deraven

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing! Someone mentioned that they shipped to Hong Kong, so I'm hoping international shipping includes the US as well because I think I really need to get a few of these!

I was headed in that direction myself, but busts that just hit the shoulders but leave off the arms, or only sculpt the neckline of the torso are fairly common as well so I'm sure that's what Carson was going for: http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2014/05/20__02_30_20/thumb0001.jpg978b4f12-e484-4a2c-a625-79dea5446b7bOriginal.jpg Personally, after playing with it a bit I think that cheese slopes in either orientation are just a little too big unless they were somehow attached to less than a brick-width between them. When you think about it, minifig heads and torsos are really strangely proportioned compared to the rest of the Lego system (and, of course, actual humans!).

That works much better than I'd expect it to! Having them on the somewhat ornate pedestals makes a big difference, and with the contrasting color the 2x2 dish echoes the general shape of the top of a minifig torso. Nice. Ah yes, that's pretty close to what I was getting at with my textual description. I like the look of that, too, for a more robust... bust. And going the other way with it, I've also seen just a plain microfig used, but depending on how you'd be placing it in a setting it can look more like a statuette than a bust. Combining one with a regular headpiece as Slegengr mentioned sounds interesting. I haven't seen that before. I think I may bust out some bricks tonight and play around with some ideas. (Sorry about the puns- maybe I need sleep more than MOCing...)

Just to be clear... are you looking for a life-sized bust for a "real" mansion, or a minifig scale bust for a Lego mansion? Assuming it's the latter... I thought I had seen some in the interiors or some of the various mansions that had been posted (like one of the Wayne Manors or something), but I can't seem to find any now. Offhand, my thought would be 1x2 or 2x2 jumper plate as the base, or a 2x2 dish, with a flat or round 1x1 plate connecting it to the center of the base of the bust for the base. For the bust itself, a 1x3 plate with a cheese slope on either side for the "shoulders" of the bust, either just 1x1 plates in the center or use something like a plate with clip to give it more detail (if it's supposed to be Mozart with a cravat or something), and then the head with any hair/hat or official neckwear. Obviously all in white, grey, or metallic to give it a stone or cast look, if that's what you're going for. If the "chest" part was just slopes and 1x1s, you could print a decal with very basic detailing to help sell it a bit more. That's a bit wider than it should be, but might look OK. The other thing you could do would be to use a minifig torso and head, pop the arms off, and try to conceal a bit of the torso in the base for the bust. That might look more awkward overall, though. Hadn't given it a thought before, but now I'm interested to see what folks have come up with for this!

Wow - beautiful! So many things to like, but the cheese slope stripes add just that little extra something to make it pop. Does the ship have any interior detailing you can share with us?

Nice. I really like the way the wood paneling and the lever on the open freight car came out! I think those are just 1x1 round tiles in metallic silver. They look great on the buffers!

Just saw the video - that's awesome! Congratulations! What a great way to start building a long-lasting, happy marriage.

Happy to help! It would be interesting to see what results you come up with. :)

I think I ran across your F4-B on another site a couple days ago but looking at the galleries for both of these has me even more impressed! They're just spectacular with the parts usage and level of detail you've captured. The decals of course really seal the deal (even though I despise STAMPS in general, you really can't argue with the results on something like this!)- can you tell us how you produced them?

That's cool. I love seeing what kind of NPU my kids come up with (4 & 6 years old). I have a reasonably sorted collection, but I keep several large tubs of random parts (usually from bulk lot purchases) purposefully mixed and accessible so there's plenty of opportunities for just that kind of discovery. My son recently discovered that some of the Friends animals fit pretty well in place of minifig heads. That was a mildly disturbing thing to see. They're both also very good at spotting Mega Bloks in those bulk buys and instinctively toss them out. I was a proud parent the first time they came to me with one and said something like, "Dad, what's this piece? I think something is wrong with it..."

I agree- that looks fantastic, but could use from additional cars for full play value. I mean, it certainly doesn't need them, but might be a nice transition in height from the front to the engine car(s) and it would make it all the more awesome! Also, if there were a few passenger wagons, SpaceKitty would make a most entertaining Conductor!

OK, that is awesome. I wish I had the extra $99 to spend on such a thing at the moment! I'd finally have something appropriate to wear when folks are getting together for a sportsball game.

