Aanchir

I've never actually seen the Asterix movies, but I've enjoyed the comics since childhood. Are the movies any good?

I sort of agree. I enjoy keeping up with the Hero Factory storyline mainly because I like the characters, but it's not a huge factor in why I enjoy the theme. The media supplements the sets and the play and building experience for me, not the other way around. It's nice to have a personality to attach to characters like Breez, Rocka, and Bulk so that if I build my own versions of those characters (or new equipment for them), their personalities can help inform my creative efforts. But I don't need those personalities to be terribly complex any more than I did with BIONICLE. And I don't need to see the characters go on all sorts of adventures throughout a single year when I'm free to make up my own. Think about BIONICLE in 2001. Yes, there was a lot of story media, but it wasn't overly concerned with telling a complete story, meaning fans were able to create their own quests to fill the gaps. The second comic even ended in a double-cliffhanger which was never resolved. And a lot of LEGO themes get far less story media than Hero Factory does. Look at LEGO Galaxy Squad last year. It had 10 sets with 14 unique minifigure characters, spread across an entire year, but it had no core media telling a complete and cohesive story. Just a handful of LEGO Club Magazine comics, games, and videos. At the same time, I do sort of understand why some people take the story for LEGO themes more seriously. BIONICLE's elaborate, multi-platform story was a big part of its appeal, and a lot of people hope for Hero Factory and other subsequent constraction lines to fill that same niche in their range of interests. With that said, not everyone wants to devote themselves to following a story that grows and evolves over the course of a year. And there are still themes like Ninjago for those who do. Personally, Hero Factory has been able to maintain my interest in it on its own merits, and I haven't felt any huge desire for it to be anything more than what it is. I would like it if the TV episodes were better, but I don't feel like more of them are necessary to tell a complete story.

Either you're mistaken or you're very, very lucky. RRP for the sets in the United States is $4.99. Unless retailers have some way at getting them for half price, a store selling them at $3 would be selling them at a loss for sure. To use an analogy, it'd be as though those same stores were selling the Legend Beasts as $6 apiece. And actually, at Toys 'R' Us in particular, the Legend Beasts sell for RRP and the Mixels sell for 50 cents ABOVE RRP. Buying the sets at RRP, there's no way that you could get as many ball joints from two Mixels as from the Wolf or Lion Legend Beast. At least, not until Series 3 comes out. In Series 3, Hoogi has ten ball and ball cup pieces, so if you bought both Hoogi and either Footi, Glomp, or Tentro you would end up with exactly 18 joint pieces for a single cent less than a Legend Beast. Not all of those would be the new joint pieces, of course, but they'd all be either ball joints or high-friction ball cups, so functionally you'd have the same possibilities as far as articulation is concerned.

It might be interesting if this topic were moved to the LEGO General Discussion & News subforum or the Community subforum so we could see whether MOCists who specialize in different sorts of MOCs (action figure MOCs, space MOCs, historic MOCs, town MOCs, etc.) are inspired by different sorts of music. Anyway, I don't normally listen to music while MOCing, and when I do, it's less for inspiration than because I felt like listening to music before I began MOCing. So it's mostly the same sort of music I'd listen to at any other time. Mike Oldfield has long been one of my favorite artists, especially his instrumental albums. I usually listen to his albums all the way through, since many of them (like the Tubular Bells series) are best appreciated as a single 40 to 60 minute piece of music. I also enjoy listening to soundtracks like the ones for LEGO Ninjago, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, The LEGO Movie, The Legend of Zelda, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. During the Christmas season, I also listen to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The only music I ever really listen to on shuffle is my brony playlist, which covers an eclectic mix of genres and currently includes about a hundred songs. These days that's most of what I listen to on my own, but not usually while MOCing unless I was listening to it beforehand. As I said, I rarely specifically choose music to inspire me as a MOCist. Rather, when I do listen to music it's just whatever music I feel in the mood for at the time.

