“Incredible LEGO Technic” incoming …

At first I thought I would have to wait until Dec 6th so I can hold Sariel’s new book in my hands. It would have been a great date, since here in Germany it is Nikolaustag. But, the earlier the better. I am eager to finally get it, just because other people already have their copy and some reviews are already available.

And today I got this:

Tuesday, that is cool with me!

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Big Bang Lego

The Lego Ideas team has just published the results of their last review phase. This time, we will get two new sets.

The first set is the “Lego Bird Project“. This approved project currently consists of three different brick-built birds which are approximately in life-size. A very cool project and well deserved to be made into a real set.

The second approved project is “The Big Bang Theory“. The project currently consists of a set of minifigures for the seven main characters, complete with nerdy accesories and the living room where they all gather. It will be quite interesting to see what the released set looks like.

Since the “nerds” from BBT do officially like Lego, it would be very funny if the set makes it into the series. Bazinga!

If you don’t believe me, please watch the video announcement:

Promo video goes wrong

This just gave me a good laugh. But watch yourselves!

The Hobbit in 72 Seconds

Once again a fantastic video from Brotherhood Workshop.

The whole Hobbit story in 72 seconds and of course made from Lego.

If you haven’t read the book, this might contain spoilers!

Light up the evil fortress

Now who would I (Balrog) be if I didn’t post THIS!

This micro-scale Barad-dûr sports a lot of detail for the scale. Ian Spacek really outdid himself with this one. And the best: The lit up eye of Sauron and the glowing lava really gives this creation the right atmosphere.

What am I building?

I was a little busy yesterday and today. And will be probably tomorrow as well. I am currently building a digital model of a certain Technic car. Actually, it is not my own MOC. It is by someone else and I am dreading for a long time now to build something similar. I was hoping for a digital model or even instructions from its creator, but until today nothing has happened.

The person who originally created this model is not staff from TLG, but he achieved to be somewhat famous among the Technic fans. I think the car is pretty cool and huge and has some great functions. A real supercar. That is why it is so interesting to me. I build the digital model to find out if I can build it with my collection or if I need some substantial parts orders. As source material I have the “release” pictures of the model (which contain some pretty good and stylish photography) and some WiP pictures. The big problem is, that I need to build the chassis mainly from the WiP pics, but the finished model is a little different at a lot of areas. Also, I am doing some “color polishing” to improve some sections myself directly. So the big question remains: What am I building?

A hint: This is the rear axle.

Who can guess from who and which model this is?

The chores of the brick

After I have done this, I have procrastinated a little to write this post. Not because I didn’t want to write this, but the so-called chores I did, really got me down a little. So “chores” is usually something you do around the house, do regularly or that is a nuisant duty. In this case, it’s the latter. But that is also my own fault, since I decided myself to keep my loose parts properly sorted instead of having a big box with all my parts like I had it when I was a kid.

What I am ranting about, is sorting away pieces. Often, it is not too much work. For example when I disassemble a system set. But after disassembling Sheepo’s Shelby GT500, I was confronted with a  rather big box full of parts. Over 3500 parts!

Usually, when I disassemble something, I try to pre-sort the pieces directly. Liftarms, thin liftarms, bricks, connectors, axles, pins, gears, bushes, panels and special parts from suspension, fake engine and so on. This time, I only had a box, because I had none of my other boxes available. So I used the box I received with my last order from Lego (which I got the Exo Suit in) and put all the pieces in there. After 4 hours of disassembly the box was 2/3 full as you can see above.

So, before finally putting the pieces into the storage I usually do some pre-sorting. Double the work, but there was no other way. So here is how I do that to keep the time effort as low as possible. The procedure is divided in several steps that are repeated until the box is empty:

1. On the layer you see, you take all pieces you can quickly find and put them in a separate box. E.g liftarms.
2. After don’t see any of this part directly, go on with the next type of pieces, e.g. connectors.
3. Again, once no obvious of the previous type are visible, change the type again, e.g. axles.
4. Repeat and repeat and repeat …

The type of piece you choose is not necessarily in the mentioned order and there are more than just the three mentioned types. But, you should stick to the type as long as you can easily find pieces of the type. Then go on to the next type and again and again and again. At least that is how I do it. Mostly I leave out pins for quite a few steps until I mostly see pins.

