to the books, the wall stood 60 feet tall and filled a mountain pass 250 feet wide. Each gate was 90 feet long and the Towers of the Teeth were each roughly 250 feet tall. At mini-figure scale that makes the wall roughly 50 bricks tall, 240 studs wide with towers 208 bricks tall. Even if you were to just build a flat wall (no gate, no towers, no surface detail) to that scale out of a single thickness of 2x4 brick, you're talking about 3000 bricks. If you want something that resembles the gate in the film and can open (with the help of some cave trolls on a curved rampart) you could easily need ten times that many bricks (as a starting estimate) Clearly, the Numenorians weren't thinking about LEGO or mini-figure scale when they build these things...

My older cat is usually more interested in the box than the bricks, but my younger kitty is currently terrorizing my Winter Village set-up and just the other day I found a cow, two mini-figures and a lamp post in my slipper...

Even after the printer is paid for, the price per piece will probably be higher than just buying stuff on Bricklink for most parts, but, as has been said, getting exactly the part you want when you need it might outweigh the price factor for some users. I think, in the end it will become more a question of finish than form. If you don't mind a slight surface texture and color variance then, one of these days 3D printing could certainly be viable. Still, when it comes to smooth, shiny pieces, it's hard to beat injection molding. Even at a resolution of 100 microns (that's about the thickness of a piece of paper) your eye is going to notice the brick isn't smooth. Depending on lighting, you could have to go down as far as 4 microns (25x better) before a sharp eyed observer would accept it as a glass-like finish (most people couldn't see the defect itself at that resolution but surface refraction could throw off the appearance causing light and color shifts that are larger than the defect itself).

There's certainly some truth to this. I've been browsing MOCs on the web for two decades now and as far as IP related projects go, from my experience LotR has been one of, if not the most, popular single subject for AFOL creations. Certainly, Star Wars is up there and more recently things like EVE Online and Halo and all sorts of other great MOCs inspired by movies, TV, and video games get a lot of notice, but LotR MOCs were big even before Peter Jackson's films came out. I remember seeing brick built Hobbits inspired by Ralph Bashi's animated films at a Sci-Fi convention in the 1980's. I think every D&D player I knew in the seventies at one point or another made a tall, narrow stack of black bricks and called it Orthanc. Some people adapted Alan Lee sketches; others bought their annual Brothers Hildebrandt calendar and did their best to turn each month's picture into a LEGO creation; still others went purely from their own imagination. I don't know of any other work of fiction whose _prose alone_ has inspired so much AFOL activity. The Tolkien fans are out there and a lot of them also are into LEGO. That said, however, for a LEGO LotR franchise to succeed long term, they need to look beyond their usual demographic of 6-12 year old boys. If they give MIddle Earth the "Harry Potter Treatment" (nearly every set is about the minifigures and giving them an environment to play in) it will probably go the way of the HP franchise - big while there are fresh films to sustain it, forgotten as kids grow up and move on. The "Star Wars Treatment" on the other hand, recognizes and actively tries to appeal to fans of all ages. Minifigures and play sets a still a core business, but there are a lot of offerings (ships, UCS display models, etc.) that adult fans of STAR WARS (who may not even be fans of LEGO) actively consume. (I even have one friend who has asked me to put together his UCS models for him because he wants the models but doesn't have the patience to put them together). I can't recall the last time I saw a B-Wing fighter in a movie theatre (and, frankly, it's not nearly as iconic a ship as an X Wing or a Snowspeeder) but the fact that it wasn't in a movie last month isn't going to keep SW fans from buying the new UCS model. Even limiting the LotR license to the WB films leaves a lot of room for adult offerings: high end UCS models; Architecture style models of iconic buildings and places, brick built sculptures of key beasts and characters, etc. In general, things that speak first to fans of Middle Earth, then to fans of LEGO and finally to fans of minifigures. I work with a lot of geeks who wouldn't display a copy of Shelob Attacks in their office today but wouldn't think twice about using a microbuild of Minas Tirith as a bookend or displaying a tiny Helm's Deep as a desk toy. That said, even if TLG were to offer such kits, I don't know if it would be enough to sustain the line indefinitely. Kids today have such sort attention spans and fickle memories. In talking to a few 20-somethings milling about the break room of my office, 7 of 9 said they were LotR fans and they were psyched to see the Hobbit movie, but only 1 of the 9 had actually read the books (one said she'd been thinking about reading it 'sometime') so who knows. Maybe the die-hard Tolkien/AFOL crossover fans are all my age or better and I don't know if mid-life crises impulse buys is really a sound sales strategy.