I know how to use a zoom button, and I did just that. That still didn't make the details of the original images any clearer to me. You might not realize, but between my post and yours, the original post was edited with better pictures. The original images were fewer than 250 pixels by 250 pixels in size. The new pictures are much better. All I tried to do in my original post was offer some advice that I thought might be helpful. No need for the attitude. Anyway, now that I can see the model a lot better, it looks fantastic! I love the design of the abdomen and the shoulders, and the tools on the hands seem nice and precise, perfect for medical applications. Do the hinges you used for the knees support its weight well in all poses? I have not seen those hinges used very often for action figures and mecha. They seem to work all right for the elbow joints, but those don't have nearly as much weight to support. I also wonder if using ball joints for the ankles might allow the model a greater range of poses. Currently, if the stance were widened much, it seems like the feet would not be very flat on the ground. I know real human ankles don't flex nearly as much as a LEGO ball joint, but real human feet are also somewhat rounded on the bottom and are more flexible so they can offer greater support even if the legs are spread far apart.

Yep. And the Mixels are five bucks apiece. So for the price of two mixels (which gets you a maximum of 16 joint piecess if you buy two of Vulk, or 14 if you buy Vulk and Seismo or Zorch) you could get 18 of the new joints with the Lion or Wolf Legend Beast.

I think the question buyers had was more of how to integrate Hero Factory parts with regular LEGO parts. Yes, it can be done. There are even a number of parts that are ideal for doing so. But it's not obvious to someone who doesn't have any experience with LEGO other than stud-on-stud building. Look at the sorts of parts that appear on Pick-A-Brick walls regularly and you'll see what I mean. Most of the parts are designed for very basic-level building. Not a whole lot of complex SNOT elements, nor a whole lot of extremely specialized designs. When the designs are specialized in any way, their function tends to be fairly obvious. Even somebody who has only ever owned basic LEGO bricks should be able to recognize a LEGO wheel or a LEGO door and understand what they're meant to be used for. Hero Factory parts are not as intuitive as the brick to somebody who has never owned a Hero Factory set, yet the parts' functions also aren't defined by how closely they resemble real-world objects as parts like doors, wheels, tires, flowers, and flags.

Vulk has eight parts with balls/ball cups, but two of them (http://brickset.com/parts/6051038) are not actually new, if that has any bearing on your decision. If you're specifically seeking the brand-new joint styles, Zorch and Seismo each have six. But if you want to get the most new joint pieces for your money, you're probably better off getting some of the Legend Beasts from Legends of Chima, which are twice the price of a Mixel. The Wolf Legend Beast and Lion Legend Beast each have eighteen of the new joint pieces, the Crocodile Legend Beast has ten, and the Eagle and Gorilla Legend Beasts each have eight. The Eagle Legend Beast is the only set to date which includes all four new joint molds. EDIT: Got my joint counts wrong for the Wolf and Lion Legend Beasts. Fixed now!

I don't know about "ideal"... it all depends on the desired outcome. The X-Men set coming out this summer uses Mixels joints, among other parts, to create a Sentinel. And for a robotic character like that, I suppose it works great. But suppose you wanted to create a cyclops, ogre, or some other creature that you wanted to have the same balance of organic and geometric shapes you might see for a LEGO minifigure or animal. Doing that with Mixels joints might not be any easier than doing it with a more Technic-based constraction system. Still, I suppose the Chima Legend Beasts do all right achieving that balance, so maybe it could be used for more humanoid creatures as well? I certainly look forward to trying it out once the parts are on LDD (I have some in real life from the Wolf Legend Beast, but it's easier to begin sketching out concepts on LDD when I don't know quite what parts I'll be using).

I have 168 displayable colors in this file, along with five colors that have names listed in the software but do not display correctly (how they display exactly will vary according to your graphics settings — on the highest graphics settings they appear as visible shading on invisible bricks). Can you tell me the material ID of whichever color I'm missing?

This is not the first time LEGO stores have done this. In April of 2011, a number of LEGO stores introduced a Hero Factory section of the Pick-A-Brick wall to promote the new character and creature building system and the Hero Recon Team online service, which allowed people to custom-order Hero Factory heroes (like a simplified, theme-specific version of LEGO Design byME — in fact, it was initially run as a part of the Design byME platform). This was just a "trial run", and it ended soon afterward, never to return. I asked Kevin Hinkle, a member of the LEGO Group's CEE team in North America, whether this might ever come back, and he said it was unlikely, because the Hero Factory parts were confusing for average LEGO fans, who didn't understand how they were supposed to be used. I wonder what "theme" this new promotion might be focused on. Perhaps the Mixels? After all, they are made of reasonably basic LEGO parts. The only really specialized parts in the Mixels are the new cartoon eyes and ball joints, and even those are incredibly easy to use for other LEGO creations.

