Aanchir

Very nice! There aren't nearly enough quadrupedal Hero Factory models on the interwebz. The color scheme you chose is incredibly exciting. The only part I'm not certain I like is where the torso meets the legs. It feels a bit disjointed with that framework of beams.

I'd invariably put quality first. I might buy a clone brand set for the novelty, but frankly I have a substantial enough LEGO collection and I do enough building with it that I'd never want to mix my LEGO stuff with inferior clone bricks, which would nerf the value of any LEGO-compatible building toy.

Generally, yes. Often the worst bootlegs appear in regions like Asia where LEGO is prohibitively expensive, and often extremely scarce. And bootleg products are often a fraction of the cost. A person buying a bootleg LEGO set might not be able or willing to afford a LEGO set, and so may never have an opportunity to compare the two out-of-package. Additionally, low-income people in these countries might be used to accepting poorer-quality bootleg substitutes of popular brands since bootlegs of other consumer products often operate similarly.

The instruction manual and customer service replacement parts database (and my copy of Vahki Vorzakh, whose eyes are colored similarly) lead me to believe otherwise. It's normal for transparent colors to appear solid in many of TLG's softer plastics. Even transparent colors in ABS are not properly transparent because colorless ABS granulate is not transparent by nature.

It's not that hard to build a custom head for them... in many cases you can even use them on a Toa Mata head with just a few parts added to the back to hold them in place. With that said, this MOC does it very effectively with what appears to be just a shell. I'm astonished that you were able to create a model with such an impressive "infected" look in just a few days. I think the weakest part of the design on the "infected" side is the leg. Even though of course cohesiveness was not the goal, it still feels a lot more pieced-together than the torso and arm, which have motifs running down their entire length to create a sense of visual continuity. In contrast, the colors and motifs on the leg feel more broken up. The hero side of the design is fantastic and just simple enough to feel cohesive. Often with a larger-scale hero the armor feels very pieced-together, but not in this case. The weapon is also very neat. It feels elegant and majestic, hinting at the character's lost glory. As much of a cliché as orange and blue contrast can be, I almost wish the transparent blue color from the weapon were present on more of the "uninfected" side of the design, if only to add an accent color that broke up the otherwise neutral color scheme. Even a blue light on the shoulder could perhaps have been sufficient.

Here's my first submission: Constraction-Scale Bazooklaw LXF File

Yep. Confirmation has come in the form of a job offer posted last July to work on designing the 2014 Hero Factory sets, as well as Advance and Ghost collaborating on the 2014 Hero Factory TV special. Anyway, the black brain promotion is pretty neat. I'll try to make it to a LEGO store within that time.

It's kind of interesting that you say that, because I'm often surprised how few AFOLs use non-LEGO elements in their displays. TLG used to sometimes encourage the use of non-LEGO elements in their various publications (even the LEGO Studios Movie Maker kit from 2001 used a baseball to reenact the boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark in one of the included demo videos), which is kind of surprising considering that they have a vested economic interest in getting people to buy more LEGO. But at the same time, I suppose by encouraging kids to explore their creativity outside the limits of LEGO building they build their brand's reputation with parents.

Could have been because the prototype Cragger had two-colored Transparent Orange and Titanium Metallic ones instead of single-colored ones.

Adults, or kids who have pre-owned LEGO that their parents got them from eBay or yard sales. The latter is probably a more significant group than a lot of AFOLs might expect, and it's the sole reason I have classic Space minifigures in my collection when I only became a LEGO fan in the mid-90s. Anyway, this movie looks brilliant so far. I hope it has not only references to classic LEGO, but references to the LEGO fan experience as a whole. One of my favorite scenes from The Adventures of Clutch Powers (which was also a wonderful, charming movie, if not nearly as brilliant as what we've seen of this new one) was when Bernie von Beam painstakingly sorted all the parts for the team's siege engine out by function, and then Brick Masterson got fed up and threw the parts together quickly, missing an important piece in the process. It showed a remarkable awareness for the different ways LEGO fans of all ages build. From what I've heard about this movie's story, I don't think I'll be disappointed. I'm curious what critics will think of this movie, though. Movies with toy tie-ins often face a lot of scrutiny by critics, and with almost photorealistic renders of actual LEGO products this could be no exception. I've even seen reviews of the LEGO Ninjago series where the reviewers say they wish the characters had more realistic hands. Then again, the fact that it doesn't appear to emphasize current LEGO product offerings over vintage stuff means it should hopefully be given a little forgiveness in that respect.

