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I haven't read the IGN article, but...There was a lot of other mirror references. The episode was bringing back the first season episode, "White Rabbit", which is of course a play on Alice in Wonderland. This new episode had a white rabbit (Jack gets the key from the white rabbit) and his son is reading Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice. In that, in order to get to Wonderland, Alice basically falls through the mirror. The writers aren't being literal with their references, but they were heavily implying the existence of mirror worlds, and that you could travel between... if you had the key. The other interesting point in that episode was that Jacob knew Jack would behave that way, implying that Jack's upteenth tantrum was all part of Jacob's plan. Eleven more episodes left!

I talk about it, and after a while, it's just what you do. The odd time that I hear disbelief, I compare it to having model trains or something, and point out it's a heck of a lot better than being a sports fan. When anyone comes by my apartment, they often want to use all my built sets.

I'm looking forward to seeing reviews by all the new recruits here! I hope you all get started soon.

Since Indie is pretty much restricted to the films (not popular enough for expanded universe...yet) there are a lot of themes that don't fit Indie. Adventurers is basically Indie with the restrictions from Lucasfilm. That's a lot of freedom. There seems to be a lot of Adventuers buzz here. Anyone want to start a pool for when the petition gets started?

This looks nice. I'm curious to see how it compares to the old one. It seems like there's been a color shift from red to burgundy on it, but it looks okay. Lucky you that they're available in your area Thanks for the review.

No wonder it's fresh in your head. I watched season 1 the summer after it came out, and the rest as they appeared. So that was starting 4-5 years ago. It's hard to keep track of everything

Strange, 3 is my least favorite. Too long, too many time killing episodes. The last 2-3 episodes of 3 I liked lots, then I loved all of season 4 and 5. Interesting interpretations. I got the joke with the rock, but the stuff about them being from the 1600's I don't know. Probably something like that. Smokie said something to Richard Alpert about being free again, which implies he was on the slave ship originally, or something. There's a lot to take in, so I need to read through the write-ups on Entertainment Weekly. They have fairly in depth interpretations there. I should watch through all the seasons again, but I just don't have that sort of time

Got the City Corner, and was a little disappointed. It's not as great as I'd been thinking it was for months now. Saving money for the next one.

What? Like Avatar?

I'm sure it has some funny jokes, but it sounds like "the plot" is very tedious. I'm not a movie critic, in that a lot of praised Oscar films bore me, but a lot of Hollywood popcorn flicks bore me too, especially the last third where the fun stuff gets swallowed up tying up the banal plot. Let us know what you think!

Looks like Cop Out is Kevin Smith's worst reviewed film, and that's saying a lot. I'll take my time catching this, though I'm always curious how a group of talented people can make a really lousy film

These are at a really bizarre scale, and I like them! They remind me of Japanese super-deformed manga versions of Star Wars ships. Beautiful.

Please change my title to "King of Eurobricks: 2052"

Lovely review Creator sets like this really are the red-headed step-kid of the Lego line, they don't fit in with any size or series. For me, the only Creator sets I own are all houses, that are roughly minifig scale. But, I can see a lot of good "Lego" qualities in a set like this. A lot of ingenuity, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to any kid that had a passing interest in Lego, planes, or models. In fact, it might get a kid interested in planes totally hooked. Thanks!

Looks like I have my New Years resolution for 2010

This is a lovely looking set, though there are maybe too many panels substituted for bricks. But with the printed pieces, that can be forgiven. I remember this being on the shelf at Toys R Us, but at that time, I wasn't about to put my money out for a large size set. Oh well. Thanks for the review.

This is a beautiful, touching movie. It gets to the heart of someone jaded like me I've seen it four times already.

The last two episodes (5 & 6) were phenomenal. This is my favorite season so far. The pacing and story delivery is perfect. I love that the smoke monster is now a character. I love that Claire is possessed by him, and possibly Said. I love that the numbers are those of the candidates. What did the Japanese man say to Hurley in the temple? Hard to get 100% since he speaks like a samurai, and I haven't learned samurai Japanese, but he always talks down to him, and the last part was "If you enter this temple, I'm going to cut off your head."

And you were informed, contact Whitefang with your intentions. Please follow Whitefang's instructions that he posted to you previously.