This looks incredible from what I can see, but the pictures aren't nearly big enough for me to discern any detail. If you can't get a better camera, perhaps it would be worth your time to try rebuilding this model on LEGO Digital Designer (http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/). That way, you can either take larger screenshots or post the model as an LXF file so we can download it and look at the build in more detail. Plus, you could preserve a copy of the model digitally so that if you ever take it apart you'll be able to rebuild it.

My personal theory recently has been that the style introduced in 2008 might have been supposed to have stronger friction. I considered this possibility after noticing that many of my pre-2008 joints have become very loose even without cracks that reduce their structural integrity. I don't think it would have been to make the joints less breakable, for two reasons: first of all, it didn't have that effect at all, and second, the previous ball cup design hadn't been extremely fragile up until 2007 when there was a bad batch of bright yellowish green joints. That wouldn't have allowed much time to come up with a redesign, and it's unclear what impact a redesign would have had anyway considering that the problems in 2007 were not geometry-related.

I definitely had my own imagined LEGO universe back in the day — in it, for instance, Ice Planet 2002 and Rock Raiders were closely connected and may have even coexisted on the same planet.

Awesome. It isn't too elaborate or complex, but I appreciate that somebody in the LEGO community is putting forward an effort to create LEGO-inspired music. The dearth of music in the LEGO community sometimes gets me down when I realize how many amazing brony-created songs are on my iTunes (102, to date) versus the number of AFOL-creates songs on my iTunes (currently, zero). I'm no musical expert, but one way to start improving your music further would be to add more tracks to it that represent different types of sound. This song uses only one type of synthesized sound throughout, and as a result it seems a bit... "plucky", for lack of a more precise term. If there were a steady backbeat to keep the rhythm and some more continuous sounds in the background mirroring the rising and falling "energy" of the song, it would make for much better listening. Of course, this is far beyond my experience, so I couldn't tell you what kind of synthesized sounds or instruments would be best. I'm just judging from what a lot of the music I enjoy listening to has which this song currently lacks.

The chest armor shouldn't flop around much if the head is pressed down tightly, since the shoulders grip around the shoulders of the torso. So it doesn't have that issue anywhere near as badly as previous minifig torso armor did.

My latest purchase was Furno Jet Machine. Beautiful set.

This is by far my favorite TARDIS project and I've been trying to promote it everywhere I can. Its one disadvantage compared to some other projects is that it doesn't have enough door panels, but that's something the LEGO Group's designers could surely fix in a heartbeat. It's not that I think a TARDIS needs to have a working interior and exterior, but so many of the TARDIS projects I've seen don't even include opening doors of any kind, meaning that the "exterior" version of the TARDIS is little more than a static display piece. And I think a franchise with as much action and excitement as Doctor Who deserves a set with a similar sense of action and excitement built in — not just a boring replica. The Daleks in this project are also more nicely-proportioned than many of the LEGO Daleks I've seen, though they would probably have to be redesigned slightly since their construction involves parts not pressed down all the way on the studs. Still, they're beautiful in their simplicity.

The sails might look a bit odd in a traditional Pirates display, but I think they're pretty stylish, and having seen the movie I get why the sails are built how they are. In the movie, like the rest of the ship, the sails are far larger and more elaborate, using a combination of Technic panels and curved slopes. This was probably so that the sails would be more recognizably "made of LEGO", and thus more visually impressive within the context of the film (in contrast, the film's only other textile-based parts are the capes on characters like Superman, Batman, Vitruvius, and Lord Business). EDIT: My brother points out that I'm mistaken and Emmet's bedsheet is also textile-based. Scaling the model down so it could be released as a set, it probably made sense to simplify them to just Technic panels, in order to reduce the size, cost, and the weight they would add to the masts (which might give the ship a harder time keeping balanced, as tall as it is), all while still maintaining that brick-built look that made the movie's version of the Sea Cow so visually impressive. I certainly don't think these are a sign that future LEGO pirate ships will use a similar technique — after all, a more realistic pirate ship would demand more realistically-shaped sails, and I don't believe there's any brick-built solution for more realistic rectangular sails that wouldn't multiply the cost and complexity of a set tremendously. I look forward to seeing whether any Pirates fans can replace the sails with textile-based or plastic film-based ones. I haven't owned a LEGO pirate ship in years so I can't really judge how big the sails would have to be to look appropriate on this enormous vessel. Benny will probably be easier to find online once 70816 comes out this summer. Vitruvius, on the other hand, is not appearing in any other sets this year and so I imagine his aftermarket price might only continue to climb. Queasy Kitty is this set's one real "exclusive" (not counting Metalbeard, who is built differently but still depicts the same version of the character as in 70807, and less accurately to the movie at that). She will probably continue to command a very high price.

