Kingboy

Apparently there's been a weird schism forming due to issues revolving around the sale earlier this year of the Brickfilms site, and parts of that community have migrated over to Bricks In Motion and the forums over there. A lot of brickfilming institutional knowledge can be found over there as well. This post isn't an endorsement of either site over the other. Some folks only go to one or the other for whatever personal reasons, some go to both. General Stop-Motion animation sites (non-LEGO specific) are also helpfull. Animate Clay is a pretty decent one to start at. Any information you can find on general movie making will help as well—scripting, lighting, audio work (vocal, music and foley) and video editing, you might need it all at some point.

Let me throw out the first "Bah!" to purism then for this discussion. I'm not to keen on those animals myself, but I'd love to get hold of some of those bottles(especially after seeing ), and my Dwarves would like some appropriate drinking vessels as well.The option of having a decent cellphone would be nice as well, as well as a handful of other various tools. Really, if it fits to scale visually, I don't see this as any different than using something from Brickforge, Brickarms or any other customized piece vendor (still want to see about getting some of arealight's fantastic hairpieces one of these days). If there was a Playmobil equivalent to Bricklink out there, I'd be ordering up some bottles and such for my minfigs to get their drink on.

I don't know, but it's probably for the best that the schoolgirls are stickers, not real minifigs, lest they end up in some betentacled Black Fantasy creation...

My French isn't good enough to be able to tell you which link it is, but there's almost always an "Ask the Seller a question" link on eBay auction pages. You could use that to email them and ask where they got it... I take that back. I'm willing to bet it's the "Poser une question au vendeur" link...

Amazing New Medical Breakthrough! Mankind's Dreams of Immortality Made Real? Late this evening, noted scientist and inventor Dr. Hiram Zephram, long known to be in ill health, announced a surprise demonstration of his latest and most important invention. Zephram's months of seclusion, coupled with his reputation for eccentrism and showmanship brought a veritable horde of reporters and socialites to his wharfside laboratory for the unveiling. They would not leave disappointed. Greeted by the sight of floor to ceiling red velvet drapes secluding one end of the laboratory, illuminated by a single spotlight, the murmuring crowd wondered to each other what mysteries and marvels they were about to witness. From behind the curtains came Zephram's voice, broadcast to the crowd as if by some unseen public address system. "Friends, colleagues, members of the press, tonight you are to see the beginnings of a new life not only for one man, but for all of mankind itself! Illness and the inexorable ravages of time have finally met their end at my very hands. Some of you may have thought me long dead these many months—nay! I have been but perfecting my final legacy!" A mechanical contraption, shaped like a man and standing head and shoulders above the tallest gentleman in attendance strode forth from behind the curtains, the tinny voice of Dr. Zephram blaring forth from grill in the device's torso anouncing, "I give unto you—LAZARUS!" L.A.Z.A.R.U.S. or the Longevity Augmenting Zephram Apparatus and Resuscitative Utility Suit, promises to be be a miraculous panacea for many ills that plague modern man according to its creator. But is society ready for such a radical change? Dr. Zephram defies death with his astounding L.A.Z.A.R.U.S. technology! Trusty lab ape and test subject Solomon inhabits the succesful simian prototype model. Creator and Creation appear together for the historic unveiling of this unrivaled new advancement. (As usual, images are clicky to see larger photo)

Along the lines of Technic stuff, will some of the newer Technic pieces become available, even if only at Shop @ Home? The PF Motor Set is a great starter set, but the PF M-Motor and the PF Battery Box are available seperately already. The new PF Lights however are not. Availability of these parts, as well as other items like the new Linear Actuators (and perhaps the Technic bits/sensors from the WeDo set) as seperately available parts, even as S@H service packs would be fantastic. I have plenty of ideas that could make use of mulitple lighting pieces, but I really don't need a battery box and motor to go with each.