Did you forget your last post in this thread? http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...mp;#entry666477

There's no worry about that, I plan to index them in the first post, so people can post all they like in this thread. Just to be clear, while anybody can post a tutorial in their own thread, I'd like to post them in this thread and reference them from the first post.

There's more coming! But not this week, I should take a break, two reviews and a tutorial in 4 days Absolutely mental, I'm so tweaked out this week (exercise + coffee - alcohol = busy busy def)

The new Slave I looks a heck of a lot like the last one. The colors are sharper, but it's a hard sell for me. But Bossk... I like these ships, but I'd be happy with just the minfigs. Maybe I'll just buy them and sell the sets, and keep the figs. I'm torn. But I have a few months to think about it. Great new pics there.

I want to go through the process I went through to make the title pic to my Galaxy Explorer review. It's an intermediate level tutorial, so you may use Photoshop tools that aren't so common, but I'll try to make it as clear as possible for beginners to follow along. If you've used it a fair amount, there should be no big surprises here. Here is the finished pic: To begin with, download the four original pics used here: Moon, Ship, Base, shipshadow. To start with, I prepared the main ship. It's what the pic is about, so I did this first. Open the ship.jpg pic. Double click the layer so it isn't the background, it will become 'layer 0' or whatever name you give. I used the lasso tool and just roughly went around the ship. Then, I went to select /inverse to select what I hadn't selected. I then deleted this selection, so just the ship is left in the pic. Next I select the green around the ship with the marquee tool. I usually use a white background, but this ship has so much white on it, that it would make this step a hassle. With some green selected, I go to select/similar to get the majority of that color. Of course, you'll get some colors you don't want, but that's okay. Notice, the tolerance is set to 40 (not circled, but in the second row from the top). This is the range of shades taken. "0" is only identical pixels, and the higher the number, the higher the range. Now, the first time, I deleted the stuff I didn't want, but this time, I'm coming close to the ship, so deleting is too dangerous. Instead, I create a layer mask, hiding selection. Layer masks cover what's visible, but leaves the picture intact. (Layer masks are one of the most important items in the Photoshop arsenal.) I create a new layer and fill it in with a color that will create contrast. Any color will do, as long as you can see clearly. The next step takes a little time. I close up to the image, and in the mask, using the brush on the mask, I manually either cover or show the ship. This is not the way to create masks for trees or hair, but for Lego, it only takes about 5-10 minutes. Save the pic! If you make a mistake, you'll want to come back to it. Anyway, now we can apply the layer mask. Right click the mask (the box to the right of the image in the layer). This is the image we'll be dropping into the pic. As we can see, I'm watching LOST season 6 as I make this It's pretty easy to multi-task if you have a nice big screen. Next, repeat this whole process with the base.jpg pic. Getting the whole of it cleaned it important, but if you leave a little white, no worries, you can clean it up later in the process. Having too much is better than too little. Now I start a new page. I made mine 1024x816 pixels. I don't know why I chose that size, but the moon pic is from the Internet, and has a lower resolution. (I just google-image searched "moon lunar" and this showed up. "moon surface" would have been cleverer, in retrospect.) Ultimately, this pic was being made for Eurobricks, so a high-res image wasn't needed. In the end, the pic I used was only 800 pixels wide. To this, copy-paste the moon.jpg pic. <SPOILER> Yes! Claire is back, not looking so cute either! <END SPOILER> I edit/transform the moon pic so that it fits the screen, but lower it, because I want lots of room for space. <Remember, hold shift during transform to maintain proportions, so you don't stretch your moonscape> Don't worry about that white space. Next, I create a new layer, and call it stars. Hopefully you can imagine what I'm going to do now. In the moon layer, select the sky, and the negative-white space. <shift-select adds areas> Switch to the stars layer, use the paint bucket tool to fill it up with black, then go to filter/noise. I used about 100%. This looks quite crazy, so filter/blur/gaussian blur it about .3 to .5. Then, with the stars layer selected, option-click new adjustment layer (bottom right-hand corner). This is very important. This layer will affect only the stars layer, and is always adjustable, whether you want more or less stars. In this new adjustment layer, slide the black towards the white, until you're comfortable with it. Next, again, with the stars layer selected, option-click new hue/saturation layer. I check colorize and slide the hue to the right until the stars get a nice little blue tint. It's looking great, except the pesky marks and moon guys. I quickly grab the clone stamp, and select a nice big soft brush, and then clone them out of existence. <option-click to choose the area to copy from, then click/drag to copy to> But the pic is missing something... It needs some Lego! Now for the fun stuff, we bring the ship in! And it's freaking massive! Again, quickly with the edit/transform (or command-t for short) I bring it into the size I want, and also rotate it a bit since the originals position isn't where I wanted it pointing. Now that the ship is in place, I want to do the lights. Because of the way I do the glow, I use a different layer for each color. I use the eye dropper tool to get a basic yellow, then lighten it to a color I like. I basically just color the yellow piece in. Then, I use a much whiter yellow, and color the center, to replicate a light. But it looks funny, so I put a Gaussian blur on it. One to two pixels should make it look good. Of course, you can do it until you're satisfied with it. Next, double click the layer to bring up the layer effects. You're going to add an outer glow to the pic. You mainly have to adjust the spread and the size. I set it at 7 and 21. Again, use your judgment as to what looks good in your opinion. Then repeat this for the green and red lights. Each need their own layer, their own effects. In this tutorial, I'm not going to do all the lights, but you'll have to in your pic. The ship should essentially be done now, but you might want to adjust the levels, either brighten or darken it until it feels right to you. I dropped the base pic in and resized it to look nice, but the angle/perspective of it was all wrong. So, rather than just transform it, I transform/distort it, allowing me to force perspective on the image. A lot of this will make it look funny, but a little bit can really help integrate two images together. Last, we need to create a shadow. First, open up the shipshadow.jpg pic. Basically, you're going to do the same to this as you did to the first pic, but because it's a shadow on the moon surface, you can be lazy and roughly get it, nobody will know the difference. In the end, I chopped off some of the wing, and it's all o-tay. Again, drop it in the pic, and transform it to a smaller size. I also vertically crunched it a bit too, since it's supposed to run off in the distance, it's not supposed to be in the proportion of the overhead shot. That pic, you want to adjust the levels on it, pull the lower white slider all the way to the left, so that the pic is pitch black. Then, Gaussian blur it two pixels or so, and in the layer menu, lower the opacity to 40% or so. It looks good, but it's not interacting with the picture well. I add a mask to that, and mask the shadow on the foreground minifig. He now stands out now. Finally, create one last layer for the lights' shadow. They need to appear on the ground, for realism's sake. I use the eyedropper to copy the color on the ship's light, and paint them roughly where they belong on the shadow. Then, Gaussian blur them, between 10 and 20 pixels, again, when it feels right. When you're done, you should have an image roughly the same as the one I made in the starting pic! Total time? Less than an hour. If any points of this review are unclear, I'll edit this post, so that it as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Try it and show us the results!