You can just use iMovie (or iDVD if you have it) and export to DVD. I'll automatically adjust the size and bitrate to make it fit. That's the best option if you want to fit it on one disc, playable on standard DVD players. The specifics depend on the version you're using, but here's a reasonable run-down with and without iDVD: http://www.techisky.com/how-to/burn-imovie-to-dvd.html

A 5-inch binder holds a surprisingly large number of instruction sheets, but the binders can be ridiculously over-priced. Thankfully, we went paperless at work a couple years ago, so now as the Accounting department is able to shred things past a certain date, I can get loads of large binders for free. The ziploc bags are definitely a good idea for protection from the elements; I used to keep my instructions piled in watertight plastic bins before I decided to organize them better and protection was a concern, but I live in Arizona so water at least isn't really much of a worry! If you have a sizable Lego collection, you should considers getting a rider on your homeowners/renters insurance to cover it. My biggest fear for my bricks is a fire that leaves me with a huge lump of melted ABS! Anyway, I imagine that the gallon of poultry-sized bags offering some protection and then kept in cardboard bankers boxes for ease of handling would work pretty well. You could even put sets of the bags in hanging folders in the banker boxes to make it easier to go through them if you find yourself accessing old instructions relatively frequently.

That is an interesting show- even shows the development from concept to sculpture to mold & paint of the new (at the time) police dog/German Shepherd mold amongst other interesting tidbits. You can watch it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2wah736BAc

I put the instruction booklets in heavy-duty plastic sheet protectors (like these: http://www.staples.com/Staples-Heavy-Duty-Sheet-Protectors/product_489131 ) and then put them in large 5-inch D-ring binders. The heavy-weight sheet protectors can even fit most of the bound instruction booklets that Lego produces, and anything larger (like the book for the Death Star) wouldn't fit in most other storage solutions anyway so those just get stacked/boxed separately. I haven't quite settled on how to sort them all yet, but at least it's easy to reorganize them in the binders. Right now it's roughly by theme and then by set number. That doesn't work quite as well for long-running themes like Star Wars where the set numbers have drifted through so many ranges over time (so I feel like sorting them by year), but I try not to sweat it. It's working pretty well so far for a couple hundred instruction sheets, but we'll see how it holds up over time!

All of the royal monkey regalia on the ship is great. I agree with Matteo1130 in that this has an interesting humor and mix of old-school blockiness with nice modern details. Not sure exactly how I'd classify it, but it's a nice build!

Well, I'd never buy the clone stuff either, but I heartily agree that force ghosts would be awesome done that way!

I concur with the other folks- just go to shop.lego.com and you'll get there. The link you referenced (http://shop.lego.com/en-US/cart/convertBasket.jsp?_requestid=2387366) has session-specific data in it; trying to get to a specific shopping cart in a specific state, so that's not going to work for very long in most cases as the session data will expire in your browser and/or on the server side. Use the regular link and click through from there to what you want and all should be fine. :)

That's great! Did any of the other members of the construction crew end up with peg legs or anything?

This looks like a blast! But based just on existing themes, eh? Well… I can't wait to get going on a Galidor Exo Suit! *cough*

Wow, that's really interesting! I think you've captured the essence of Emmet nicely. It kinda makes me want to try making a similar piece in mosaic/collage style using various Lego elements. It's always fun to see other AFOL's creative interests- Thanks for sharing!

Looks nice! But… balaclava. Cloth baclava wouldn't be so nice. ;) Does it attach at the neck, or just around the head inside the hood?

I'm also a blended approach guy. Depending on the model, especially if it's not meant to end up particularly large, I just "hit the bricks" as it were and see what happens. If it's something that I'm finding challenging to conceptualize or that I don't have enough parts to prototype, then I fire up MLCAD and take advantage of the unlimited parts palette and supply to work things out. Or, if it will be a large MOC that has some repetition (a large building or ship's hull, that kind of thing) I may start with real bricks to work out some of the rough dimensions and SNOT angles and whatnot, but then replicate those specific features and then complete the rest on the computer so I can get a reasonably accurate parts count if it looks like I'll need to place an order to complete the project. The one thing I don't do is sketches beforehand... but mainly because I'm fairly awful at drawing. ;)

Yes, the legs could have maybe used a little more attention if you had the time, but this is great! I especially like the cockpit with the dual gatling guns, and the furnace at the back with the guy shoveling in coal is fantastic. I also really like the open superstructure with the netting, etc.- I really prefer that kind of creativity & re-imagining to just the stock model with the surfaces covered in steampunkish bits.