Still Raindrop

When I heard it was a bank, I was unsure how well it would fit in my street, which so far has DO, PS, and a Chinese restaurant MOC--but hearing that it has a laundromat attached, it sounds like it will be right at home!

I also like all kinds of themes. I'll go through phases where I say I'll only get one theme, but that never lasts. Most recently I've said I would stick to city and modulars. Then I put together some Adventurers minifigs to inhabit my town, but that led me to want to reassemble my old Temple of Mount Everest...then I saw some of the new Ninjago sets and I was done for. For the past six years I've been mainly mono-themed by necessity. I got married in 2009, and our apartments haven't been big enough for lots of display space. My wife prefers city and modulars, so those (and Winter Village) are what has been displayed; while I would get the occasional other set or make the occasional non-city MOC, there wasn't anywhere to actually put them, so they wouldn't last long. However, we recently moved into a house with a huge crawlspace that has become my new Lego area; I'm going to reassemble some old sets (including the OE Temple of Mount Everest), work on some MOC projects, and save up for Master Wu's Dragon and the Temple of Airjitsu. It's good to be back! (Below is a picture of the space and some of my Lego collection--the "most useful" pieces that I had in our apartments. I've been moving the pieces I had kept in my parents' basement over slowly) Hey, we have the same first favorite and lifetime favorite! Well, I liked Pirates before I liked Aquazone, but I was six when Aquazone came out, and 6125 Sea Sprint 9 and 6115 Shark Scout were the first sets I put together without any help from my dad, so Aquazone is what I consider my first real favorite.

As a big Adventurers fan, I have to say that you've captured the look perfectly! Great job.

I'm guessing you have reddish-blond hair like I do. Dark orange is too red or auburn, while tan isn't quite red/golden enough. I've been going back and forth between those two colors and dark tan, myself. My beard, however, is definitely red, so I use the leprechaun head.

We just moved into a new place, and for the first time I have a real Lego room. Well, it's more of a crawlspace, but still. My modular street is displayed upstairs; everything else will have a place in my Subterranean Lego Paradise. I just moved my stuff in (and I have a bit that I still need to move in, so this isn't everything), but I intend to do lots with the space--including rebuilding sets that I couldn't display before (my wife loves my town, but wasn't as fond of, say, Power Miners in our living room), adding a small building table anda cushion to sit on, getting a small board scooter so I can move around without crawling, and more. Here are the beginnings of my Lego crawlspace: As you can see, it's not yet a place that will help you out very much; however, I've been making the transition from boxes to drawers (I think you can see one of them behind me), and that has saved a lot of space. Now that space isn't at a premium I won't be making the switch quite as quickly--but I still intend to do so eventually, as drawers make for a compact and convenient use of space. To my right you can also see sliding containers; if you have couches in your Lego room this is a great solution, as well.

If headgear counts--I don't like the bowler hat too much. I love the idea, but the execution isn't the best. When it's pushed all the way down so it sits securely on the head, it usually covers part of the minifigure's eyes (kind of like the old-style baseball cap backwards, except there's no good-looking "forward" position).

Beautiful! This has a very modern look, and you've done a great job with the shapes. If it were a real house, I'd love to stay there!

I'm hoping for just a 32x32 corner building. A wider one could be cool down the line, but it would be a misstep this year, since we're already getting the much larger Ghostbusters HQ. A bank would be great--and I agree, it will probably be larger than the last couple modulars (and I've truly enjoyed the Detective's Office, but I'm all for another bigger modular).

I'm a copywriter, so I'd probably be a scribe.

Awesome--those trucks are spot on! Perfect modern update of a classic. Any plans to build the trucks?

That would be a shame--my birthday is in February, and I don't really have much chance to get modulars the rest of the year. Oh, well, I suppose it might give me a chance to get the Palace Cinema or Parisian Restaurant.

So, there's a KKII-inspired coming up, but still no Orient Expedition remake or further Johnny Thunder theme? Things aren't going so great for us Adventurers fans (with the exception of the Lego Movie cameo).... In all seriousness, though, this theme doesn't really do much for me--but as a 26-year-old AFOL, I realize that it's not really designed for me. It's a cool idea, and I like some of the designs. And, like Power Miners, the color scheme might grow on me. Of course, I'm mainly collecting modulars and the odd impulse buy--we'll see if Nexo Knights has anything that would pique my interest.

This current one is a picture of me from when my wife and I went to Legoland in 2011. I saw a guy in a Johnny Thunder costume and knew I had to get a picture with him! Previously I would change mine based on how my sigfig looked (which changed based on whether I wore glasses, how long my hair was, whether I had a beard, and whether I saw my hair as more red or blond). I eventually started feeling like I couldn't get my hair color right with the available options, so I just stopped.

I have to agree a bit about the blues--I love the different blue colors, but there are so many of them that are incredibly similar. If something like sand red were to come back, I'd be able to overlook the blues more easily, but the overabundance of near-identical shades is a little off-putting.

