fallentomato

Exactly what I was going to say. I'm curious about the Cannon Battle, are these going to be the spring loaded projectiles that seem to be everywhere, or are they going to be a new piece entirely? Obviously Lego is never bringing back the original firing cannons, but I hope at least they make a new cannon, rather than trying to use those spring loaded cannons, they just don't fit in with pirates. I wonder if the soldier's will get a ship? There's a possibility that Kraken Attackin' may have a Kraken a Pirate Ship and a soldier ship. I know it's unusual for Lego to have three factions in one set, but that's basically what's happening in Troll warship. There's also a possibility that they might have a ship in the shipwreck hide-out set. It's common these days fro most sets to include members of both factions, so I would expect that there may be ships in sets than it first appears based on these names. I'm almost positive Brickbeard's Bounty is a ship. I doubt it would be another base, since there are already loot island and shipwreck hideout. Also the action themes tend to vehicles more than bases these days. Of course there's always the possibility that this is all made up , but it certainly feels true.

I'm glad people liked my smileys. I can't wait to see them start popping up in threads all over EB. I think the cannon could be deadly in the wrong hands, hopefully it won't be used for forum warfare. And King Kahuna is just plain awesome.

I only tolerate the pale-fleshies because of the occasional dark-fleshies. I understand the rational behind the pale-fleshies, but I was quite happy with the way Cloud City dealt with the issue of race in the Lego world. I don't think Lego should be aiming for absolute realism, but I do think that the inclusion of dark-skin tones was very important, because while there a great deal of ethnicities that can portrayed pretty well with yellow, there is definitely a limit. One of the problems I have with fleshies is that they are a color that doesn't appear anywhere else in the Lego world, it makes them stand out from the other bricks in my opinion. That being said, I do think that all the colors of minifig can co-exist together, I like to think that the pale ones come from colder climates. Yellow will always be the predominant skin-tone in my Lego world (I'd use more dark-fleshies if they were easier to come by!), you can't beat the classic

These are fantastic! That ice dragon is gorgeous. I love the way you used minifig arms to define the eyes. And the color scheme is perfect, just enough trans-blue. The stone golem is also quite good, the techniques you used for the joints are great and I intend to steal them.

Really phenomenal instruments! As a former bandie I really appreciated their authenticity. Some great piece usage in there, particularly the flex tubing on the trombones, the hands as mouthpieces, the cheese slope on the saxophones. Really great!

Okay here's my first entry: 1) Monkey! I'm sort of surprised there wasn't already a monkey, every pirate needs a monkey. For when you are feeling mischievous (or helpful, depending on the monkey I guess). 2) Squawk! Are you noticing a pattern with my entries? 3) I think of this as a happy shark. The pirate animal smiley trilogy is now complete! I guess the crocodile is also a pirate animal, but I think I've spent enough of my morning on this already.

Poe is well known for his macabre stories, but "The Masque of The Red Death" always stood out in my mind because of it's gruesome imagery. When I decided I was going to Brickworld this year, it was too late to get together any large MOC, but I wanted to bring something so I made a room for the mansion project. "The Masque of The Red Death" takes place in seven very colorful rooms, but the only important room is the seventh one. "The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet -- a deep blood color." Since the room is all black, I didn't see much point in trying to put in details like heavy folds of fabric - no one would be able to see them anyway. I did however make a couple chairs and the grandfather clock which is mentioned in the story. "The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat... But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror." The back wall had to be tan so it would match the rest of the mansion. I only had a few tan piece on hand (mostly the ones from The Lost Tomb) but I think they worked out pretty well. And here's some pictures of the whole Mansion form Brickworld. It's a simple little MOC, but I hope you like it. Bigger pictures on flickr. +Dave

So I don't know how many of you have heard about this, but this week something amazing is taking place. Joss Whedon, the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly/Serenity got bored during the writer's strike and created a musical about a wanna-be super-villain that is premiering on the internet for free this week. After this Sunday you will have to pay to see it, but for right now it's free and hilarious. Only the first act is up right now, but the second one goes up tomorrow and the third one one Saturday. It is absolutely hilarious. I've already watched Act I 3 times, (but then again I have a soft spot for super-villains, especially struggling ones). The songs are also catchy, I can't wait for the rest to go up. :edit: The second act just went up!

Yes, sorry. In my hurry to respond I didn't properly introduce my internet-self. Hello, I'm Dave. We met at Brickworld. As I said I've been meaning to send you my thoughts on all of this season are the other cool things on your site, but I've been distracted. I've also been meaning to give you a link to which involves a couple gruesome Fabuland murders. (Although my piece use is nowhere near as inventive as yours). Yes, there were some good visual humor moments. Others have already commented on the Governor's head hanging around the police office, which is nice and morbidly funny. And of course there's the old standbys of the suddenly appearing lambs and Gavin correcting people who call him a monkey which still get a chuckle out of me. Don't you hate it when a character does that?