I think he meant "sets based on architecture" rather than "sets from the LEGO Architecture theme". In the former sense, this is indeed an "architecture set", in the latter it is not. Not all of the Architecture sets are overpriced. The Robie House is an excellent value for money. My younger brother has it — $200 for 2276 parts, many of which are very desirable and useful in large quantities. Not a bad-looking display model either. I definitely recommend it. But this brings up another point — perceived value can play as big a role in a set's price as the number of parts and minifigures. Most sets are designed to meet certain price points, which means there is a certain budget they have to remain within, but it's entirely possible for sets like the smaller LEGO Architecture sets to be priced higher than the budget for the parts if TLG wants to promote them as high-end collector's items rather than just toys. I think this is probably the reason the LEGO Architecture sets are priced as high as they are. I most often see them in bookstores and museum gift shops, where they are shelved among other high-end collector's items rather than with the other kids' toys. Sometimes you see this working the other way around, in that certain design changes are made to a model to make it seem more "worth its price" to kids even if it has plenty of value without those changes. In the LEGO Hero Factory theme, the sets with a higher price point are typically taller than the ones with a lower price point, even if the set already has plenty more value in extra armor and accessories than the smaller sets. I dislike this change in some instances because the more expensive sets begin to look gangly and don't really need the extra height as far as proportions are concerned. From what I can tell, this change is made because if kids pay more money for a certain set, they expect that set to be bigger than lower-priced sets. Kids aren't necessarily going to compare value in terms of weight or piece count, except those who have the LEGO building instinct and who understand the finer points of what gives a set value. In the case of the Sydney Opera House, I think it has a perfectly reasonable price-per-piece, even if that results in a quite high price overall. The model's footprint alone (25"x15", or 80 studs by 48 studs) is very substantial, and the size and complexity of the structure built on that footprint is also nothing to sneeze at. If it didn't use those curved slope elements, I think it might be even MORE expensive, considering that a surface sculpted out of bricks and plates might have to be a lot denser than the hinged structure the current model offers.

I've rarely tried sticking to one single theme. Generally there are at least two or three themes each year that I'm interested in collecting, and while I might occasionally step outside those themes, it's not a huge temptation when there are almost always sets within those themes that I have yet to obtain. This year the themes I am intent on collecting are Hero Factory and Ninjago. I'm trying to avoid adding another theme to that list since LEGO stores in the vicinity of LEGO conventions no longer offer staggered discounts to registered convention attendees. But I still haven't gotten a single Ninjago set from this year — shocking, I know, but I couldn't find the smaller ones when I was at college and since coming home I've been trying to be frugal until I can find a job to bring in new income — and I have sets from last year I haven't even built yet, so I haven't had a terrible craving to buy new sets. I will probably cave once I see a REALLY good deal on sets I'm planning to get.

I wouldn't mind a completely new road system myself, particularly if it were based on the full 3.2mm. plate thickness versus the current, thinner road plates. A road made of 8x16 tiles would be ideal because... ...it would be compatible with both models built on baseplates and models built on standard plates without any change in elevation between the two (a plate attached to a layer of studs is level with a baseplate sitting on top of studs). ...it would be compatible with sets like the Modular Buildings that include their own sidewalks, without having to transplant them from their original bases. ...it would allow more customization potential, such as putting crosswalks at intermediate points on a block (currently possible if you have your sidewalks plated over, but not if they're level with the road surface) or creating inclined roads. ...the new 8x16 tiles don't have molding marks on the top, making them ideal for printing. I've been meaning to make a LEGO Cuusoo proposal for such an idea for a long time, but I still haven't gotten around to it because I don't own 8x16 tiles in enough quantities to make reasonable mock-ups for demonstration purposes. I also don't know if such a Cuusoo proposal would ever succeed because a road plate pack of this sort, with a matrix of plates underneath for reinforcement, would be more expensive than a current road plate pack, and because I know a lot of people are VERY resistant to change on this level (those who don't appreciate the constraints of prefab road plates often prefer to make custom road plates using SNOT techniques). Still, I plan on trying to acquire some 8x16 tiles in bulk at Brickfair this year and trying to throw a proposal together, just to see how many people are open to the idea. But currently, I don't know if TLG sees enough money in any different sort of road plates to change them up considerably. Even though the current road plate set on sale was released in 2005, I'm sure they've been producing them relatively consistently since then, so it's not like they will run out of original 2005 copies of the road plate packs and have to release a new version.

