fallentomato

Vig. 52a With the revival of the pirate theme, I have just had pirates on my mind. So it's not too surprising that I made a couple pirate-themed MOCs. I thought that non-pirate minifigs might want to celebrate the return of their long-lost friends. And what better way than to dress up like the three classic pirate animals? I'm proudest of the shark costume. The parrot costume was originally made for one of my brickfilms (not about pirates at all), but I think it works as a costume. The monkey I'm not entirely happy with, but brown it such a hard color to work in. I've thought about maybe doing another shark costume that is more in the big bobble head style of the other two. Hope you like them.

This weekend I started building this Sun monster. I'm waiting on a bricklink order of 16 of those big bionicle flame pieces, but in the meantime I thought I'd try to get some feedback on the rest. So imagine it with twice as many flames plus all of them red instead of black. I'm really proud of the face. The orange pieces are all from the smallest power miner's set. These arms made possible thanks to my large Aquazone collection. The legs are very problematic - not sturdy at all. I'm going to replace them with click hinges and hope that fixes it, but should i do it with red or orange? I'm torn. And here's a back view. I've already got the pegs in place for the other flames. I'm happy with how it's going so far, but I feel like I've still got a while to go before it's finished. Let me know what you think! EDIT 1/20/08: I got my bricklink order of flames in and redesigned the legs as well.

36. Lord King of Everything - Die for the King! 31. Fat Tony - We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.... 29. Exotrator - The Pirates of San Pedro

20. Capt. Kirk - Walk the plank, you scabby dog 14. Erdbeereis1 - Murder In The Market! 19. RoVer - Pirate Invasion - Caribbean Port

42. Oky Wan Kenobi - Tower Raid 28. 74louloute - When I grow up, I wanna be a pirate... 37. Chrispockster - Swashbucklin'

While those elements certainly display a greater amount of creativity from the TLG design teams, they also require less imaginative effort on the part of the child. I don't think this is always bad thing, for instance I'm glad that we aren't still in the days of brick built horses, but the thing about brick built horses is that it is then very easy for the child to turn it into a unicorn or a zebra or a camel where as all the can do with the current one piece horses is add on wings/flamethrowers/etc. fo the place where you attach the minifig. There's still a possibility for imagination there, but it within a much more restricted realm. No matter what you do the horse will still be a horse. At a certain point of specialization you verge into Playmobil territory. Obviously LEGO will always be a hugely powerful toy/medium for creative and imaginative expression, and for us AFOLs who have spent years building, the addition of new pieces only opens up more possibilities. My concern is not even with this so much as the fact that bulk bricks and "freestyle" buckets and idea books have become a marginalized part of the LEGO line-up instead of it's core. You have to search to find them in my local LEGO store. The emphasis is on the system sets, where kids are provided with an existing story and pieces that have very clear intended uses (of course the kids can always choose to ignore the intended story and uses, but that's not my point) and unlike the past, most sets these days don't come with pictures of alternate models. My main point is TLG has stopped pushing creativity in the way it used to, it is no longer a visible part of every product. And that, I think, is a shame. I agree, LEGO is still doing a great job, especially in comparison with other toys. And yes I do hope that children sympathize with the rock monsters, but even if they do, there's still the issue that the set they have is mostly made up of the drill. It's not like the Batman and Agents lines where the good and bad factions each have equivalent vehicles in most sets. And i do agree that children will do whatever they want and will create conflict even in the "minifig paradise" - I certainly did But again, I'm more concerned with how LEGO is presenting it's play themes and storylines. I just can't imagine showing the picture of 8958 to OKC. As for children needing much more stimulation these days I disagree, I mean children just have more stimulating options and if they are raised exclusively by those means, obviously they are going to demand much more from the toys/entertainment. But that's a question of how parents are raising kids and that's a bit outside the scope of this topic... Thanks for your reply!

