Aanchir

Yes, both of these parts are examples where decorations are included for their coloration, but with the decoration removed, the coloring can be done with the paint bucket tool. The parts you get straight from the parts palette on the left are undecorated and can be colored in any combination; I felt I was doing more of a service by including the decorated ones since those can't be generated within the confines of the program. There are some parts that there are decorations for on LDD which I used the paint bucket tool for instead, specifically those that would have garish seams and would lose a lot of detail with decorations in place of painting. Some of these include the Ocean King's crown (there is a "full field" gold decoration included in LDD for this; however, like all decorations it lacks shading from any angle and conceals the part's contours) and the Viking Woman's helmet. Coloring these with the paint bucket tool is hugely preferable, and if you feel the same way about parts like the pie and medal you are welcome to switch the decorated parts out with painted parts in your own files. I've found some parts are kind of buggy when trying to "paint" the separate parts of them. I had difficulty painting all three surfaces of the Battle Mech's armor separate colors in a recent file, for instance-- I had to go into an LXFML and edit the correct colors in to arrive at a solution. Not sure what the reason for this is. Editing the correct colors into an LXFML works though it becomes harder to tell which surface is which when you're simply reading them as text fields in a sequence, so some trial-and-error is necessary. I should add that this one is a funny case in that depending on the colors being used, the "highlights" will cover a different amount of the surface. So, for instance, Flame Yellowish Orange on Bright Orange appears to cover a larger area than Flame Yellowish Orange on Black.

I should mention that the Clockwork Robot head, which you've colored yellow, can be decorated without any errors, though not with the decoration tool. The decorations have to be edited into an LXFML file, after which they can be copied and pasted into any LXF or LXFML without errors. You can download an LXF I created that includes this part and all other CMF parts from S1-S8, properly decorated when possible. Only a few of the parts in this file have errors: LDD lacks the proper decorations for five of the parts and lacks decoration surfaces for one part, all of which are colored Phosphorescent Green to differentiate them from correctly-decorated parts. Also, the Hula Dancer's hair piece, the Small Clown's hat, and all decorated arm pieces have the decorations misaligned or stretched because the alignment of the decorations does not correspond with the alignment and shape of the decoration surfaces. Also, the fact that you can not pass an axle through the holes in the new ball cups is not an error. The holes in the new ball cups are designed so that they are smaller, and thus the ball cups pretty much never break, unlike the older ones which were often extremely fragile during normal building and play.

I haven't seen any crippling bugs, but some of the timeline items (specifically, the Brain Attack villain images and the webisode trailer) slightly overlap one another instead of being staggered properly on my screen, and the "Download" link for the Brain Attack Rocka (44002) image instead links to a poster of Breakout Rocka (6202). You can see the proper 1000x1000 Rocka image by editing the URL of the 700x700 preview image, but its color quality is severely lacking compared to the 1000x1000 images of other sets and even compared to the 700x700 image of the set, with the green parts in particular horribly oversaturated. Incidentally, there also is no Pyrox image under the "Images" header, but this is not a bug so much as something that was not even uploaded. Interface-wise, one of the bigger changes I see is that parts of the backdrop are animated, which I don't recall on the previous version. I can see how this might cause problems for some users. Although Brain Attack and Breakout content are now divided up with separate headers, Breakout content (or more accurately, all pre-2013 content) is still arranged somewhat arbitrarily. Also, probably not a new error, but when you switch to the "products" header and click any product, then click the "X" to close out that product's pop-up window, it reverts to the overall (non-product-specific) timeline, which is a bit irritating. Still, at least the interface is fairly clean-looking, which makes me hopeful that it might be redeemable with future refinement.

No, the recolored paintball player legs were just photoshopped. They were never actually in the customer service database. That's one of the things that's frustrating about pics like this... they can be very useful as illustrations early on, but they tend to spread like wildfire until eventually they lose the context that identifies them as unofficial mock-ups.

