Aanchir

It's a great design, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I'd want to see sets designed like that. One advantage of simpler designs is their stability. This one is great as a sculpture, but can't carry its own weight without a stand and has somewhat limited articulation. Not to mention that since it doesn't use one particular building system, building with its pieces could be a daunting challenge compared to the average HF set. This isn't to hate on the MOC, just to point out that designing a MOC and designing a set are very different things, considering that set designers have to think of so many factors other than just appearance, and those other factors aren't limited to "business considerations" like target audience and budget.

Alright, thanks! I always appreciate when somebody goes out of their way to be thorough even with things that they don't have much interest in or expertise about. If you don't have any pics, we do have plenty of seemingly-finalized product designs from Toy Fair (i.e. no obvious prototype parts), but it's nice to see the models from as many angles as possible.

Yeah, I meant 5%. Silly me getting percentages and fractions mixed up. Gonna go back and correct my post now.

You think that's great? There was at one time a whole LEGO brand manual online full of design specifications for LEGO publications and licensed products. I have it saved to my old computer back home, but really ought to transfer it over to this one since it's unfortunately no longer online (and not cached by archive.org). It had many interesting tidbits-- for example, something I found quite unusual was that the LEGO logo is always to be larger than any theme's logo, and is always to appear next to the theme's logo towards the top of any product's packaging. The biggest exception was BIONICLE-- for BIONICLE sets, the theme branding was to be front and center, with the LEGO logo smaller and usually at the bottom of a box. Likewise, when being written as text, every theme was to have the LEGO brand preceding it (LEGO Pharaoh's Quest, LEGO Atlantis, etc.)-- the exception, again, was BIONICLE, which could just be written as BIONICLE. All in all, this makes a lot of sense since one of the aims of BIONICLE was seemingly to capture an audience of kids that thought of LEGO as a "kids' toy". By distancing it from the LEGO brand, not only did it manage to appeal to kids who might otherwise be entering their dark ages, but it also made the theme's mythology and storytelling value feel a little more genuine to people who might otherwise have been reluctant to immerse themselves in what basically amounted to advertising for the toys. More recent themes don't seem to need this as badly, of course, since the LEGO brand has become more respectable across a wide range of audiences, and with the strong financial performance TLG has encountered in recent years, they recognize they have more to gain by tying all their products explicitly to the LEGO brand than they have to lose. Sorry for the tangent; just sharing one tidbit I found interesting. Others include that if bricks are shown cascading down a surface, they should be in proportion with real bricks and with each other, and likewise minifigures should be in proportion with bricks whenever possible. At my nana's house we have a late-90s-era picture frame from LEGOLAND California that clearly isn't in line with these standards and suffers as a result. Also, the LEGO logo should not be shrunk beyond a certain size, and if it has to be then it should be replaced with the "word mark", the word LEGO in all caps. Interestingly, the spines of some of the early Ninjago graphic novels violate this, but it's been addressed in more recent ones. It's really good to see how much thought goes into this sort of thing today!

Oh my gosh, that My Little Pony season finale was stellar. I went to a local meetup to watch it, and it was definitely a great experience.

The 3DS has quite a number of great games-- my twin brother has been quite happy with his. I would love to have one myself if I could honestly commit to playing it regularly, but if there's ever a game I really, truly want to play, I can always borrow his when he's not using it.

As far as fonts are concerned, this might come in handy. It's a LEGOLAND park style guide. It recommends the Chalet font family for most applications, which is consistent with a lot of LEGO publications including the instruction manuals. Some of the text in the instruction manuals uses "LEGOChalet 60" and "LEGOChalet7080", presumably personalized versions of this font. Overall, you can learn a lot about LEGO fonts by just opening a PDF instruction manual and viewing its properties, but I guarantee most of the fonts used are not available for free, and as such it may be more effective to find free approximations than to use the real deal.

But aren't the VIP rewards also scaled to the currency? In that case, a US buyer who buys 100 dollars in sets gets enough points to earn 5 dollars in store credit. In contrast, a European buyer who buys 100 Euros in sets would earn five Euros in store credit. The only thing that fails to balance out is the real cost of the sets according to the value of the currency, but no matter what your currency, your eventual VIP rewards will always be 5% of what you spent to get them (not counting the extra 99 cents on each set's price tag that don't add to its VIP point value). EDIT: Thanks to bjtpro for correcting my math.