Beyond the connection points, I imagine this could have some trouble fitting certain characters on account of the blades being so low, potentially colliding with the character's head. I would move them up another module or two. I know, I know, not a MOC topic, and you're probably not supposed to edit your posts if you want to qualify for the raffle, but it's just a word of advice for future builds.

Actually, that flame part is a two-color blend (really, it always has been, regardless of color), and one of those two colors is the same color (329 White Glow) used for the ghosts and other glow-in-the-dark elements. Since light can get through the transparent-colored plastic, this means the opaque glow-in-the-dark color can still glow, if not as brightly in places where the light has to shine through a layer of non-phosphorescent plastic. TLG has used this technique before several times in the BIONICLE theme, particularly in 2007, blending their then-current glow-in-the-dark color 294 Phosphorescent Green (which actually WAS transparent, at least in certain types of plastic) with 42 Transparent Light Blue to create blue parts that glowed green. The octopus in set 8636 was a non-BIONICLE example. The term for parts like this that have more than one color of plastic is "co-injected". I spoke about co-injected parts in this post. It's kind of impressive that they have been with us for over a decade now!

For the record, I never heard the slightest thing about a contest to make AFOL-submitted designs into official kits until the aforementioned LEGO Factory sets were actually out. And that's my point about LEGO Cuusoo as well. A lot of people probably don't pay much attention to these kinds of things until the set is actually revealed, even if celebrities and websites plug the project during the voting process. It's when TLG can reveal official pictures of the sets and make a big press release about their features that the news really starts to spread like wildfire. The Minecraft set may have gotten plugged on a lot of major video game blogs, but the amount of exposure it got increased substantially once it reached review, increased even more once it passed review, and peaked after the final set was revealed and a press release was sent to major news media. Does this mean that the earlier hype is irrelevant? Of course not. It's a great way to spread brand awareness, and it gets more people using LEGO Cuusoo which leads to more meaningful data. I think the latter, not the former, is where pre-approval hype for Cuusoo projects generates a measurable benefit to TLG: the platform would be meaningless if people didn't see any benefit in taking part. But frankly I highly doubt its impact at those earlier stages is where TLG sees the most benefit, especially since a lot of hype for a project that turns out to be non-viable can be a double-edged sword if the audience that the project has the most appeal with later gets rejected. Plenty of AFOLs have already announced that they've given up on LEGO Cuusoo after their favorite projects got struck down. How do you think the reaction is with people who didn't even start paying attention to LEGO Cuusoo until these same projects garnered their attention? As for the threshold of 10,000 supporters being arbitrary, that may be the case, but sometimes you need to simplify things to terms people can understand if you actually want them to have any faith in a system. People like nice, definite numbers. Even if the Cuusoo approval process were conducted in a more statistically meaningful way, people wouldn't be as interested in the platform if they couldn't actually see visibly and comprehend numerically the impact their collective support had on a project's progress. Maybe LEGO Cuusoo would be a more genuine process if it didn't have as many superficial bells and whistles like this to get people excited, and just asked people to volunteer their opinions without being able to see their impact immediately. However, is the lack of hype really worth it if not enough people become engaged with the platform to generate any meaningful data?

It does... one of Cragger's is that color. It looks pretty much solid (like most transparent red parts in that type of softer plastic — compare the eyes of Vahki Vorzakh or the Quaza spikes on the Savage Planet villains), but it's the same color as Worriz's blades and the official color is Transparent Red.

That's not entirely set in stone... you could always try your hand at a custom brain. Getting that texture on the top surface would be incredibly difficult, but if you could achieve something to that effect it would make your entry all the more impressive!