Well, they could add some kind of qualifier. This isn't necessarily the final battle in the sense that are no more battles, but some things have already phrased it as "the final battle for the fate of Ninjago", which would technically still be true if the stakes are lower in future story arcs. Realistically, though, it's more likely that they'll ignore the "final battle" branding in future arcs and keep the stakes high when it comes to season finales and the like. It'd be terribly limiting in a creative sense and terribly disappointing for a lot of fans if the writers decided that no story arc could have higher stakes than a season that had already aired. If Ninjago continues to be the setting (and there's no reason why it wouldn't), then the story will eventually need a threat to Ninjago that's as formidible or more so than those which the Ninja have already overcome. Yeah, I agree. It was the one thing really hurting my enjoyment of the game. Now, on the other hand, it's not a long game... I was able to unlock every level and max out my upgrades within maybe an hour of play. Still didn't get gold medals on every level, but still that's not a whole lot of gameplay. I was also somewhat disappointed that the game didn't feature any actual Spinjitzu-- if it had, it would have been close to what I'd consider the ideal Ninjago mobile game as far as gameplay is concerned.

Ah, alright. I was working from memory with that one. My bad. I'll correct that now. There are a couple other errors like leaving off the Musketeer's feather which I've also corrected. Don't be afraid to notify me if you see any other (avoidable/unintentional) errors. I was posting this mainly for decorations reference, but that's no excuse for sloppy coloring (especially since with so many months spent correcting color errors people have posted in official sets I of all people should know better). The coloring of certain parts in 294 Phosphorescent Green was a deliberate error. This way by using the "color selection" tool you can instantly highlight every part that is missing a decoration. In retrospect I could have sort of halfway hid the inaccuracy of this decision by only coloring the faulty decoration surfaces this color, rather than the whole part, but in any event that color error was intentional on my part.

Agreed. The only thing that is really not totally clear is whether highly-detailed painted parts that are currently made ONLY in China will be shifted to the new Chinese factory and continue to be made ONLY in China for global set releases. I imagine both are true; anything else seems needlessly complex. More basic bricks will probably be made wherever is closest to packaging for the region of intended sale.

Another comic book reference, this time in the Rainbow Dash issue of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic micro-series published by IDW. A multicolored LEGO castle is one or RD's unconventional methods for defeating a pair of cloud gremlins. It could of course be interpreted as a clone brand-- if it were unquestionably a LEGO shout-out then Hasbro might have vetoed that panel, given their nature as a competitor to TLG-- but Occam's razor tells me that LEGO is most likely what the writer and artist expected the reader to see, especially since there is no Castle, Creator, or Duplo equivalent that Hasbro owns the rights to.

Well, in the case of the silver and dark silver colors prior to the 2010-2011 change (131 Silver and 148 Metallic Dark Grey), one reason they were replaced is that they were inconsistent even before replacing them. Compare a Metallic Dark Grey part from 2007 to one from 2003 and the difference is abundantly clear: 2003 parts in this color typically have a somewhat greenish tinge to them, so much that I originally thought the color had been replaced in 2007. Silver parts were even more inconsistent, and 2010-2011 wasn't the first time TLG tried to replace the color-- in 2006 they tried to replace it with a new color called 296 Cool Silver, which was even MORE inconsistent than 131 Silver and tended to look washed-out. 131 Silver was returned to production in 2007. Still, parts in 131 Silver were terribly inconsistent throughout the color's lifespan. It's worth noting that prior to 2010, most parts labeled Pearl Light Gray or Flat Silver on Bricklink were in fact supposed to be the same color, often varying only in what plastic material they used or what surface finish they were designed with. Since the switch to 315 Silver Metallic and 316 Titanium Metallic between 2010 and 2011, silver and dark silver parts have been much more consistent, and they often look better to boot. Is the change a bit frustrating from an army-building perspective? Yes, but if meeting the "target color" consistently was not possible with the older colors then it goes without saying that a change was necessary in the long run. Besides, generally it is possible to mix-and-match different metallic colors without the differences between them being obvious except under close inspection. There's a reason that Bricklink tends to identify two to five different metallic colors with the same name-- a lot of AFOLs can't even tell the difference, or can't recognize that any "change" has been more than random variation.