So I've started going to these biweekly potluck talks that some alumni from my college started last year. Every other Monday a bunch of people get together and eat food and then there are three presenters who talk about anything from neuroscience to politics. I volunteered to give one about LEGO (since that's the only topic I know squat about ) at next Monday's meeting and now I am scrambling to get a power point together. The (admittedly pretentious) title of my talk is "The changing face of LEGO: the death of imagination and the rise of otherized imperialism." The main point I want to get across to my fellow twenty-somethings is that LEGO is not quite the toy they remember from their childhood. The two specific trajectories I want to trace for them are the two that I find most troubling: 1) The shift away from products aimed at fostering creativity and imagination to more straightforward model building 2) The dramatic change in the tone of the system storylines from simple rivalries to the violent imperialism/colonialism epitomized here Here's a basic outline of what I plan to talk about. My apologies if this is rough and hard to follow. I'm putting it together as I go. I will probably begin with a quick overview of some basic LEGO facts for the uninitiated: lego = leg + godt = play well the reason there were no green bricks for so long was because OKC didn't want LEGO to be used to build military things (I think, I don't remember where I read this now) modern brick design patented in 1958 first modern minifigs as we know it in 1978 For the first topic I was planning to illustrate the trend in a few different ways 1) The changing "brand statements" which go from "The toy that builds imaginations/We build great imaginations" to "Just imagine" to "Play On" 2) The removal of alternate model pictures 3) The decreasing percentage of merchandise on a yearly basis that is in the basic/creator/bulk category (this will involve making graphs out of brickset data and may end up too laborious a task to finish by next week) 4) Perhaps the increased in licensed themes? Basically I will start by presenting my (very worn) copy of the Bill and Mary idea book and end with a run-down of the current product line For the second topic I will start in 1978 and show a lot of pictures of box fronts to illustrate what I see as three distinct phases 1978-1988 - Minifig paradise - With the exception of a few castle joust sets and siege towers there is no depiction of direct conflict of any kind - There is only one face for all minifigs - there are no clear good guys or bad guys. 1989~1998 - The eternal struggle - 1989 is the introduction of pirates - introduction of non-smiley faces - also the introduction of factions ( pirates versus imperial guards, space police vs blacktron) - this continues through out the next decade and spreads to nearly all the themes - there are two main categories the conflicts fall into: law vs outlaw & good and evil sides fight over resources ~1998-2008 - otherization and imperialism begin -1998 Hydronauts vs. stingrays. Here we have a conflict where the "evil" side has been dehumanized, but at the same time legitimized. If the stingrays are part fish, or otherwise native to the sea, doesn't that make the hydronauts invaders, who are taking the stingray's natural resources. Of course this is conjecture, but not completely unfounded. -1999 Rock Raiders. The inclusion of the rock monster is problematic. Clearly the rock monsters are native to the caves and are probably only protecting their homeland from being damaged. Another point I will make is that unlike the factions of the past the rock monsters are underrepresented in the theme - there is no rock monster cave. They exist only as an obstacle between the Rock Raiders and the precious resources - General trend in this time period to dehumanize the evil faction - Examples: skeletons/trolls in castle, the cyborgs in agents line, robots in exo force - increasing tendency to pit "man vs. beast" Examples: Dino Attack, Vikings, Aqua Raiders - 2007/8 - Mars mission - Another example of a imperial/colonial conflict - humans are fighting martians for energy crystals on mars. The human also have elaborate capsules on most of their vehicles for containing martians and it looks like they are using them for power as well. They are at the very least subjecting them to tests and shooting them through tubes for no good reason 2009 - ??? - Miners and Monsters - The sentient monsters are part rock and part crystal - The power miners are drilling through rock to take crystals - The crystals are likely either a food source for the monsters or something akin to baby monsters - In some cases the monsters are being enslaved and made to collect these crystals for the miners - In many cases the miners are throwing dynamite at the monsters I'll probably wrap up by making a vague attempt to tie this back to the real world by saying something like "what is this teaching our children? in a time where violent conflicts over natural resources are very real, do we really want to give the impression that might makes right?" Wow. That was a long post. Thank you if you have read through it all. I'd love to get feed back on what you think about this, what I am leaving out, what I have gotten blatantly wrong etc. Most of this I pieced together from memory and a couple hours of trawling Brickset. )And just to ward off potential flame wars, no I don't think LEGO is spiraling downward, in fact I think if anything it is only getting better , these are just a couple things that have been troubling me. )

Yes, as he pointed out, there was nothing in the rules specifying it had to be a brand new film and the entry form even had a place for prizes won by the film. He entered a couple of old ones I think.