Here you can see how I do it. I still have a third of the pieces to sort. At that moment I was sorting out thin liftarms as you can probably assume from the small container that I placed on the edge of the box. At this stage, normal thick liftarms that were in my way were directly put into the other big cardboard box. That keeps a little dynamic in the process and liftarms are especially easy to sort out as well. Therefore I usually take liftarms in the first sorting step. After that liftarms are sorted out “by the way”.

Here is a close-up picture of the box. I would now change the type of piece to sort out, since no thin liftarms are visible at a quick look. I could choose between axles, connectors or pins. I think I chose axles as the are somewhat more prominent than the connectors and pins being a plain nuisance. More than that, I just sorted out other pieces from the box until only pins were left. And in the end, I had this:

The big box in the background is filled with liftarms, the few panels and the bricks. Left of that are the connectors. In the row in front of the cardboard box we have (left to right) suspension, steering and fake engine parts, then bushes and flex axles, gears, pins and then axles. In front of that two boxes with thin liftarms.

At this stage I could easily detail-sort the pieces and put them in the storage containers with similar parts.

Now the big question: How do you guys handle MOC disassembly? Do you do something similar? Do you have a process that is totally different? Please let me know in the comments.

 

42030 Volvo L350F Wheel Loader Behind the design video

The Lego Design Team has published a new video about the design process of the 42030 Volvo L350F Wheel Loader. This is a interesting video that shows some of the process, but still keeps some more detailed facts as a mystery. If you have not already seen it, please see it here:

Also the video has some hidden details, like the poster of the preliminary 42039 24 Hours Race Car and some other of the upcoming models standing around.

Proper Box Arts for Technic Sets 1H15

New pictures of the box designs for the Technic sets for 1H15 have surfaced.

Most of the sets still resemble the preliminary images. Only 42039 has undergone major differences. That is quite disappointing, since the promo video for 42030 showed a poster of 42039 in the same design as the preliminary image showed. Personally, I liked the preliminary version better. And the new mudgard pieces don’t look as useful now.

Well, here is the video where all pictures are shown:

Also, Paul from Australia posted the available pictures on his Blog: Click

Funny fact: A first picture of 42041 has occured as well. That means, that the famous 8041 Racing Truck will hit the shelves once again. This is rather nice, but I am not sure if this set still has the appeal to reach big sales. Apart from the black 5×11 panels, this set was not very outstanding in terms of parts.

Help needed for graduation project

Today I received a request on Eurobricks about participation in a survey for a graduation project. These are quite common these days and I think most of us can invest the 5 minutes needed to participate in the survey. Helping out here is kind of important, since the graduation of EB user Zanferia is depending on the projects success.

I joined this community not only because I am a LEGO fan but also for my studies. I worked at LEGO as an intern in 2012 so when I started my graduating project on online brand communities I could not see a better community to work with than a LEGO one! ( I am a French student at ESC Rennes School of Business )

For my graduating project, I need to send questionnaires to members of Eurobricks. Of course the questionnaires are anonymous, and answers will be used only for my report. At the end, it asks for an email address but you DO NOT have to give it, you can just check the “NO” box and submit the questionnaire.

I know you do not know me so feel free to ask me any question !!!Here is the link to my questionnaire: http://www.thesistools.com/web/?id=428554
If you have also friends in this community I would be really grateful if you could ask them to fill in the questionnaire as well.

This project means the world to me as I need it to graduate
Thank you for taking the time to read me

Zanferia

The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete and you don’t have to provide much personal data. Consider it your good deed of the day 😉