Oh, cool, the kitten decoration works now? That's good to hear. It was added in a previous update (along with several other decorations from the Pet Shop), but LDD at the time didn't have any decoration surfaces on that part. I'm going to have to go through and check other parts that previously were unusable due to a lack of the correct decoration surfaces... I've already checked some of the ones that have been with us for a long time, such as the Atlantis treasure key, Atlantis warrior head/helmet pieces, Space Police III alien heads, LEGO City airplane tail, and Agents body armor, but no luck with any of them. Squidman's head does now support decorations, but unfortunately LDD has never had all the decorations needed to make the complete decorated part. I think his pupils may be present, but not the pattern from the top of his head.

No, Kirch did not die. He collapsed with the rest of the crew as the brains controlling them abandoned ship, but several robots that Breez had rescued came in to move the bodies to safety, and since Aquax survived the brain detaching from him (and was functioning again within minutes), there's no reason to think that the brains detached in a manner that would permanently disable their hosts. I got Secret Mission 4 a couple weeks ago before Spring Break, and I was quite impressed, though I'm surprised at the amount of continuity being established in these stories. They still function as stand-alone stories for the most part, but SM#4 picks up almost directly after the events of SM#3, and the idea of a galactic conspiracy is not entirely wrapped up, mentioned as something the Hero Factory will have to keep an eye on in the future. So we'll almost certainly be seeing that plot thread come up again. Overall I'm quite impressed that Greg Farshtey has been able to take the more-or-less straightforward alien invasion story that forms the backbone of Brain Attack in so many different directions. The synopsis and short preview of SM#5 in the back of SM#4 don't exactly fill me with confidence that this story arc will be as closely tied to the overarching Brain Attack storyline, but then again I'm confident that this story can be pulled off after reading the previous books in the series. Still need to watch the Brain Attack webisode, but I might find time for that this weekend.

Alternatively, they just don't think it matters that both this and the transparent arm exist. The people who own both the transparent arm and transparent hook, and who are inclined to use them together, are probably fairly few in number. And TLG technically doesn't endorse separating and re-attaching minifigure arms and hands to begin with, since it weakens the connection. So if TLG had a reason to do so (and that's a big "if"-- I can't think of many uses for a fig with just a transparent torso, or just transparent hips), they could really introduce every single minifigure part in transparent colors across several figures. But without retooling the molds themselves this still wouldn't allow them to release an official fig where two or more of these transparent parts are connected to one another.

The real issue is that it's not a choice between "spend additional money on new animal prints" and "don't spend additional money at all". Rather, money spent on new animal prints probably has to be be part of the budget for new parts and decorations in a particular product line. Now, tell me, which would a kid rather have: a new decoration on an existing animal mold, which will probably not open up many brand-new uses for that mold, or a new decoration for a minifigure or building element, which increases options for customization of figures and models? Now, in some cases, we do see new animal prints, particularly for horses. And one reason for this is that horses tend to be very distinctive, whether because of breed alone or because they are practically characters themselves. If Shadowfax were in a LotR set and used the same white horse print as in the Lone Ranger sets, with a conspicuous bridle, it wouldn't be remotely authentic. But for the most part, if a set has to have a dog there's no good reason why an already existing decoration won't be sufficient, unless the dog is meant to be a different breed-- and unlike horses, dog breeds often require more than just a change in color and pattern to look authentic. The dalmatian in this year's Fire sets is treading a fine line, since technically a dalmatian should have floppy ears, not pointed ears like the "German Shepherd" mold that's being used currently. Why does LEGO Friends get so many new animal decorations and molds? Because they are some of the main selling points for many of the sets they come in, and as such distinctiveness is as important as it would be for minifigure faces. As such, they get the part of the budget that would otherwise be spent on other new elements. On another note, introducing a new decoration is technically introducing a new element, and TLG likes to keep the number of elements in production at any given time in check (they have to; they can't just add new machines to the production floor willy-nilly). So if an animal decoration is already in production, or has been produced in copious supply, then reusing that same decoration is more economical than introducing a new one. It's the same reason any element would be reused: there has to be a substantial justification for why a new one would be more effective than an existing one for it to be worth shuffling production around.