I voted Yes, but now that I think about it, I'm not sure if it actually is a good idea. It would be nice because it would eliminate the uncertainty I have every time I go to post an animation here. I never feel as though I'm posting it to the right forum. Especially since some of my movies are easily put into a theme, so I end up going to "Other" a lot. Consequently I haven't felt like I am really part of the one the theme communities since I'm always jumping around. This forum would be a place to belong. It also might encourage more people to post brickfilms here as it would give them a specific place to do so. But on the other hand, I already have Bricks in Motion (and Brickfilms to a lesser extent) for that purpose. The reason I joined Eurobricks was not to be part of yet another brickfilming community. I joined it specifically because it was a more general Lego community. I like the fact that it's divided by theme and thus people who might not otherwise have seen my film will, and also I'll see MOCs I wouldn't have seen if I'd stayed at BiM. If there is a specific brickfilming forum created here, it's likely that it will mostly be frequented just by people making brickfilms and be cut off from the rest of Eurobricks. Also I get the impression that the brickfilming segment of Eurobricks is a relatively small fraction, so it might not be worth it. I don't know, the more I think about it the more I disagree with myself.

I'm not sure what forum this should fall under, but it looked like most of the brickfilm posts were here. The winners in the Nicktoons Animation Festival were announced yesterday. And while the official website only has the grand prize winner on it, most of the winners can be found on youTube: by Garrett Barati by Philip Heinrich (Smaegol) by yours truly by David PaganoI could only find one of the 17 and under category: The Most Pointless Adventure Ever by Rick Theroux All the movies are really short (~2 min) and good. I can't wait to see the film Garrett produces with the $25,000 grand prize.

I was initially totally against this line, but now I'm planning to buy multiples! Of course mostly I'll just be buying them for the crystal monsters (and because I could always use more orange and lime.) 8960 looks really awesome though and may actually stay together for a while. I can't wait to amass an army of those crystal monsters and build them a cavern where they take their revenge on the evil miners. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! I also like the face on the guy in the mecha - looks like he's wearing a monocle.

This creation doesn't really fall into any neat category, it's got elements of castle and space/underwater, but really it's just silly. It was first conceived as a simple alternate build for 7770 and 7092, but then I was having fun playing around with the characters and thought it would be fun to animate a short with them (since that's the form my creations usually take anyway.) So I did, . I hope you enjoy it.

I was also going to suggest to make this a contest. There could be two prizes, am Agents set and a fresh-baked pie. I'd offer to run it myself, but 1) I'd want to enter and 2) I'm rubbish at baking pies. The only pie I can make is ice cream pie and that wouldn't ship well. But yeah, if I hadn't just finished packing up my collection last night (I'm moving in 2 days) I'd be working on Brotherhood of the Pie MOCs right now.

Nooo! I was really hoping purple was on it's way up. The secondary colors have slowly been growing in availability. I remember the days when green was solely relegated to trees and baseplates. And then the StarWars line introduced orange and now it's pretty well represented. I thought purple was going to join them as relatively available colors. Alas.