As soon as I saw this was up I clicked through it at lightning speed. I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the pictures or even who was delivering the lines: I craved the raw information so much. This, I think, is a testament to your superb suspense writing and has nothing at all to so with my inclination to binge. I love the bit about the mafia declaring a war on "those gays." Although if anything happens to Gregor (or Gavin for that matter) I will be heartbroken as they are my very favorite couple. Besides, haven't you killed Gavin enouhg in your set reviews? Also, while I'm talking about Gavin, I like how over the course of the season he has grown braver. Even though he did hide behind something initially, when the time came, he stepped forth and was (somewhat bizarrely) the voice of reason. Wonderfully done. The most startling revelation for me was actually that You sure showed me! I'm actually glad that it ended up being The other scene that I thought was particularly good was the Hunter/Piper reconciliation. It felt surprisingly genuine considering how Hunter is possibly the least genuine character. The only negative thing I have to say about this episode is that it didn't have much of the classic FH humor which I know and love. ( Although I did love "Well, he’ll be dead again soon.") But obviously this was because you had a pile of exposition to deliver. So I'll forgive you this time. I also have a document full of notes on the rest of the season which I read in a whirlwind week after Brickworld and have been meaning to turn into coherent sentences and which I will deliver to you in due time. Keep up the great work!

I imagine that he sees the snake swimming by and grabs it to inspect it. "I've never seen a snake this color before! I wonder if it's dangerous... I reckon it's pretty harmless by itself, but you get a dozen of these together, they could probably tear apart a whale. Oy! Marv, come look at this! Have you ever seen a red snake before? Marv? I said--" and that's when he turns around. I take your point, but I guess I was operating under the old Aquazone assumption that the seafloor is blue.

I think this is the right forum to post underwater stuff in? Underwater doesn't seem to be a very popular MOC theme , but it's one of my favorite. I'm a big fan of the Aqua Raiders line, and I think that 7770 is a fantastic small set for a number of reasons. However, I've always felt that it does a very poor job of conveying just how scary sea snakes are. So I made a little vignette to set the record straight. You can see larger versions on flickr.

Thought I'd share this little bit of information. When I was at Brickworld this year, I went out to a bar with a bunch of Lego employees and some other fans. After the conversation (and drinking) had been going on for a little while I casually brought up the question of whether we'd see a new pirates line any time soon. One of the employees got a very telling look on his face and it was pretty clear that he had an answer but obviously couldn't say anything. This combined with the new shark, the return of the cutlass and the monkey, and those pirate figs in AZ make me 90% sure Pirates will return next year. When you think about it, pirates used to be one of the four pillars of System. The past few years have really seen Lego returning to its roots in a number of ways. It's only natural that this would involve the return of pirates.

So in the English class that spawned my interest in stop-animation there was this closet full of costumes, one of which was a panda suit. For a different project I wore the panda suit and strutted around the room and then people started calling me Pandavid and thus it was only natural to make a panda-suit minifig.

Short Version: I've been playing with Lego as long as I can remember. About 5-6 years ago I started focusing on building sets and characters for stop animated movies. You can see all those movies on my youtube page. I graduated from college just over a year ago and got a full time job and thus a disposable income which I mostly spend on Lego. It's been awesome. I used to be an active participant in the AFOl community but then I had a dark age, but after meeting Hinckley and all the other awesome AFOLs at Brickworld this year I have returned. Long Version: I am the youngest (by far) of three children and thus I reaped the benefits of my brother and sister's lego collection which included many classic space, castle and town sets. The first three lego sets I remember owning are: Basic Set 3+ (1613), Basic Building Set, 7+ (725) and Forbidden Island (6270). For many years we three all collected lego together and every Christmas we'd set up a gigantic display with all of our sets. My sister even went so far as to suspend her space ships from the ceiling with fishing line. Eventually they both grew out of it and I was left with an incredible collection at my disposal. From my late childhood through my early teens I played Lego with my best friend. He brought most of his collection over to the Lego room in my basement and there we built empires and spaceships galore. There were ongoing epic struggles that we would act out continuing each time wherever we left off the last. The story would necessitate a gigantic space battle every so often in which most of the space ships were destroyed, then there would be a month of rebuilding and then another massive battle and so on. Eventually he too gave up on lego and my collection was increased yet again. Some time during that period I also started lurking (and occasionally posting) on the rec.toys.lego newsgroup. You know, back in the dawn of the internet before forums were so ubiquitous and people actually used news groups. Anyway, after a few years most of the people there migrated to the Lugnet forums, but they seemed too daunting at the time. Also I was a teenager and had more important things to do, like feel awkward! For a while my collection sat in the basement more or less collecting dust. Then a school project got me to make my first stop animated lego movie and now that I had a creative goal to justify playing with Lego I dove back into it and am very glad I did. Throughout college I was separated from the majority of my collection and only had access to a small amount of bricks that I used for making brick films. (I still haven't liberated all of that lego from my paren'ts basement, but I'm working on it.) Naturally, I am a member of Brickfilms.com, but I rarely post and don't even lurk that much. Anyway it wasn't until I attended Brickworld this year as a registered attendee and spent four days talking with all the other AFOLs that I realized how much I had been missing out on by not being an active member of the community. So I've started a flickr account and am going to start photographing my MOCs and sharing them (something I've never done before). And I've joined up here to talk about all things Lego. And that's my Lego life story.

