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Faefrost

Eurobricks Grand Dukes
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  1. Faefrost
    No one has mentioned it but the Ideas Old Fishing Shack is easily converted to a rather interesting portside location for our Pirate Brethren. lot's of useful parts and colors and that wonderful cobbled together run down feeling out of the box. Destiny's Bounty is still the best ship we have seen in years for Piraty stype stuff. I stumbled on this video last night. Not my creation but gotta give the builder his due. He combined two DB's and extended the masts and DAMN! My hat is off to "MOC Your Bricks" well done sir. That is Magnificent! and at the simple cost of two common retail sets.
  2. Faefrost
    We never got any British ships. An Interceptor or Dauntless. Or Sao Feng's ship which would all be really nice to haves as well.
  3. Faefrost
    Just from eyeballing it, it looks like it is behaving and selling exactly the same as a typical Modular. Not an instant sellout, but steady upper end sales. I watched a number of them bought with the Downtown Diner. Figure it will do well next week with the anniversary bonus.
  4. Faefrost
    Yeah, Cinemasins has gotten lazy, predictable and lame. Going after the low hanging fruit or fart joke instead of being actually clever. They became that which they parodied. Although anyone treating them as an actual movie review needs some serious help and possibly medication... As for the movie? I finally watched it... Meh! It lacked the warm charm and cleverness that Ninjago and its characters have had on TV for so many years. It felt like watching that godawful Michael Bay Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies after having fallen in love with the clever classic and new Nik cartoons. You have that “WTF am I watching and did the producers ever actually watch the source material?” Moment. It had its fun moments and scenes. It was gorgeous to look at. But much of the charm of either the original show or the predecessor Lego movies felt absent or lacking. Ninjago works when you take the property seriously. This means no live Cats among other things. Breaking the fourth wall is bad for the property.
  5. Faefrost
    The only flaw is a Black Cat fig would really want that fur colar piece that Kraven and Penguin have used. But it won't work with that hair.
  6. Faefrost
    They are pretty close to doing just this with the Lego Batman Movie series 2. They have a TON of Super Friends characters in there. Apache Chief. Black Vulcan, The Wonder Twins!
  7. Faefrost
    We know what the weapon is. It's the version of his weapon used in Marvel's "Ultimate" comic line through the past 12-15 years. It makes sense as many elements of the MCU are borrowed freely from the Ultimates Universe and comic books. Largely as they were a bit more grounded. Hawkeye is the Ultimate version. Falcon is closer to the Ultimate version. Nick Fury is the Ultimate version stepped off the page. Spider-man is the Ultimate version. It's a simple design. Easy to recognize and hard to get wrong. And one that is easy to do in Lego. Beta Ray Bill or Storm's Hammers may need a special piece
  8. Faefrost
    My first suggestion. Above and beyond anything else is get your hands on Brickcitydepots book http://a.co/d29QCm9 Trust me it’s worth it for $16. Hundreds of tips on spotting the world and simplifying the little details into Lego parts. It also has complete instructions for one full detailed modular pharmacy and three unfurnished general purpose buildings. My approach is I decide a color palett and a rough pen and paper idea of what I want first. Very rough. But part of it is I view every modular building as telling a story or having a story running through it. It helps me decide what it is I am seeking to make. It has to have a purpose and a story before I start piling on architecture. For the rough draft I use pictures of real buildings. Places I know. Something that caught my eye as a good subject. Etc. from there it goes into LDD to get the basic build together. I probably go further than most in ?LDD as I will also design or scetch out the interior and the furnishings. Each of my LDD projects will have 6-12 files for different floors, furniture. Combined tests and templates. I like to get the virtual model as detailed as I can so I can render it. Once satisfied, I pull a parts list and start building. No plans ever survive contact with an actual build, so you just sorta make it up as you go, trying to more or less create what you planned out. Oh I should mention what is perhaps the most overlooked part of an LDD design. Printing out the parts list. Importing it into BrickLink, and finding which insanely rare or improbable parts you used. Then going back, finding work around sand doing it again. LDD does not calculate cost or rarity of part. If you set it wrong it will not even validate color selections. You want to try and not plan your build around insanely expensive ultra rare parts. Unlike others I design from the bottom up. The ground floor is normally the most complex and packed with details. It will be the anchor purpose of the building and it’s story. The architectural trim and facade and roofline are what I do last. But Tend to focus more on the interior. Get the walls and windows up to define space, then design the interior.