I like the show to an extent. It doesn't have a whole lot of substance, obviously, but it's not really supposed to. After all, these are just interstitial shorts, not full cartoons. And I love their simple, slapstick sense of humor. My favorite of the five shorts released so far is still Cookironi, which has a madcap flavor akin to Tom & Jerry, and tells a story with a lot of rising action before the ultimate conclusion. Sort of a combination chase scene and arms race, in a sense. I hope there are more shorts like that one. "Hot Lava Shower" and "Electrorock" are also pretty funny!

If anyone's looking for Doctor Who projects to support, this one is my favorite by far. Not only is the TARDIS a nice size and shape, it also unfolds to reveal a brilliant console room that is indeed "bigger on the inside"! So cool! It also includes two Daleks. Most of the other TARDIS projects are static display pieces with no built-in interior or even opening doors of any kind. And many of them are not nearly as well-proportioned. The only thing I dislike about this unfolding TARDIS is that it doesn't have the correct number of door panels, but that'd be an easy thing for the designers to fix if they think it necessary — after all, Glenbricker's TARDIS design is about the same size but has more accurate door decorations.

I have experimented some with it. The real thing stopping me much of the time is that I've always placed a big emphasis on stylistic consistency. So if a MOC uses predominantly smoother lines and textures, I try to stick with those rather than using more elaborate parts. And oftentimes that means I use BIONICLE parts with other BIONICLE parts and Hero Factory parts with other Hero Factory parts. So for instance, this semi-recent digital MOC used mostly high-texture Technic and BIONICLE parts except for the Y-joints, mask, hands, and weapons. This emphasis on stylistic consistency and visual continuity was a big deal for me even as a BIONICLE fan. Even though I sometimes mixed textures haphazardly in my MOCs, I didn't like seeing textures used haphazardly in MOCs or sets — a bit of hypocrisy there, maybe. I wasn't a fan of the Kalmah armor on Hydraxon's legs, for instance, because the smooth organic curves and polka-dot texture were completely asynchrynous with the other silver parts of that set's design, which tended to be either very smooth or characterized by sharply-defined geometric textures. It's not that I have an aversion to using the building systems together. But while there are BIONICLE and Hero Factory parts I'd use together in a heartbeat (since there's some considerable overlap between the aesthetic styles with certain pieces, like the Toa Mata foot), more often than not I feel like the parts work better alongside similarly-designed parts than alongside each other. Of course, that's just personal taste. I've seen plenty of wonderfully elegant MOCs that use Hero Factory and BIONICLE parts in tandem. The situation just rarely comes up for me that I think a BIONICLE part would be ideal for a primarily HF-based MOC or vice-versa. It does come up sometimes, of course — I used the 2008 Takanuva's leg-guards for Caitlyn Gauss's blaster, and have used Carapar's leg armor on some digital concept models. Another factor that's pretty important is that I've always enjoyed setting constraints for myself, and some of my proudest MOCs are the result of those constraints. Sometimes, the constraints are obvious: when building my 2008 Akamai Nuva and Wairuha Nuva MOCs, I only used the pieces from the 2008 Toa sets (I have instructions for both of those MOCs if anyone's interested). And this peacock was designed as a Brutaka alternate model. Other times, the constraints are more self-imposed. For instance, when building a Toa Nidhiki or Lariska MOC, I usually like to challenge myself to use only pre-2006 parts (other than Nidhiki's mask), so the result looks like what a set released around the time of the characters' introduction could have been. When I built Certavus I tried to stick to a Glatorian-like level of detail and complexity, and use recurring motifs from the Glatorian sets, while creating a character who still looked unique compared to those which appeared in sets. With MOCs like Caitlyn Gauss, I have another incentive for working primarily within the building system: to prove to myself and others that I can do it. The Hero Factory sets tend to be reasonably good for their size, but ever since the building system came out there have been frequent claims that the building system is no good for building larger-scale MOCs. And to