Oh my goodness, signed LEGO sets? Signed by the actual design team I presume? This is... one of the most brilliant LEGO contest prizes I've ever known! *tears of joy* I already see names in that pile that I recognize! I will try to find time to enter this contest. I am currently staying at a relative's house and am away from my collection, so I won't get as early a start as some builders. And I'm not going to get my hopes up too high since I'm far from a gifted MOCist (my truly impressive MOCs only occur after inspiration happens to strike and I have a couple weeks to refine my ideas, and such opportunities don't come about as often as I'd like). The fact that there's a digital component is a great benefit, but I'm also up against much more competent competition in that category! Certainly I have no meaningful experience rendering custom building elements or even rendering LDraw or LDD models in POVray. So I'll have to put a lot of time into an entry for that contest and may need to try some new things. Also looking forward to the reviews and giveaways! I'll be honest, I'm not too concerned with winning the giveaways myself, not because Thornraxx and Stormer XL are bad prizes (they're even good sets to have in multiples) but because since I already have these sets and am not in desperate need of expanding my collection, it would be just as nice to see someone else get them! Still it's a great way to revitalize interest in the subforum. The other announcements intrigue me, and I have no idea what to expect (Set designer interviews? Some kind of community building activity?), but whatever it is I'm sure it will be awesome! Overall, you guys really know how to get me excited! Best of luck to anyone entering either contest, and here's hoping even Eurobricks members who haven't really indulged in constraction sets and MOCs will find ways to join in the fun this month!

Do you even realize how difficult this would be? LEGO Cuusoo staff can't predict the future, and while in some cases (like conflicts with a new licensed theme) brand fit can be determined before the project even approaches 10,000 supporters, this is just one type of brand fit conflict. What if the Cuusoo project could potentially conflict with an idea being explored in a new non-licensed theme, but which is not yet set-in-stone? Furthermore, this is a tremendous waste of time and resources since it is impossible to know how long the project will even take to reach 10,000 supporters. By the time it does, brand fit issues that previously existed might have gone away or new ones might have sprung up, which defeats the purpose of even exploring that before the project is made public. That's some pretty confusing reasoning. What if someone wants to propose something as a stand-alone set? Do they then have to plan out an entire new theme? Cuusoo has done pretty well so far working with stand-alone sets, and I think complicating things for TLG and users alike in this way serves no purpose. You are paying for advertising, because the advertising is in the form of the set itself and you're paying royalties to the creator (and anyone you have to enter into a license agreement with). There's generally no difference between the ethics of creating a new Cuusoo set to gain attention and creating a new theme to gain attention: the only difference in the two situations is that in the latter scenario, you're relying on ideas generated in-house, whereas in the former you're asking (and paying) fans for niche ideas to draw the attention of a niche audience. Believe it or not, the hype generated by the proposals themselves before they're approved as products is probably negligible when it comes to the eventual sales, because you can't make a meaningful profit off of just the product's supporters, or even just off of people in their communities. The community support is the tip of the iceberg, and like any kind of sample-based statistics, LEGO Cuusoo basically hinges on the idea that a strongly-supported project is evidence of a more widespread sentiments "under the surface". A "silent majority", if you will. Once the product is on store shelves, that's what will get the general public's attention, not any hype that came from within the LEGO community or fan communities that lent their support to the project. I don't think anything about LEGO Cuusoo feels like a con job. The returns, as far as I've been able to tell, are perfectly reasonable. While they may not be sets that excite a lot of people tremendously, the point is that many of them are sets that would not otherwise have been considered without the community's involvement. Rejecting projects before they go public is, as I said, a waste of time and resources, as many of the reasons for accepting or rejecting them could change completely by the time that they actually reach the threshold that gets them to review. It also requires a lot of involvement from many departments of TLG, which is not just a single monolithic entity. The people who determine whether a LEGO set meets the LEGO Group's brand standards may not be the same people who determine whether a project conflicts with an existing license agreement, who are in turn not the same people who decide whether a project may conflict with licensed or non-licensed products already in development. And some of these questions cannot be answered on day one. Note that the Modular Western Town project, one of those people felt should have been shot down before getting to review, was created in October 2011. It's entirely possible that TLG had not even signed a contract to produce sets for the Lone Ranger movie at that point, or that the departments of TLG that were in direct correspondence with the LEGO Cuusoo team hadn't been informed that it was in development. Your plan seems to hinge on TLG operating with 100% awareness of everything going on in the headquarters in Billund, but sometimes plans for new themes are kept secret even from other designers, especially early in development. Frankly, I think LEGO Cuusoo is currently operating about as efficiently as it can. If that's not good enough, then it will be up to the staff to find what changes have to be made or cancel the project entirely. But given the success of the Minecraft set, I don't think the LEGO Cuusoo team has any reason to give up on this little experiment just yet.

Character Building is nowhere near becoming more popular than LEGO. Before the Doctor Who sets came out I never saw them nor heard of them in the United States, where Mega Bloks is the most successful clone brand. Keep in mind that the main reason that stores stock clone brands instead of LEGO, and why kids buy clone brands instead of LEGO, is that LEGO is more expensive. And LEGO could not afford to charge the prices they do unless they could remain successful while charging those prices.