I love working with all kinds of colors--however, I'm sad that sand red is retired and dark orange is relatively uncommon for bricks. These colors are fairly close to the color of Pikes Peak granite and red sandstone, which are abundant here in the Pikes Peak region. I'd love to make some outdoor MOCs that reflect local areas, but the rarity of these colors makes it difficult. So, while there are other colors I like just as much, these always come to mind when I think about my favorites, because they're the ones I'd most like to have. I suppose I could bricklink dark orange bricks, and may do so at some point, but the price of sand red is prohibitive.

Tintin and Star Trek would be great licensed themes (although I'd worry that a Star Trek theme would overlook DS9). As far as non-licensed themes go (and I'd much rather have new non-licensed themes than licensed ones), I'd love for Adventurers to return. There are many stock adventure situations that could still be explored, and a return of Johnny Thunder & co. would be great continuity (especially since he seems to be at least a kind of cult character--his appearance in the Lego Movie, the giant Johnny Thunder I saw at Legoland in 2011, and other appearances suggest that Lego hasn't forgotten about him).

Umarak's name is almost an anagram of Makuta...almost. Not sure if that means anything. Probably not

I know the chances of it being an Adventurers set are slim to none, but it would be a shame if we didn't see the CMF S13 paleontologist hair/pith helmet combination recolored and repurposed for Pippin Reed.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this or not, but here goes. Lately I've been thinking about how many AFOLs and their MOCs inspired me back in the later Web 1.0 days (for me, specifically around 2001-2004 or so)--and how I've sadly lost track of many of them. I wondered if this has happened to anyone else, and what your examples were. Maybe this thread could even be useful--maybe someone could help you find the MOC you remember, but can't find any more; or perhaps an AFOL will recognize that their own work is being described. For example, I vaguely recall seeing a town that included a bar with an old sea captain who owned a motorcycle; I don't remember much else other than that I thought it was really cool, and it used the old antenna piece (in fact, it was one of the first times I saw that piece). Similarly, I remember several castle MOCs that included a character who was (I believe) called the Red Fox--his design included a repurposed sticker from the 8226 Mud Masher set. There are several others where I remember some details, but have been unable to rediscover them. The one I remember most, however, is the one I was saddest to lose. In the pre-modular days, I remember someone had made what would probably be a modular-scale city (the buildings weren't built to the modular standard, of course, but I think they were closed-back buildings, and the size was about right to fit in with the modulars of today--and many were much bigger). In it, there were such buildings as the Ogel Family Chemical Company, a Disney store, a cool old treehouse cafe building, a massive church-type building made mostly of trans-clear parts, and so much more. Even in my Dark Ages, I'd still revisit this city and be amazed. However, it was on a personal website which now appears to be gone (and my Google Fu is not strong enough to find an archived copy). Of course, there are also some success stories. I remember reading and enjoying some Johnny Thunder comics that someone made. Turns out I found them on MOCPages--they were created by Athos. I've learned my lesson, and I'm saving these and other MOCs like "Bill and Mary Go to the Airport" (from this very website!) on my personal computer, just in case they too ever disappear. So, again--have you had experiences like this? What MOCs inspired you that you can no longer find? Any success stories? And if you're the creator of that city I described...the world needs you back.

I dunno, looking at pictures of some moles (like the star-nosed mole), they definitely have prominent claws, even if they're not super long. I still think it could be a mole of some sort.

The places you stay and where you play looks like one great big alleyway. Sorry, I know it's been referenced already, but I couldn't resist. Great job showing that kind of decay--the colors and that top floor make it so convincing (as well as all the little details).

I know what you mean--though this is an area where I just suspend my disbelief. I just built a small 16-wide modular with exterior stairs; I initially wanted to seal off the stairs, but doing so made the interior even more cramped.

Huh. Well, I guess this will be my third year in a row of not buying a winter village set. It looks great, of course--the details are definitely an improvement over the original. But I have the original, and it's not enough of an improvement to warrant an $80 purchase. Too bad those flags will probably be pretty expensive.

I think the timing was wrong in all kinds of ways. Not only was the show just starting (so they didn't have as many things/characters to draw on as they might have later, not was the adult and kid fanbase as big), but Lego was starting to get out of a bad place financially (Jørgen Vig Knudstorp had just become CEO), so they probably weren't willing to risk a lot on a brand new licensed property that didn't have the proven popularity of Star Wars or Harry Potter. Moreover, their minifigures weren't as sophisticated yet, so the character likenesses were a bit "off" in ways that could be easily fixed nowadays (like giving Aurra Sing's hair to Book 1-era Zuko and making a few new molds). By the time that they could have done ATLA justice, it had already been a failed line, and they may have thought that its time had passed.

I agree. I only got into Avatar recently, and was disappointed when I saw Lego's two sets (which came out during my Dark Age). I posted a little earlier in this thread, but I absolutely agree: more sets and better representations of not only characters, but also environments (an igloo, perhaps, a buildable Appa, some other small buildings, etc.) might have made the line a huge success. And a good Uncle Iroh minifigure would have been amazing--Iroh is my hero.