Nich Artri

Hey guys! Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but when browsing the Lego aisle at the local Wal-Mart today, I spotted a slew of 2009 sets, including Creator, Bionicle, Power Miners, Indiana Jones, City, and Clone Wars (Murphy's Law would dictate that this would happen after I just spent all my Christmas cash at LS@H... - -; ). Mind you, my Wal-Mart is pretty horrible when it comes to Lego selection, so I'd like to see what the better ones in metro areas are doing. No sign of the Pirate sets yet, but I'm sure they'll be up and about soon. Cheers! Nich

Lego-wise, I got a Lego Star Wars Rebel Scout Speeder (yay!). I also got a $50 AMEX gift card (which is immediately getting spent on Lego Shop at Home ), a $25 dollar Barnes and Noble gift card, The complete Blackadder box set, a Legend of Zelda T-shirt, some lounge pants, $40 cash, and There Will be Blood on DVD. The question is....what to spend the AMEX card on... Cheers (whilst I ponder)! -Nich

1) 29. Exotrator- The Pirates of San Pedro 2) 31. Fat Tony- We pillage, we plunder we rifle and loot... 3) 32. SirNadroj- The Pillaging of Neptune's Noggin Lagoon Most of the entries I saw in this round were remarkably cruel and pillagelicious (term patent pending); so much so that this had to be the hardest for me to judge yet! I picked Exotrator for first because the entire MOC caught my eye. Scenes of cruelty abound throughout the scene, the Spanish-style tiled roofs are gorgeous, and I love how the fort design was approached; not to mention the little details like bits of wayward sand, the rock snagging that bit of driftwood, and the archway for the bell. Second goes to Fat Tony. His rated "Arrrgh!" (sorry,couldn't resist ) rendition of the Pirates of the Carribean theme ride had me chuckling at some points and had me outright shocked at the cruelty at others. Once again, there's some fantastic fortress design, as well as some top-notch flame effects. Kudos! Finally, we have SirNadroj's "The Pillaging of Neptune's Noggin Lagoon." Three things that immediately struck me about this MOC are the huge boat (colossal, one might say), the classic pirate fort colors, and of course, the namesake head; which is fantastically built. There's also a bunch of nice touches, like people flying through the air, a promiscuous pirate couple, underground caverns and what appears to be a small child being hunted (muwahaha! ). Honorary mentions go to Olog's Shark Attack, Capt. Kirk's Le Quatier Brique, Paul Cantu's The Raid on the Governor's Mansion; be it known, that if through a weird time/space mishap, the other entries didn't exist, you'd have my top marks. Congratulations to all for your hard work! AVAST! -Nich

Images included where appropriate. Theme Name: Steam Heads Characters: Good Guys- Phineas Copperling, Lady Bennet, Steambot Bad Guys- Lord Blackthorne, Henchmen Conflict: Gold! Setting: Alternate Steampunk Victorian Era Background Info: Inspired by Adventurers, Wild West, Exo Force and Rock Raiders Themes Sorry for the pic quality, they're more or less rough sketches... Cheers! Nich

Hey KDog! Great comic as always! It sucks about your computer...my little brother's Dell did that too, so he took it to the tech department guys at the local community college. Works like a charm now. The only other things I could suggest is remove the battery and put it back again, use a system backup/restore function to set your computer back to earlier settings, or (my personal favorite) smack it! If none of that works, you might have to call Dell to get replacement parts or maybe even a new computer (in a worst case scenario)... Looking forward to the next comic! Cheers! -Nich

(1) 21. Nich Artri- Fishing With Envy and Greed (2) 20. Capt. Kirk- Walk the plank, you scabby dog (3) 7. Fat Tony- Marooned This category was hard for me to judge. There's so many great entries! Eventually, I decided to go with what caught my eye and was also creatively cruel. I'm picking my entry for first because I love it more than any man should love an MOC. I can't believe it came out as well as it did! Of course, that's just my opinion... Capt. Kirk gets my second place pick because his entry is quite wonderful to look at and also because it's a whole new take on a classic pirate mode of death. Kudos! Finally, Fat Tony gets third on my ballot. His entry has to be my favorite cannibalism entry out of the entire contest, due to his intuitive tree design and his head choice. An honorable mention goes to oDDerFisken for You or your girl? It combines cruelty and Rube Goldberg which is just pure awesome! Cheers! -Nich

1. 22-Lego Joe 2. 17-pe668: Colonic Cannonball 3. 35-Nich Artri: Lust's Streetside Hair Salon There were so many fantastic entries, it was hard to pick three. Also, as an entrant, I'd like to win something, so I made a compromise and I took my top two favorites and made them 1st and 2nd places respectively, with myself in 3rd. Besides the two entries I put in my ballot, I particularly liked Lt. de Martinet's entry (24), svelte_corps' entry (38), and Captain Zuloo's entry (41). All of these entries, in my mind, were creatively cruel. Well, that's all, good luck to everyone! Cheers! -Nich

I managed to get ahold of a Shipwreck Hideout, a Kraken Attackin' Raft, and a Cannon Battle. I could've got more, but I'm on a fixed budget and need to buy Christmas Presents. I would like to get a ton of the soldier impulse packs and a few of the modular fort sets as well. Cheers! Nich

No problem, Capn'! Glad to help.