  9. Faefrost
    I like that! Very good use of color and kibble. Lots of interesting architectural detail and shapes.
  10. Faefrost
    Anything beyond 3 series a year seems to oversaturate retailers and cause them to skip series. I know my local Targets will seemingly never be clear of the Lego Batman Movie figs, such that they have never bothered to put out the Ninjago or Wave 17 product. There are probably unopened boxes in the store room.
  11. Faefrost
    In shuffling things around a bit more I think I have found the perfect place for the DD among the other Modulars. Put it to the Left side of Assembly Square. The front corner of the Coffee Shop lines up with and matches the DD. There are some curved elements that are the same across the lower portion of both buildings and flow together And the colors seem to blend well.
  12. Faefrost
    I have a wide Ikea shelf that circles three walls of my Home Office at about shoulder height. 5 shelf segments each holds 4 1/2 Modulars (4x32 + 1x16 or similar). The city basically wraps around and above my work desk. It's starting to get a bit tight. With City of Ninjago, Haunted House and Old Fishing Store in with them, plus 3 of my own MOC's I am almost out of room. I can fit maybe 2 more buildings.
  13. Faefrost
    Great MOC! I love all the scenes. (Ok I was wondering how Scooby Doo qualifies as a horror movie scene... then I remembered Freddie Prinz Jr and it all made sense) btw here’s a neat trick if you want to use those printed wood grain tiles to tile out a floor. You only need to use an actual printed tile for about every fourth tile or so, semi randomly. Your eye will pick those up and sort of fill in the wood texture mentally. So you don’t have to buy tons of printed tiles. The visual effect actually works better if you don’t use all printed tiles as your eye finds that a bit cluttered and busy and it breaks the illusion or effect you are going for. Eyes or vision can be funny.
  14. Faefrost
    I’ve played around with mine. I think the only official ones that it doesn’t go well alongside is the Parisian Restaurant. The colors and style shift is a little too dissonant there. Of my MOC’s the only clash is with the Winchester. Mainly because it is a very similarly styled and shaped building. That light tan Steamlined Moderne with curving frontage. The two side by side look weird.
  15. Faefrost
    It’s Apples and Oranges. Lego has granular data on what would And would not make a valid and successful Lego set at regular retail. And even at D2C. As others have mentioned Ideas is largely about oddball niche stuff that would be overlooked in their broader market research. Neat little niche subjects and communities. You can’t compare The Ideas process with regular product development. They serve wildly different masters and in many ways work backwards from each other. Forregular sets they develop the business case first, then go on to develop the subject, line and sets. For Ideas they develop the project set first, the idea, then go and research or seek to find the business case. And yes most single Lego sets would likely fail at the crowdsourcing step. Simply because they are not really meant to be taken as the entirety by themselves. Most Lego sets are a small piece of an integrated line. The Themes. You don’t evaluate a part without the whole. The closest internal product to the Ideas developed sets is the Creator Expert line. And most of those would likely easily pass the 10k threshold.
  16. Faefrost
    The best, perhaps only, hope for new Classic Space sets currently lies with the Lego Movie 2. Rumor is at least part of it involved Benny’s themed area, so we should see a set or two reflecting that. Other than that really the only hope would be some sort of massive D2C set that does for Space what the Imperial Flagship did for Pirates.
  17. Faefrost
    One suggestion. Given that it is a period theater, and you are still working on the upstairs, why not simply make it a balcony? With the projection booth either embedded in the front or rear of the Balcony. They were very common around the time period.
  18. Faefrost
    My suspicion is the Ninjago City Docks set will be a 32x32 or 32x48 set. Basically a standard modular footprint designed to connect to one of the pinned sides of the Ninjago City set. It will be another 3 layer tower set, but the canal at the bottom of City will transition to the Dock area on the lowest level. One of the outward facing sides will have a stone pier intended for you to park the Destiny’s Bounty against it. This set won’t House the DB itself, but will likely give a nice transition on a shelf between Ninjago City and the DB. The levels will, like Ninjago City, probably include some various locations from the movie and show. The school wood seem likely. I believe a Hot Dog store is in the dock area of the game. Maybe a Tea store or the Mojo Dojo? This is all complete speculation on my part. But the price hints at a 4000+ piece set and what rumors we get hint at both a “Modular” and a something intended to connect to NC. “Ninjago City Docks” May mainly refer to the district of the city. Not necessarily the core focus or build. Granted at that scale of set it could be anything.