Yeah, just to make things easier for you guys, let me identify the NEW decorations that are not in Minifigures Series 1-8 (or that I haven't been able to identify as such, at any rate): 73244, 89745, 89746, 92100, 96692, 96698, 96699, 97304, 97373, 97941, 600570, 600778, 600944, 600959, 600960, 600962, 600963, 600969, 600979, 600980, 601233, 601234, 601258, 601259, 601260, 601345, 601347, 601496, 601497, 601500, 601501, 601502, 601503, 601504, 601506, 601507, 601508, 601509, 601510, 601511, 601512, 601513, 601514, 601682 So those are the decorations to focus on matching to the correct parts. Most are from the Haunted House. The others include four torsos, a leg, a 1x1 cylinder (Davy Jones's heart) and a bottle.

No, no instructions or images. I think PeabodySam was just proposing a general MOCing challenge, not something that would be a submission for this official sets topic.

Yep, there are eight decorations missing from Series 1-8: The hat decoration of the S4 Street Skater The four leg decorations of the S5 Zookeeper (the LDD team's file uses the legs of the S2 Explorer) The skirt of the S6 Lady Liberty The reverse (sleeping) expression of the S6 Sleepyhead The side decoration from the right leg of the S8 Actor One other decorated part from the series cannot be generated: the faceplate of the S8 Alien Villainess. However, this is not because the decoration is missing, but rather because the part has no decoration surface to support it.

Great, I'm away for a week and I find a large quantity of my work is done for me. I've been hard at work making all the CMFs! I had been keeping away from Eurobricks to focus on schoolwork and only just now came back to post my progress. The one in the first post is unfortunately incomplete in some respects. In my version, there are only eight decorations missing from series 1-8, and parts that are missing one or more decorations are marked in 294 Phosphorescent Green. I can also see some of the parts in the version provided by the LDD team lack colors (for instance, the S3 Alien's eyes are uncolored). So at least my work didn't completely go to waste. There are also some bugs present in both my version and the LDD Team's version. Arm decorations do not line up correctly with the decoration surfaces, for instance, and the Minotaur's eyes are identical when they should be mirror images of each other. In my version, any silver-painted parts are colored 298 Cool Silver Drum Lacquered, any gold-painted parts are colored 310 Metallized Gold, and any copper-painted parts are colored 139 Copper. Still got a lot more decorations to match and present in a form that can be used as a custom palette... and yes, I will also try to get a spreadsheet of Bricklink equivalents put together so you can update LDD Manager with new decorated parts. Just wanted to share this so people know I haven't been completely isolating myself from the latest update and am still hard at work.

OK, update regarding decoration surfaces: Minifigure arms do have decoration surfaces; however, they are not aligned correctly for the arm decorations in the latest update to look correct. For example, trying to put the Minifigures Series 2 Mime's arm decorations on results in one wrapping around the elbow and the other wrapping around the wrist. Swapping the two decorations yields no improvement (the arm decorations in LDD, oddly enough, seem to be identical for the right and left arms, rather than mirror images of each other).

Still figuring that out myself... I've spent about the last three hours putting decorations on parts. I've generated 62 new decorated legs assemblies, with only a couple decorations missing from any of them. I know this will make people perhaps a little impatient with me (it might be a while till I have everything mapped), but I'm going to go ahead and spill the beans — besides a few omissions, this update includes ALL DECORATIONS for Minifigures Series 1-8. So I've got my work cut out for me. Now, the negative side of this is that I have not yet been able to confirm that every one of those decorations has the necessary decoration surfaces. So, for instance, minifigure arms, certain accessories like surfboards, and certain hair pieces may or may not have their decoration surfaces programmed in. But once I have more to share I'll be sure to post updates here.

