Kai NRG

For a first ever ship that is pretty great, nice use of those long slopes for the hull. I also love the checkered floor on your vignette.

Great to see this nod to a theme I really enjoyed back in its day, you did a really clean job turning it into a display piece!

She's a beauty, very polished, great colors, looks like it'd be pure eye candy on a shelf.

Congrats to the winners! Cool to see that you guys had the flexibility to add to the prize pool given the number of entries and, of course, also cool to be one of them Thanks for the great contest that pushed me to finally alt build my speed champions!

I know we were looking at honoring prior members somehow. I can't remember on exactly what we settled on, but I do know we decided to keep it relatively small so that we start off with a fairly even playing field--something like bringing over one ship and maybe a small percentage of DBs. So there's certainly no point building loads and loads of stuff, especially because the new map/game should have some cool features that you'll want to use to inspire your MOCs! It will also be a smaller scale game in the sense that it will focus more on your sigfig's story, the adventures of their ship, and so forth, rather than building massive settlements with generic figs. I think there's still a deal of potential on the current map/current era story if you're just looking to build some cool MOCs. I love your enthusiasm by the way! As I'm sure you've figured out we're running a little behind on this project, hopefully we can push through and launch sometime this year.

Despite being on the new leadership team, I have no idea who has the old account sheets (there are probably links to them somewhere in the forum here), but for Era III, we will be moving to a new format and new map, so while you can certainly get a head start building generic things like ships and houses, your current assets will probably not be relevant. For story purposes, the worlds of Eras I and II will still certainly be around, but they'll no longer be part of game play. In the meantime, it's a great opportunity to finish up any loose storylines you had going or build in any current settlements whose theme strikes your fancy, before we move onto a new map. There are still a few "transition challenges" planned, so keep an eye out for those as we (hopefully) get closer to the new era launch!

Especially in the case of an immersive shot like this one, I can recommend taking a look at it in the camera lens frequently as you build it. That really helps you spot excessive clutter or empty sections, as well as giving you a good idea of the composition. I find it harder to take a build meant to be seen IRL and turn it into a good photograph than the other way around, so if you start off focused on what the camera sees, it often not that hard to finish off the edges as you go along. (...unless you get distracted into going WAY overboard, I did that once and this was the scene, this was me "finishing off the edges" ) Your builds always look like delightful display pieces with well balanced colors, I'm excited to see you trying to take that up a notch for online presentation!

Thank you! The asymmetry was a fun way to change the layout compared to the car and use parts differently. Thanks! I agree, this car had a great color scheme that translated well for a futuristic vehicle.

Great perspective through this window, nice job with the inset bookshelves too, and that center portal looks really neat!

Awesome heap of treasure! The golden pictures on the walls are a nice addition too.

What a fun remake of a skyline set! Pretty impressive how much you got out of a really small selection of parts!

(Small Category)

I've been wanting to turn my Speed Champions into space racers and the alt build contest seemed like a great opportunity. Turned out to be a lot of fun, good break from some of the larger projects I've been doing lately. Maybe the biggest challenge was to incorporate as many mudguard bricks as I could; the pairing between the white one and the windshield was a happy accident. I had kept the stickers off the car when I built it with the intention of turning it into a spaceship, it was fun to find the logic of the stripes and turn it into a new shape. It's considerably smaller than the car, probably uses about 70% of the parts. These were fun colors to work with and it was a nice break to have such a restricted parts selection as it kept the build small and focused. C&C always welcome, thank you for stopping by!

We're supposed to post in the forum of the original set, not the forum that fits the theme of our modification, did I get that right? Which forum is home to Speed Champions? Edit: I see my second question has been answered already, they're in town.

Good point, that is a very valid dilemma! I'm always a little surprised when building to notice how many things change depending on whether or not I intend the creation for real life display or photography.

The lighting here is spectacular, not least the delicious purple glow in the back! As usual we have a plethora of finely crafted details, I specially love what you did with that snake head--I always felt like there was something to be done with that but couldn't figure out what. The dip under the high arches is gorgeous. I somewhat wish you had finished off that corner, though a cut corner is kind of artistic personally I find the gaps in wedge plates uncouth, especially in your main shot which is otherwise almost an immersive scene. But its a very cool build, great balance of colors.

One of the biggest reasons for the revamp is to design it so that it can basically run itself after the initial automation work, so launching before every piece is ready would kind of defeat the purpose. The original game required a lot of maintenance that meant that much of its potential was unexplored because leadership was bogged down in the mechanics a lot, and we're hoping to smooth that out with Era III. I think it's safe to say that we've done so much work on it already, and there are quite a few of us who really want it to happen, that it's sure to get done sooner or later, we just have all for different reasons been intensely busy with real life lately.

Been fun seeing a second advent calendar this year, like Aurore you did a great job breaking down these scenes into daily bites. This last one is pretty cool with the Nocty interpretation of each guild!

I really like the texture you got out of those sideways log bricks, and the piled up snow is great too. Like T-86 says, you nailed the Mitgardian feel!

Beautiful tree, great job on the ornament placement. Makes for a fantastic addition to the first scene. It's been awesome seeing these, thank you for delighting us again with an advent calendar!

Nice job on the lighting! I like the rugged shape you've achieved on the rockwork too.

Really nice curves inside the arch on the wall. Great collection of gifts too, can't go wrong with a best boss mug

Finally, I've been dying to see what went on that poor lonely light grey jumper! This finishes off the scene really well. Great job with the design, it's such a unique way to present a MOC piecemeal like that and I'm super impressed by how well you did it, every bit had something interesting in it.

Great snowscape! I really like how well the white fern parts work to add some snow to these evergreens. I can't get over that one long horn tho, I keep thinking there's a fire

Really neat to see the star thing come together, great design.