a certain extent, it's easy to see where people get that conclusion. BIONICLE has been gone long enough for me to appreciate some of its flaws, but there's still no denying the elegance of certain titan sets like Roodaka, Brutaka, or the 2008 Takanuva (I know it sounds like I'm just naming sets with "aka" in the name but bear with me). They had flaws characteristic of their time, obviously — my Roodaka barely stands anymore since the ankles are supported by just a single friction joint that has weakened over the years, Brutaka's inner thighs are more empty than any Hero Factory shell, and the 2008 Takanuva's lower legs had gaping holes in them. Nevertheless, they remain some of my favorite BIONICLE set designs. After the new building system, there were fewer designs this impressive. Fire Lord had some brilliantly creative building techniques but they resulted in a sub-par model. Black Phantom fixed most of Fire Lord's flaws, but as a result was far less original, and still had rather wonky proportions. Witch Doctor used the building system quite brilliantly, but the result was not as elegant as I wanted to see. Articulation was somewhat limited, the torso was incredibly bare-bones, and there was still a heavy reliance on Technic. Recently, Evo XL Machine has done a reasonable job stepping things up a bit (using Technic to supplement the building system, not to take its place), though it doesn't have that naturalistic, streamlined quality that I liked in those BIONICLE titans. When I saw this model in photos from LEGO World Copenhagen in 2013 I felt somewhat vindicated. Here, I thought, was the proof that elegant "titan" sets were possible within the new building system (I was not surprised to find out that it was created by Christoffer Raundahl, one of the building system's inventors and previously the lead BIONICLE set designer). I used both LDD and my physical bricks to reverse-engineer the model — my results can be seen here. And then my next step was to prove that this kind of build wasn't limited to just one MOC with just one physique. I adapted it for the model that would become Caitlyn Gauss, narrowing the shoulders and lower legs, lengthening the lower body, and simplifying the arms until I arrived at a model that was comparatively feminine, not as burly and brutish as the original. I've got another MOC in progress as we speak that uses a similar skeleton. And for this new one, I've come up with a new leg design that does not borrow so heavily from the original MOC that inspired both creations. This new leg design has a certain elegance to it, and I might actually want to see how it looks in place of Caitlyn Gauss's current leg construction. But that will still take some more time. For now, I'm happy to have created a Hero Factory MOC that can go toe-to-toe with the 2008 Takanuva. If I had settled for more BIONICLE-based solutions or legacy parts for any major parts of the design I would not have nearly as much to be proud of, because the MOC wouldn't be making any kind of profound statement.

The idea of there always being a civilian, good guy, and bad guy faction really only applies to 80s and 90s space themes where each individual theme represented a single faction, and themes would be kept in production for multiple years so one year's faction could coexist with the previous few factions. Neither is the case today. All modern LEGO Space themes include both a "good guy" and a "bad guy" faction. There are no explicitly civilian factions... then again, some of the ostensibly "civilian" factions back in the day were suspiciously well-armed, so to a certain extent this is just a case of modern themes dropping the pretense of years past, since conflict play has always played a big role in LEGO Space's appeal among kids. Space Police III is no longer really a "current" theme by any stretch of the imagination, because again, sets aren't kept in production for years on end like they used to be. The most recent "good guy" faction was Galaxy Squad, while the most recent "bad guy" faction is the aliens from the same theme. Before that, the "good guy" faction was the ADU from LEGO Alien Conquest and the "bad guy" faction was the aliens from Alien Conquest. And before THAT, the "good guy" faction was the Space Police and the "bad guy" faction was the Black Hole Gang from the same theme.

This is a beautiful set design, but what makes me appreciate it now more than ever is that last week, while I was on the road to see the LEGO Movie with some friends, I saw a tow truck on the road that looked just like it! Color scheme and everything!