The Beach House could be a nice choice. Rent has to be cheaper than the Green Crocer/Market Street apartments, and since I have two copies of the set I can live next door to a decent coffee shop. But honestly, I'd rather live here: It's a little small, so I'd have to boot the two previous tenants over to join their compatriots over at the River Fortress (recently reconstructed after many years in storage), but the Forestman's Hideout is still one of my favorite sets, and it's the only set that stayed assembled through my rather lengthy 'Dark Ages' period. Plus, I get to spend the time living out boyhood fantasies of living in a treehouse!

I thought about that originally, but between my current Exo-Force inspired project with 5 mecha using that hand style, and another side project with the same sort of thing, I wanted to try something a little different. I also decided that I wanted to keep it more inline with modern technology (as Aqua Raiders really isn't that far out there) and make it look more like something you'd see on an industrial robot. They move to the same degree that they do in the Mars Mission version, i.e they are attached to the body by small turntables. You can kinda see the difference in stance between the top photo and the bottom one. The suit's "walk" is not so much a walk as it is a shuffle. Thanks for all the feedback, I'm glad folks like they way it turned out.

I know Aquaraiders items are normally posted to the Trains & Town forum, but I figured given the actual nature of this homage creation it would be better to post it here in Space & Mecha. After reading some of the reviews for the newer Mars Mission stuff here on EB (and honestly rather drooling over the new Ultra-Drill Walker) I've been giving MM a closer look than I had before. I epecially like the hardsuit/exosuit/whatever you want to call it from the ETX Alien Infiltartor set, but wasn't sure if I really wanted to plop down $30 when that's the only part of the set I wanted. Instead I simply took a look at the build instructions for #7646 courtsey of LEGO customer service and built my own variant of it suited to fit in with the rest of my Aquaraiders kit. While officially designated the High Pressure Diving Suit by the manufacturer, the lads at my local Aquabase have a tendency to come up with nicknames for all of the vehicles in use (it doesn't help that I really like the movie The Abyss either ), and this is no exception. Instead of calling it the HPDS, the sub-jockeys and divers around these parts tend to refer to it as The Zombie, due to the way in which the utility arms hang loosely in front of the suit when the tool actuators are undeployed. Aquaraiders High Pressure Diving Suit - Front View Aquaraiders High Pressure Diving Suit - Rear Aquaraiders High Pressure Diving Suit - With cutting tool and welder deployed All of the photos are linked to larger versions of the images, fell free to click on them if you'd like a closer look.

I thought that, for the US at least, the impulse sets were going to be a staged sort of thing, meaning that some come out for spring, some for summer, etc. I could have swore I saw that somewhere here on Eurobricks, but I can't seem to find it right now. The only impulse sets I've seen locally have been the Kinght, Fireman, Poilceman and the Mars Mission mini-robot sets. Of couse, even finding those was nigh imposible for a while as the only place to have them locally was Target, and they were crammed in a ghetto over with all the cheapo toys intended for stuffing Easter baskets with (correspondingly, I haven't seen them since around Easter time). It would be handier if they put them, oh I dont know—with the rest of the LEGO products perhaps? Or at least at the registers where most folks might happen across them more often. You'd think LEGO would want them to be a bit more visible to enghance sales, as most of the impulse sets are pretty decent, especially for the price (from what I've seen so far). Ah well, minor rant over. I'm hoping my memory is serving me correctly and it's just the fact that the Good Wizard is intended as a Sumer/Fall release in the States rather than anything else.