Yep, $89.99. Typically you don't have to wait for release to learn the Canadian prices: They're revealed along with the U.S. prices at New York Toy Fair.

The problem with this strategy is that with TLG's existing themes, they've already done plenty of research to find what kinds of sets (and how many sets) are likely to sell, and they've planned out each wave of sets accordingly. They can't just add sets to an existing theme's production schedule willy-nilly or they risk oversaturating the market and diverting sales from the products they already had planned for development (note that generally a theme's sets are spread out across several price points each wave to maximize sales; throwing in an additional set means you may easily have two sets competing within the same theme at the same price point). And if they encourage fans to only build within existing themes, then they will probably end up rejecting a lot more ideas just on account of those projects being too similar to products they already have planned! The LEGO Cuusoo platform is, at its core, about imagination. The intent is for fans to create suggestions for products that TLG's designers wouldn't have thought of on their own, or at least wouldn't have anticipated enough support to push those product ideas into development. Constraining LEGO Cuusoo projects to existing themes would weaken the platform's effectiveness at this task. Sure, the Cuusoo sets so far have been niche products — which is good, because those are the sorts of products LEGO Cuusoo is designed to yield! Additionally, your suggestion doesn't really solve a single problem because Cuusoo sets would still have to be made in small batches. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that TLG should conduct market research on par with the research that goes into planning a regular wave of sets after each LEGO Cuusoo set succeeds. This would inevitably have to be part of the review process, slowing that process down even further. And if a project succeeded on LEGO Cuusoo but the market research indicated there wasn't enough demand for a full-scale production run, congratulations! You just rejected ANOTHER project that could have perhaps succeeded just fine in small batches like the current LEGO Cuusoo system entails. This system also ignores the issue of sets proposed through LEGO Cuusoo taking a long time to develop. By the time a LEGO Cuusoo proposal designed to fit within a certain theme is fully developed into a feasible set, it's entirely possible the theme it was intended to fit in has ended. If it's for a licensed theme, the license agreement may have expired; if it's for a non-licensed theme then the product line it was supposed to tie in with may no longer have the momentum and hype behind it to achieve strong sales. All that time developing the set could end up wasted on a product that few people are interested in buying any longer. By keeping LEGO Cuusoo products small-scale and independent of existing themes, they can be given an appropriate and timely marketing push instead of feeling like ideas that were held back from a previous product line. LEGO Cuusoo also serves another purpose beyond producing sets: creating awareness. LEGO Cuusoo sets aren't just aimed at fans of existing LEGO themes. Every time a project like the Shinkai 6500 or Hayabusa or Minecraft Micro-World or Back to the Future Time Machine gets made, it draws attention to the LEGO brand from niche interest groups and that normally might not buy LEGO, just like any time a new theme is announced. By only working within existing themes, you limit that potential. You sort of touch on this when you mention the Cuusoo platform's promise in terms of generating hype, but you seem to think that hype begins and ends with the online portion of the platform. In reality, the most significant hype and attention is going to come from actual product releases, which encourage people who might not normally buy LEGO to pick up a set. This then increases the likelihood that the person will continue to buy LEGO (either for themselves or as gifts for others). Overall, besides your problem with Cuusoo (that apparently being the fundamental nature of the platform), there's not a single problem I imagine that your system would solve and dozens it would create. Now, I understand that you may not like Cuusoo sets, in which case the solution is of course not to buy them. It'd be the same way if someone were to ponder "LEGO City is great in concept, but it really needs more castles and pirate ships!" This doesn't mean I'm opposed to Cuusoo projects that occur within existing themes, or think they have no chance. I'd love to see a really impressive Ninjago chess set, for instance. But it'd probably be impractical for several reasons for such a project to be created as a standard-issue Ninjago set. The "no new parts" rule is a frustrating obstacle at times, but increasing the default batch size of LEGO Cuusoo sets would create far more obstacles than it eliminates.

Yep, the late 90s and early naughts were not the best time for set design. At the same time, the sets then were not entirely without merit. Despite a tendency to rely on large, specialized elements, themes like Adventurers, Ninja, Insectoids, Rock Raiders, and Alpha Team tend to be remembered very well for their originality. This time period also was the birth of licensed themes, the birth of action figure themes, and the birth of LEGO Mindstorms, three categories which each now have a passionate following.

The Back to the Future set is rumored to be coming out this August.