Thank you! Most of those LEGO Hero Factory sets are indeed already out, but it was still a nice display in that it showed the front and back of the models. I really like those display cases full of prototype elements. The prototype Hero Factory set in that cabinet is somewhat interesting, in that it uses almost entirely uncolored prototype parts, and other than basic pins the parts that are colored are spray-painted. In particular this is amusing because when leaked retailer's catalog pics of this set started to emerge, the model was almost entirely spray-painted in this way, and a lot of Hero Factory fans complained about the awful color/texture of these parts... which in the final set were mostly just black or titanium metallic (pearl dark gray). In that same cabinet is a prototype Throwbots/Slizers throwing arm, a real blast from the past. Funnily enough, this piece was designed by Christoffer Raundahl, the same person who created that Hero Factory MOC I was so impressed with in an earlier post! Amazing how long he's been working in the constraction category. The various prototype minifigure parts are also neat. I see a transparent minifigure back there, showing that TLG has indeed played around with the idea even if they have yet to find a way to work it into official sets. I also see a prototype version of the "Ultrabuild" Batman's cowl... perhaps this was once meant to be a separate piece from the head? Finally, I often love seeing the LEGO costumed characters at events like this, but that Laval costume doesn't work all that well... that face seems badly-proportioned. I do love the Ninjago bouncy castle in the background though! Thanks so much for sharing these pics!

Yep, and in 2004 both of the then-current pink colors (9 Light Reddish Violet and 22 Medium Reddish Violet) were replaced with 222 Light Purple and 221 Bright Purple. Again, the differences between Bright Purple and Medium Reddish Violet are so subtle that Bricklink does not differentiate between them and refers to both as Dark Pink. Another color that has undergone some major changes even since 2004 is Silver. The first "pearl" silver color was 131 Silver, which was used up until 2006 even though it tended to be very inconsistent (it is referred to as both Pearl Light Gray and Flat Silver on Bricklink, depending partly on what plastic material it's used for, since in softer plastics it often appeared darker). In 2006, there was an attempt to replace it with a new color, 296 Cool Silver. This did not go over too well, though, because Cool Silver had a somewhat "washed-out" look and still was not free of inconsistency. In a move that I don't think I've ever seen happen with any other color, 131 Silver was brought back in 2007 and remained the standard until 2010-2011 when it was replaced with a newer color, 315 Silver Metallic (which Bricklink more consistently as Flat Silver, since it's a fairly consistent darker shade). Gold has had similar changes, but it was a bit different in that the original pearl gold (127 Gold) coexisted with a few other gold colors such as 147 Sand Yellow Metallic and 189 Reddish Gold (which Bricklink often refers to, quite frustratingly, as Copper, despite not being nearly as brownish or reddish as the OTHER three or four colors they call copper). Every one of these pearl gold colors was replaced in 2006 with 297 Warm Gold which has been used consistently ever since. Anyway, apologies for rambling. I'm very interested in the LEGO color palette, and enjoy sharing what I know about it.

I think Crominus's helmet (more or less a crown) is designed so that kids will interpret it as a symbol of leadership. While there's definitely room for kids to interpret the sets however they like, the designers do very deliberately work design clues into sets so that kids can understand the role of the various elements in those sets-- so important or valuable objects will often be colored a metallic color, particularly any type of gold, and colorful transparent parts will be used to suggest objects with magical or mysterious power. Minifigures with capes will typically rank higher than ones without capes, while minifigures with crowns are typically meant to be identified as leaders.

I LOVE silly scenes where a robot punches a minifigure across the room! 8D

The main addition I'd like to see the building system is waist articulation. Specifically, I'd love to see separate torso beams and torso shells for the upper and lower body of a model. The way the current torso beams and shells are designed unfortunately does not support this for smaller models. I have come up with one Technic-based torso with an articulated waist that is largely to scale with 2.0 Hero Factory torso shells but having one shell cover an articulated torso means it is ineffective when the waist is bent to a very large degree.

The Royal Knights king is called Richard the Lion Heart in some set names from certain countries, actually. Specifically, in British catalogs, set 6008 is called King Richard the Lion Heart. In Dutch catalogs, this same set is called Koning Leeuwenhart (King Lionheart). I realized when looking this up that I never uploaded my Castle set name spreadsheet to my Brickshelf, so you can find that here. Not especially relevant to this topic (my Space set name spreadsheet would probably apply more), but it does reinforce one thing for certain: character names, place names, and even faction/subtheme names were NOT consistent between countries a lot of the time. Even in the late 90s, the Insectoids theme had different names and roles for the characters depending on region, and even the home planet of the Insectoids was named differently in certain regions (Otopia rather than Zotax).