I've decided to do some tutorials on how to do Photoshop Lego images. I am not a professional, but I've been using Photoshop on and off for years, and still follow up on new tools and techniques. Usually, I don't have much to do with it, but since I've been doing Eurobricks reviews, I've been practicing it more and more. In this thread, I'm going to do a few tutorials, and will index them in this post. If you want to do a tutorial, please do, but please give links to all the source pics, so others can follow along. Otherwise, I will not index it, since it's not a tutorial. If you try any tutorial, feel free to show us how it turned out, and ask any questions about how to improve your image. Or show us what you did with the techniques you've learned. One bit of advice, if you seriously want to use Photoshop, or any graphics software: Buy a tablet. I haven't used a mouse in over a decade, for drawing or anything else. Digi-pen technology is quite solid, and once you get used to it, mouses are anti-intuitive. They require your arm to move. Digi-pens move with your wrist, for the most part, and are much easier to use, control, and have 500 degrees of pressure, allowing you to control the 'flow' of your clicks. My tutorials are all relatively difficult with a single pressure mouse. I use a Wacom Intuos 3, which is apparently discontinued for number four. You don't need an Intuos, but I recommend putting the $100-150 out for that or one of the cheaper models, like the Bamboo. http://www.wacom.com/intuos/ It's not that much money considering how long they last. I've been using my current one for five years. That's about 10 cents a day. Anyway, happy Photoshopping! Tutorial index: Tutorial 1: Galaxy Commander moon scene Tutorial 2: Mono Jet on Mars