Way to go KDog! Love the idea! I actually got a hold of one of those Castle Advent calendars and immediately wondered where the Space (along with other themes) was at. I guess it's not cost effective to put out more than one type of Advent calendar a year... - -; Cheers! -Nich

I was asked by Captain Zuloo to contribute a tutorial for his Brickfilming index, so here it is; slightly over a week late... (busy week at work ) Welcome to my Audacity Basics tutorial. While Audacity is a program with a ton of options and tools, I'm going to go through the basics; that is, I'm going to cover what I do to get my Brickfilms to sound as good as possible in the shortest possible steps. Let's begin! Step 1: Install Audacity and Start It Up. You should be met with a window that looks like this shortly after startup. Step 2: Perform a Mic Check. There are many different types of microphones, ranging from the plug in jack types to $50 USB affairs. If you (like me) film with a web cam, you already have microphone, as most of these have one built in. Click the microphone monitoring button and say something. It should register as a pair of red oscillating bars. Step 3: Start Recording. If you've ever used any kind of recording device, you know how this goes; click the red circular record button to record and the yellow stop button to stop. QED! Your recording should show up in the soundwave display. If you wish to review your recording at this point, hit the play button. Step 4: Noise Removal. Now at this point, you have a working sound project, ready to be saved as a project, tweaked, or exported as a .wav, but here's a tip that will help your soundbyte sound better! If you look at your soundwave, you might notice little spikes in areas that should be silence. Click and drag over one of these areas, click on the Effects menu, and select the Noise Removal option. This window should pop up, at which point, you should click on the Get Noise Profile button. This let's Audacity know what you consider noise. The window will then close. Now, select your entire soundwave by clicking and dragging over it.. Reselect the Noise Removal tool from the Effects menu. The window should now look like this. Use the slider to set how much noise is removed and hit preview (I use the least amount, as seen in the screenshot). Hit Remove Noise, and presto! Using the noise profile you selected, Audacity has removed all background noise. Step 5: Normalize. Think you're done? Well..not just yet. Reselect your soundwave if it isn't already, go to the Effects menu again, but this time, select Normalize. When this window pops up, make sure that both boxes are checked and hit OK. This will make your entire soundwave a uniform decibel level; quite handy when you're working with multiple soundbytes in a film! Step 6: Saving and Exporting. Great! You've finished! Now, under the File menu, select Save Project. Name it, save it and voila! You have a project file that you can modify at your leisure. The next logical step would to export the project as a file that you can use with any number of film editing programs. I personally use the .wav format. The quality of the .wav can be tweaked in the Preferences found in the Edit menu. (The technical aspects for this example were an 8-bit PCM Microsoft .wav format, a 96000 Hz default sample rate, and a 24-bit default sample format. These were tweaked with in the Preferences and work best for me; though you might want to play around to find settings that work for you.) And the final result? Well hear for yourself in this short animation I made using the example in this tutorial! I hope this helped. Cheers! -Nich

Okay! Last one! Here's what I did with my large entry: doubled the baseplate size, redesigned fort, added belltower, added severed head and more blood tiles, added a parrot, changed out the admiral's hat and gave Sloth a peg leg (though you can't really tell ) I also bleached my old white bricks (those things haven't had a decent cleaning in the 10 years I've owned 'em ). The major issue with this entry for me was its general design. It has vastly improved IMO; although, due to brick restrictions, I couldn't do a lot of the stuff I wanted. Ah well...cest la vie. Thanks for the comments, critiques and suggestions! They were much appreciated and really helped me out with this entry. GYAARR! -Nich

Okay! This entry has been added to (what little there was to do). I added a crab, gave the pirate skellie a new hat and a goblet, and I added a treasure chest. No seaweed because I don't have any and no tiles because I think the studs make the ground look rocky. Okay, once again, thanks for the comments, critiques, and suggestions! They were appreciated and helped to make this entry better! Cheers! -Nich