WARNING! This reply may contain several minor movie spoilers. If you haven't yet seen the movie and want it to be a complete surprise, do not read. I was originally skepitcal about the driver figure—I like the head, but I was trying to figure out why they put in a female minifig with no hairpiece. After having seen the movie, I now understand why; Cruncher's driver is a fairly manly looking woman, and most of the LEGO hairpeices would make the minifig look too girly for the character. :) Now that I know why Taejo's shirt is ripped up I don't mind the bits of fleshie color that are printed on it, but I do wish they would make some of the new torsos a little more head-colour agnostic...there's no real reason why Cruncher and his driver couldn't have had ties that came all the way up to their necks instead of having those little wedges of flesh showing through loose collars. Yeah, they are low-level mafioso type scum, but they aren't complete slobs. They are indeed very nice, it's the main reason I started looking at the Speed Racer sets in the first place. I think the error they made was in the smaller set though. In the movie, the only time we see Cruncher's semi is when he's being chased by Racer X. Racer X and Taejo do end up on the same team for a cross country rally race (along with Speed of course), so I guess that's where they were going by putting those two together in the smaller set, but it would have been much more interesting for them to have made up a set with Taejo and one of the cars from the very goofy, comic book-gimmicky teams they are racing against. Especially since one of the teams (that is chasing Taejo specifically) is a bunch of Army-wannabee loonies—I'm sure more people would have loved some sort of dark/sand green racer with one of the IJ Soviets at the wheel than another Racer X. To summarize: Two Racer X's is bad, but it is the smaller set that should have been changed (imho). As much as I normally don't like the stupid techic launcher thing, and would rather not see it in a set ever again (although one of these days I will make a giant multi-launcer rig out of them just for fun), at least there is a reason for it to be in this set, as Cruncher's semi has a missile launcher in the front end of it in the movie. I think you're supposed to lift the panel that hides the missile before launching it, similar to the way that panels slide out of the way on the semi cab to allow for firing in the movie. I'm gonna chock this up to the standard LEGO philosophy of "playset" rather than "model" design for a lot of things. The semi rig and Raver X's car are the models, the trailer is the playset. Seeing as how the trailer is Cruncher's mobile office (rather finely appointed with lots of paintings and his pirahna "babies" in their tank behind his desk), and the intent seems more or less to have a playest bit in order for kids to re-enact the scene from the movie, I'm not going to give them too much grief over this. They tried to capture the basic bits of the movie set (which we see mostly from the inside during the movie) and translate it into a playset type environment. That being said, I do wish the back walls were more solid, as I see no reason for there to be gaps in the back wall when the front wall (or the "fourth wall" as the case may be here) is already conspicously absent. Could have been a little better, but it's such a minor bit of this scene in the movie that I can see why they didn't spend too much time and effort on it. It would have been nice to have more paintings though, had the back wall been more complete (and I like your idea of how to use them :) ). Definately a feature which is not showcased nearly well enough on the box art. Since it is one of the major features of this set in the movie, it's nice to see it translate rather well into brick. That may be a bit harsh (but not much) given what I've said further up this post, but it probably only deserves a 3 at best, so I'm not realy going to quibble the point. :) I still think that Racer X should be exclusive to this set and a different car should be in the smaller set with Taejo, which would have improved the cachet for this set overall. True...this should have ideally been about a $30 set (especially given the general awesomeness of the IJ Race for the Stolen Treasure set), unless they made the trailer a bit more detailed (better back wall, perhaps some drop down gun ports like in the movie) or at put least one (or more) of Cruncher's goons in the set, then maybe I could agree more with the msrp. On that note: if I remember correctly from my visit to my local TRU yesterday in search of the new IJ sets (since local Targets seem determined not to get them in stock yet), they had this set on sale for around $35 along with an offer for a coupon good for $7.50 towards the purchase of a ticket to the movie with any Speed Racer toy purchase over $25. I may be wrong on the sale price, but I know the ticket offer was there. So, if you haven't seen the movie yet, and are interested in this set, TRU may be the place to go right now to get both at a slightly cheaper price. So you did enjoy the playest aspect of the trailer, even though you didn't care for the design...looks like they didn't do too badly then on what they wanted out of that bit. :) I was actually thinking about going and getting this set now that I've seen the movie and I understand what the heck is going on here more. Your review has definately added an additional impetus to that notion. My pocketbook (does not) thank you!

I voted for the Hearn minifig, by which of course I mean Len Cariou...

No, I've been lurking around for a while now, that was just as good a reason as any to finally register.

Some people have obliquely mentioned this in their responses to the set/review, but to specifically answer your question, it's supposed to be a jerrycan, a.k.a. a gasoline (petrol) container...