Okay so I have a few suggestions: there are my dream themes and then there are my dream-themes. I'll start with the ones that actually came to me in dreams. Dream-Themes 1) Storybook Theme So in my dream I was in a toy store and found these new Lego sets that were based on a combination of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan." They had really cool minifigs . Anyway, I've been thinking about it and I think a really cool theme that could have a long lifespan would be a theme based on classic children's stories. They could do a different story every year. Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan might go something like this. A) Alice in Wonderland Down the Rabbit Hole - $30 - Includes Alice, the White Rabbit, the opening to the real world, vertical shaft full of strange things on shelves, and the glass table with the "Eat Me" food and "Drink Me" bottle at teh bottom Advice from a Catepillar - $10 - Includes Alice, the Caterpillar, a hookah and mushrooms galore A Mad Tea Party - $20 - Alice, Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, crazy chairs and teacups The Queen's Croquet Ground - $40 - Alice, The Queen of Hearts, couple other card-people, cheshire cat, white rabbit flamingos, rose trees, etc. Who Stole the Tarts - $50 - The final courtroom scene with a brick-built giant Alice (hey, a man can dream) There'd probably also be a $5 set with Alice and the Cheshire Cat in a tree. And then there could be another whole year's worth of sets for Through the Looking Glass. Yeah, this theme would be awesome and it would mean more blond hair and a female fig in every set. B) Peter Pan (my favorite book as a kid) Darling's Bedroom - $10 Mermaid's Lagoon - $20 Indian's Camp - $30 Lost's Boy's Hollow - $40 Captain Hook's Pirate Ship - $70 What's really great about Peter Pan is that it contains so many different fantastical elements. You've got Pirates, Indians, Mermaids and Fairies all mashed together in one theme. 2) Tops In a different, much older dream I encountered Lego sets in a theme Tops. I only saw the small set and it was just a couple people in top hats on a rooftop. Maybe this could just be a theme exploring famous heights (mount rushmore, Eiffel tower, etc.) and each one has a minifig in a top hat standing on top of it? Or maybe it's a play theme with Tops vs. Bottoms. The Tops live above ground and have top hats and canes and fight using the power of choreographed dance. The Bottoms are sewer dwellers (mutants?) with no appreciation for music and they are quite fed up with all the people tap dancing on their ceilings. Might be a nice twist on the Town theme. I'm envisioning split level sets with lots of trap doors and such. Also the Bottoms could have giant alligators ala the new giant sharks in the Agents sets. Dream Themes 3) Time Travel I just want to say off the bat that I am in no way asking for a return of Time Cruisers or Time Twisters. Those sets were ug-ly, and of course everyone hates Timmy. I also didn't like the underlying implication that time travel was needed for the different lego themes to interact. I am much more of the Bill and Mary Idea book school of thought that castle and space and town and so on all coexist simeltaneously. But I'm getting on a huge philosophical tangent so I'll stop here. That being said... I think that a properly executed Time Travel theme could be awesome. Instead of focusing on all the time travel machines like time cruisers did, it should focus on the places/events traveled to. This could go a few different ways. They could do a theme about visiting real historical events/places (hannibal crossing the alps, the hanging gardens of babylon, ben franklin's famous kite flight, etc.) They could even have different subthemes, like Inventions or Discoverys or Monuments. Another way this theme could go is more like the agents theme, where each set is little adventure, except they would happen in different eras. You'd have the obligatory dinosaurs, maybe a tussle with an Egyptian Pharaoh, evil robots in future, etc. Then there's the option of a license with an established time travel franchise like Dr. Who. I personally think the album Broken Bride by Ludo would make a great Lego theme. Time travel, dinosaurs, zombie-apocalypse, what else do you need? 4) Return to Aquanzone And by Aquazone I mean Aquanauts and Aquasharks style. The subsequent sub-themes just didn't do it for me. (Although I was a big fan on the new Aqua Raiders.) I alway thought Crustaceans might be a good faction. I don't know if it would be normal humans in crustacean style subs, or if they would be like stingrays and be hybrid creatures. I think it would be cool to throw a faction in there that is not evil and a natural undersea dweller. Atlanteans perhaps? Wow, that ended up being a bit longer than I expected. And now I want to go build MOCs for all of these themes... Before I go I just want to also add another vote to the tallies for Pirates, Steampunk, and a real (non-Factory, non-Star Wars, non-Mars based) Space theme.