There were two sets at the very bottom of the list that are quite possibly from this theme. To quote myself: "Mini saw blade/Stone Chopper Mini walker/Mine Mech I’m curious as to what theme these sets are from. Almost sounds like rock raiders and while Lego seems to be bringing back some old themes next year, I highly doubt rock raiders is one of them?" Guess I was wrong. These two set names definitely sounds like a cross between Rock Raiders and Exo-Force. Yes, hopefully Lego will learn from the mistakes of Rock Raiders (especially that color scheme! I mean I was happy to have turquoise, but those sets were ugly). I'm looking forward to the half crystal monsters - hopefully this will mean a lot of color trans-colored parts. Are you dismissing Aquazone as a legitimate theme? Them's fighting words! I think your point is valid for some of the older attempts at one-off themes, they were mostly flops. However, Exo-Force, AquaRaiders and Agents are examples of one-off themes Lego has done in the past couple years that have all been pretty well-designed and successful. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. At least until photos come out. Rock Raiders was a good concept if nothing else.

Wonderful You're probably right about the parrot...

When I was at Brickworld this year I talked with the creative director for the playthemes and he told me that the reason why they are also so vehicle heavy (even castle was mostly vehicles this year) is because vehicles are what the retail stores want, because they sell the best. That's why the few great building based sets (Volcano Base and Dwarves Mine) have been done as store exclusives. Blame it on the 8 year old boys who are the main demographic for these themes. Kids these days just don't appreciate architecture. That being said, I would love to see a slew of buildings in this theme. The Agents definitely need a base and Dr. Inferno (or a brand new villain if we're so lucky) could really use an evil laboratory. We could also possibly have one of the buildings where all these priceless items are being stolen from. Or perhaps in the world of Agents, practically everything is a vehicle, even the banks. But yeah, I think you're probably right with your guess of 4 vehicle based ones and maybe a base for the agents. If they are going to just do a bunch more vehicles, I'm rooting for a cool train heist set. Yes. That would be awesome.

I'm a producer for a small small video production office at The University of Chicago. Because it's a small office I end up doing a lot of things other than producing, filming, editing, running around campus etc. I am looking for ways to transition into a career making Lego animations (or doing anything with Lego really, I'm not picky ) Until that happens though, I'm pretty happy with in academic video world. I would also like to hear more about this. A Lego film student? I'm intrigued.

My smileys feel left out. I'm not sure why they weren't loading on your computer before. It's possible that BrickFilms was down yesterday, it does that sometimes. But here are their locations, if that helps. http://nnn.brickfilms.com/fallentomato1.gif http://nnn.brickfilms.com/fallentomato3.gif And you better add them soon, otherwise

Call me old fashioned but I'd just want two of these. If I'm going to be stranded with limited Lego, I don't want a bunch of specialized pieces, I want raw materials to unleash my creativity. Besides if I had minifigs with me, I'd probably go crazy and start talking to them.

Okay, I give up. How do discnnect teh head from the ball joint that anchors it to the body? I tried for a while and even used plier, but I still couldn't get it to come apart. What am I doing wrong?

Ah-ha! I did not realize that Fabuland body parts were so interchangeable with system ones. I guess I shouldn't be, this is Lego we're talking about after all. I will have to do some experimentation when I get home tonight. :skull: Very nice loot pile also.

Ahh yes, I can see that now, his are indeed wide with shock. You'll have to excuse me, I don't have a lot of experience noticing those fine distinctions in Fabuland characters. A flaw on my part to be sure. For instance, I only just noticed that you've replaced the normal Fabuland arms with regular minifig arms, thereby giving them all wrists. Are the arms sockets compatible? I have so few Fabuland figures that I don't want to risk breaking them by trying to dismember them. Kinky!

Personally, I'd say it was a double entendre I think the most impressive thing is that you found a good use for those 2x2x10 black pole tower things. I never know what to do with those pieces, but they work perfect as a scaffolding for the lights. Same goes for those pieces on the top. They work well both as stage elements and in keeping with the Fabuland aesthetic because they are so gigantic. I am also a fan of the electrocuted roadie, he looks so calm and peaceful, like a self-immolating monk. You'd think someone in his situation might look a little more shocked. Now that's a pun. ::Dodges tomatoes::

Well Agents is fig vs. fig. True, the bad guy are all cyborgs of one form or another, but they're still figs. And technically the current castle sets are mostly fig vs fig, just not human vs human.