Okay, I have finished the final version of Lust's Streetside Hair Salon. Some changes: the minifig in the window has been changed, the pictures have been taken with a better camera, I found another plume, so I was able to leave the smaller one on top of the shaved woman's head, I added another lilypad, and I added a parrot to the roof. I wasn't able to add tiles to the roof due to a lack of pieces, same for the white tiles around the pier supports... :/ Also, I didn't add any barrels or lanterns, because, when I did, it looked to crowded for my tastes. The street wasn't smoothed out either, simply because I like how it looks weathered and beaten. At first, I didn't know what you meant by this, but looking closer, I could see how they look the same. One is actually a standard scared woman head and the other is one of those new Agents heads. Thanks for all the suggestions, comments, and praise guys! It was much appreciated, and I think it helped the final product out immensely! Cheers! -Nich

Okay! Free Stuff! Sounds groovy! I'm in! Cheers! -Nich

I voted yes because I feel Brickfilming is an under-appreciated side of the Lego hobby and needs a forum here on Eurobricks. Sure, you could put it in Other Themes, but that detracts from the creations and discussions that belong there, as well as the films themselves. While there are forums out there already for Brickfilming (I should know, I belong to two! ), I believe that a separate forum here on Eurobricks could bring in more Lego fans from around the world and promote confederacy and friendship thanks to one more use for our favorite plastic brick. Thank you -Nich

Hey hey! Denver, eh! Only 300 miles away! Maybe they'll have them online...

M'kay! I've used some suggestions, I've redone some scenery, and I've retaken pictures of the finished product... much better IMO. What do you guys think? You Might want to check out my small entry, too...I've done some renovations there as well.

You might want to try getting a few Farmer's Cowls: Thy certainly have the trademark Link hat dangle-down-the-back-ability. A bit of modding and a fresh coat of paint could to wonders. Or alternatively, you could grab a few inexpensive head rags and spray paint those. Just a few suggestions mind you. Cheers! -Nich

Impressive! Morden's armies tremble with fear... I absolutely love the Metal Slug series and I gotta say, this is a pretty good representation of the Slugnoid...maybe you can eventually work up to a Tank Slug...in any case awesome! 10/10

Hey KDog! Long time reader, first time poster! I gotta say, thanks for reigniting my love of classic space minifigs! I've been scouring Bricklink the last few months picking up as many as economically possible. Nice work on the Doctor storyline! I was wondering when he was going to show up....

I really like the giant squid idea (possibly because I have one in my medium entry; wa-hey! shameless slef plug! ). Also, the tower looks absolutely amazing! Maybe you could use a red Technic ball for the pupil instead of a black one; that way, it'd up the evil squid factor and match the evil skellie pupils. Also, perhaps some white plates to represent waves breaking on the shore. Other than that, I've got nothing. I look forward to seeing this develeop, and look even further forward to seeing the finished product! YAAARR! -Nich

Not bad at all! I'd suggest maybe turning another skull or two on its side and perhaps adding a ribcage/skellie torso thing. I also agree with the white background suggestion made by pr0visorak. Other than that, good showing! Cheers! No, wait....AVAST! -Nich

Vig. 42d All My entries for the Pillage the Village Contest revolve around the Seven Deadly Sins Pirate crew. This is my large entry, and thanks to suggestions an critiquing from the community, I think it looks tons better! Thanks guys! Capn' Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, and Wrath are on their way to ransack Port Royale's Imperial Guard armory, but what's this! The gates are locked tight! "Avast! Those soldiers over there look rather helpful! Let's see if they'll assist us in getting the door open..." Knock, knock, boom, splat~ Private Wilkins Dilemma (notice the pile of shakos from previous "ammunition") Once again....splat. The Admiral is not amused.... "Cor blimey! I blew his blinkin' head off!" Fight of Pride A lot of the stuff suggested I couldn't do, due to a lack of pieces (i.e. the transparent red plates for blood). Still, a lot of the advice helped. Thanks again!

Vig. 42a All my entries to the Pillage the Village Contest revolve around The Seven Deadly Sins pirate crew. This is my medium entry; of which I am quite proud (and even more surprised that I manages to pull it off with my paltry brick collection ). Mr. Dawson, the dock manager at Port Royale, thought he could cheat The Seven Deadly Sins pirate crew out of a king's ransom in dock space rent... Envy and Greed thought he was a prat and decided to show Mr. Dawson the joys of Kraken fishing! The bait is not amused... Gone Fishing... Pirate Skellie's Treasure Trove Imperial Skellie's Crow's Nest Dramatis Personae From Left to Right- Imperial Skellie, Greed, Mr. Dawson, Envy, Pirate Skellie Hope you guys enjoy looking at it as much as I had making it!