I sometimes like when I can have a bit of variety in skeleton colors. Alternating beam colors, as long as they're either neutral colors or colors used elsewhere in the model's color scheme, in my opinion add a great deal of visual interest. Sometimes I even try to coordinate bone colors to the shell colors over top of them, like I did on Kit Martello, if I want to emphasize the organization of the color scheme and tone down the emphasis created by exposed knee and elbow joints (a red shell and a red bone flow together visually). One thing I kind of wish is that torso beams came in more of the common beam colors like Medium Stone Grey, Bright Red, and perhaps even Bright Yellowish Green. This isn't to say that I want fewer black torso beams, but considering some of the colors we've seen in torso beams such as Dark Red and Bright Orange, I think these more common Hero Factory shell and beam colors would have a lot more versatility.

I saw this on Flickr a while ago; probably should have shared it. Here's a pic. I like that both Jay and Zane come with their golden weapons, though I'd have preferred the new ninja costumes.

Really? They're large, fairly specialized, and have exactly two intended connection points. Not to mention they already come in at least seven varieties. I have a hard time imagining how adding a couple more equally-specialized varieties would be that much more useful, especially compared to other types of recolors like helmets and more traditional building elements like shells. Really the comparison to Kraata is very apt, and the Kraata were notably one collectible that did not present a great deal of usefulness to MOCists in the grand scheme of things. Sure, they came in a number of color combinations, but they also came in six different shapes that were more or less identical in terms of functionality, with aesthetic differences too subtle to be seen in most MOCs. And while a number of clever MOCists found uses for them due to their small size and unique shape, I think it goes without saying that the budget for many of those "extra" varieties of Kraata (particularly those with clashing colors, like Lemon Metallic and Bright Red) would probably have been better spent on other, more useful new elements.

No, I'm quite confident Gorzan's chest piece will use stickers and the others will be printed, just as it has always been with those pieces. I can't see any reason TLG would introduce a printing machine for that piece now when they didn't for Stormer XL, especially since it is a piece with broad, flat, well-defined surfaces that are relatively easy to apply stickers to, and Gorzan's chest pattern would require complex multicolored printing whether on a sticker (on which TLG can already support that kind of printing) or on the piece itself.

I don't think RCBs are a good tool for designing a cohesive, exact model. While rules can be set in advance to keep color schemes and other factors fairly consistent, the fact remains that making a model with any degree of specificity usually requires several revisions, and it's hard to do that in an RCB without potentially undoing parts of a model that a builder was quite proud of. Not to mention that a lot of the fun of an RCB is being able to take it in any direction you want and never knowing how the final design will turn out. That doesn't work too well when there's one specific end result in mind, particularly in the case of later builders who will be constrained to building whatever the previous builders haven't created yet. A Ninjago RCB would work better if it involved the creation of a fantasy setting never depicted in detail in any medium. Now, a full-scale Destiny's Bounty wouldn't necessarily have to be too huge or complex. Keep in mind that there was a pretty much show-accurate Destiny's Bounty at LEGOLAND Deutschland, and that was at miniland scale-- in other words, LARGER than what a minifig-scale version would have to resemble. Granted, that one lacked interior details and was not entirely show-accurate when it came to color, but nevertheless it shows that a minifig-scale Destiny's Bounty is far from impossible.

Fabuland is actually a transitional theme much like Jack Stone or 4 Juniors. Unlike Jack Stone, pretty much all the connections were System-based (Jack Stone had a mix of System-based and Technic-based connections), but there's no way you could confuse a Fabuland piece for a Duplo piece in real life. I believe Fabuland arms and regular minifigure arms are also interchangeable. For me, there is a certain cuteness to Chima, but only the same amount that is inherent to the LEGO minifigures. The stout proportions, the simplified, cartoony facial features, and the bright colors help the theme feel friendly and inviting despite any sense of danger evoked by the theme's fantasy weaponry or the angry-faced villains. For examples, check out Laval's facial expressions. The little smile on the left is very cute, and only slightly less so when his helmet piece is on. Similarly, some of the stylized tribe emblems have a cutesy look, as does the wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of Lennox's Lion Attack.

Anyone who's taking pictures at this event, I'm curious if the Hero Factory area has any summer 2013 sets on display? I recall that we got a pretty good look at some of the summer 2011 sets at this event two years ago. Certainly we've had some decent Toy Fair pics, but few pics of what many of the sets look like from the back or sides.

Probably depends heavily on how they're removed. I think some of the more common ways of removing prints, such as the use of weak chemical solvents, should leave the color/surface finish of parts fairly unaffected. I've seen some people recommend removing prints using just a rubber eraser, but I imagine any type of removal that uses that kind of abrasion comes with a certain amount of risk. And of course stronger chemical solvents are a definite risk because it could affect the texture/surface finish of the plastic, and thus its appearance. On the whole, though, it's not damaging the parts that I'm worried about; it just feels better to me to get a part that never had a print on it than to remove a print from a printed part, and thus essentially remove a printed part from circulation-- especially when the printed part is from one of my own sets that I might want to reassemble some time in the distant future.