  19. Faefrost
    Agreed. Also while Parisian Restaurant looks like a smaller modular, it's incredibly dense. There is no wasted space in it and it is wall to wall interesting builds and techniques. It really is Jamie's masterpiece.
  20. Faefrost
    This one isn’t really that much of a game for these two reviews, sadly. Second Review - None. Gilmore Girls Diner has no brand synergy. It fails same way Golden Girls did. Peru is the most interesting. Colorful, but likely no real market for what is essentially a Peru tourism set. I am Your Father is Star Wars pre existing license. Not gonna happen Space Shuttle has been done so many times by Lego in so many scales that it won’t be considered for Ideas. The only Idea this set brings is the requested scale. It’s just “what you already made, but bigger/smaller” Research Aircraft. Only real contender. But they have those so saturated in Creator sets that it really has no differentiation. Plus jet fighter problem. Saturn V Launch Tower is an add on for another set. Instant fail. Third Period Pop up Book is the easy winner. It’s too obvious. Unique, clever, eye catching, family friendly. Lighthouse, Bout House Diner and Dive Shop are all really continuations of the wonderful Old Fishing Store. While each is wonderful I don’t see them building a line of these. At least not through Ideas. Not impossible but really unlikely. A Christmas Story House, let’s be honest, it’s a crude flat build that is riding an IP alone and doesn’t appear to include any of the charms of the IP. A Christmas Story set might be viable. But this isn’t it. RuPauls Drag Race. Not just no, hells no! No way, no how, never! Lego is NOT going to kick over that can of worms. Not brand friendly. Jaguar, put this down as an outside chance. It’s a gorgeous model that doesn’t seem too huge. Plus I don’t think Lego has a Jaguar License in effect. But the pop up book is a better fit Ideas set.
  21. Faefrost
    This is a little bit of it. We as AFOL’s tend to think of sets by “10 cents per piece” or something similar. But that’s not how designers view it. They are given a part budget to work with. Each part has a certain specific budget cost. Each color or color change has a cost. Parts that are already surplus and do not require injection molding factory time have a lower budget cost than those requiring molding. Sometimes it also has to do with the packaging lines. They can only have so many unique parts placed in a given bag. Each bagging station only has so many hoppers. So each part or hopper change/add requires budget. Finally that is balanced by the need to keep clear color distinctions in the sets and instructions. Not just for young builders but even for AFOLs. I challenge anyone to build a Megobloks Call of Duty set and not go mad trying to discerne colors.
  22. Faefrost
    It’s biggest negative is it’s scale is a little off compared to the other modulars. Which can be very distracting to the eye. Green Grocer is also a hair overscale But is less noticeable due to color choices. It also feels less refined then the regular modulars. It feels a bit blockier. More like a traditional Lego set. The steps of the front roofline feel very awkward alongside the other facades. Especially with the large gap of open air caused by the garden area. It breaks up the visual flow of the rooflines.
  23. Faefrost
    We have gotten 2 a year in the past. There have been times when the time between them has dropped to 9-10 months instead of a full 12 month cycle. Also with several “Modular Type” sets starting to scroll out of the catalog, ie Ghostbusters Firehouse, Simpson’s Sets, Ninjago City, that set might be a replacement role for one of those. There have been rumors about redoing Cafe Corner with modern parts and a full interior for years. But they’ve been just that. Granted those rumors existed alongside the ever present rumors for a new UCS Milenium Falcon and Taj Mahal...
  24. Faefrost
    I’m pretty sure it involves parts forming and some rebuilding of the lions into the alternate modes. And honestly, from what I see of the Robot and Voltron fan community they are largely fine with that. They just got what is not only the best perfectly transforming Voltron Chogokin last year from Bandai, but it is a strong contender for current best of breed for die cast robot toys. That itch has been scratched for now. They are craving the Lego experience and accept it is not the same as the Transforming Gokin toys. I think for most of them, it being able to hit a few poses will be more important than perfect transformation.
  25. Faefrost
    The movie version would not work well as a modular...but... The rather well defined comic book version however works extremely well as a modular design. I've had one roughed out in LDD for ages. Just haven't gotten around to finalizing it and getting the parts yet. As for the set, I saw the leaked pic. Yes it is the Sanctum, but no it's not a Modular. It's about the same size as the Avengers Tower or Creator buildings. So about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of a modular. But very nicely detailed. It will be a good starting place for a Modular MOC. Especially that window piece for the Seal.
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