Really? You must not watch a lot of Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny cartoons. There's a story reason for why the animals of Chima developed the way they did (it's related to the power of CHI or something), but in general it's not like it's something that really needs much explanation, since anthropomorphic talking animals have been a staple of cartoons for decades. Overall the story is something like Thundercats meets Kung Fu Panda meets James Cameron's Avatar, so it has a sort of a precarious balance between dense mythology and silly, lighthearted fun. But then, that still renders it more accessible than BIONICLE usually was, since that theme tended to lean heavily towards the "dense mythology" side of things.

Very neat design. Mostly a recolor, but his color scheme still really suits that build, and the wings and lightning pieces also go well with the model.

I believe those indicate where the three faces of the finished bag (front, back, and bottom) will be glued together. That seems consistent with all the Hero Factory packaging I currently have with me.

Yes, and I've been searching for a version I could use for my iTunes ever since. It seems like that's finally going to pay off very soon. I wonder why the key visual wasn't included in the instruction booklet like past waves? Was it not finished in time, or were there too many complaints about the number of ads in the previous Ninjago instruction manuals? Personally, I always love when an instruction manual has content like this that hints at the engaging story behind the theme, much like how some BIONICLE manuals had promotional images of the characters and the events of each story year, or how the earliest LEGO Star Wars instruction manuals had little screenshots of scenes from the movies related to the sets on every page.

Well, I don't think Hero Factory would introduce a new price point for a final wave of sets-- after all, one reason the BIONICLE Stars were made small sets, besides requiring fewer molds, is that the price point for small sets tended to have more reliable sales than the price point for full-size canister sets. In Hero Factory the current lowest price point is $9.99, so I imagine a final wave of sets (if it were to happen abruptly, say, next year) would be priced according to that rather than designed to meet a lower price point which might have uncertain sales. Overall, I wouldn't be opposed to TLG creating a smaller price point of sets, though, as long as the parts are still versatile within the Hero Factory building system and not as specialized as the parts of the Agori/Av-Matoran/Stars/1.0 Hero builds. It would be great to have more smaller parts for use within the building system, and it could also be used as an opportunity to create neat creatures or assistants (for instance, a canine companion for a Hero, a robot drone, or a robot assistant like Quadal).

TLG is a bit inconsistent about the quality of their PDF instructions. Some of them tend to have very good color quality and line quality, while others are discolored or pixelly. I agree it's a problem that should be dealt with. I understand that the discolored ones may be a result of file compression, since a smaller PDF file size is easier for the average user to download. But at the same time, this screenshot you show-- from a set this year, no less-- shows that this is far from a worthwhile sacrifice in some cases, where the resulting file becomes near-illegible.

So Toys 'R' Us Hong Kong's Ninjago microsite has updated, with contents including (supposedly) a new poster featuring the 2013 key visual I've been having so much trouble finding. It looks quite awesome, but unfortunately it's currently a dead link that redirects to the main Toys 'R' Us Hong Kong site (this is fairly common with newly-added posters to the site from my experience). I'll be watching intently to see when that poster gets added, since it'll make great iTunes album artwork for some of my Ninjago tracks. You can see the same key visual used as a background here, and apparently it will be the cover art of the sixth Ninjago DVD in Poland and some other countries.

That is a nice use of those torsos — they fit together wonderfully! The cannons (both the big central cannon and the small blasters on top) are also nice, and the legs give this a nice mechanical look. Great MOC

Eh, I don't have a problem with the idea of it, but I have a feeling this will not be as successful as the main series just by virtue of being derivative. The obvious intent is to create a line of fantasy fashion dolls to compete with Monster High, and thus capture a slightly older demographic of girls who may enjoy MLP:FiM but probably doesn't spend as much on merchandise as the younger girls at whom the toys are generally targeted. And I don't have a problem with that: the idea of human versions of the characters has been a popular one within a significant portion of the fandom, and it's neat to see the brand being pushed in new directions. However, this will frankly have a hard time making sense to people outside the context of the MLP:FiM brand (after all, even the title "Equestria Girls" doesn't make much sense if people can't make the connection to horses), unlike Monster High which draws its inspiration from well-known horror archetypes. And as such, while this creates a new means of generating revenue from the established fanbase, it does not strike me as something that would be likely to create a whole lot of new fans of the brand as a whole. There are exceptions, of course. Somebody on deviantART who I was (previously) following recently posted a long, hateful rant against MLP:FiM and bronies, but then later posted something about how they are intrigued by this spin-off. So perhaps this might be an avenue through which some people embarrassed about the perceived childishness of MLP:FiM might be able to better appreciate the show's characters and mythology.