LEGO Birthday Party

Wow, sorry for no posts, I’ve been in a non-posting mood.

Well any how, since it was my birthday yesterday I thought this video was rather relevant.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game!!!

Some said a collaboration between Marvel and TT Games could never happen. Apparently, nobody told the studio behind the popular series of Lego games. After all, Warner Bros. is the parent company of both TT Games and DC Comics, which made many people assume that a Marvel Lego game was off the table. As our cover story shows, those people were wrong.

Via: Gameinformer.com

Not much news is available yet, but just the name LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game conjures excitement! How can it be anything but cool? Especially after watching this video

LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game was a pleasant surprise for me and I really enjoyed it. Of course to be honest I’ve enjoyed pretty much every Travler’s Tales LEGO game out there. But the Lord of the Rings story just isn’t my cup of tea. Marvel on the other hand — well lets just say I went and saw Avengers three times in theaters and leave it at that.

The one thing I’m hoping, and they probably have fixed this if LEGO Lord of the Rings is any indication, is that the Marvel game will be about more than one character. I loved LEGO Batman 2 but its one failure was that you only got to be Superman at the very end of the story portion of the game. Once you got into Free Play, it was much cooler. I mean who doesn’t want to fly around the city looking for citizens to save?

Lord of the Rings was very different, and had to be, since it was the Fellowship of nine characters traveling around together for the most part. So you got to use all the different characters with all their different abilities much more frequently, even if it that can also get a tad old after awhile. I have to admit, I still haven’t finished the game. A week is about my limit on playing a game constantly. I don’t know of any of the games that I’ve fully finished except maybe the old LEGO Star Wars video games, but that was many years ago when I didn’t have quite so much going on in my life.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game won’t be out till the fall, so we have a while to wait. LEGO City Undercover exclusively for the Wii U game console is set to come out March 1st and although it looks like fun, I don’t have a Wii U and don’t have plans to get one any time soon.

Even if we do have a bit of a wait I’m looking forward to being Iron Man, Spiderman, and Wolverine when it finally does come out. And of course as soon as I know more info I’ll let you know.

Building Life-size Bag-end

The pictures were impressive, but didn’t really highlight the shear size of this model. This new video released by LEGO gives you a much better perspective on how really massive this model is.

Don’t have a chimney? Build one!

Okay, maybe we can’t do this in the real world, but in the LEGO world anything can be built from anything else.

LEGO Lord of the Rings the Video Game Review

So I’ve been playing LEGO Lord of the Rings the Video Game for about a week now. I’ve beaten the story portion and I’m making my way through gathering all the extras. I’m playing it on PS3, as that’s my console of choice. First impression — Awesome!!!!

Before I played it, I was a little hesitant with this game. Some of you might cringe when I say this, but I’m not a fan of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy. I love the Hobbit, which I’ve read several times, but the LOTR is just a little too heavy and depressing (if I want to be perfectly honest). Sure it has a grand sweeping story of power, tragedy and good triumphing over evil but I just can’t get into it.

I couldn’t even get excited about the sets too much. Somewhat because of my lack of interest in the subject matter, but also because there isn’t all that much in the way of parts that interests me in the sets. Yes, it is a bevvy of castle parts, and I used to be almost exclusively castle when I was younger. I just don’t build castles much anymore. And of course there are the minifigures but I don’t need to collect every figure either.

Putting all of that aside, I wanted to get the game and see for myself what it was like. And of course I wanted to share my opinion of the game with all of you.

Now after LEGO Batman 2 I wasn’t sure how TT Games could top it. Being able to traverse all of Gotham was simply awesome, especially flying around as Superman. There’s no flying in this game (or if there is, I haven’t found it yet ) and like the books you are walking around Middle Earth — all of Middle Earth.

Take that in for a moment. All of Middle Earth. Peter Jackson may have opened the window into the world, but running around a LEGO version of it is simply cool. Its all there — the Shire, Mines of Moria, etc. And you get to bash all sorts of things for golden coins to your hearts content. Its all laid out on the familiar map of Middle Earth and as you go through the different stages you unlock more of the world. The initial playing of the game as I beat each “story” version of the levels really kept me wanting to play till I beat the whole thing.

The Fellowship characters are all used with pretty equal amounts of time, which is nice. Giving even Pippen and Merry specific tasks that only they can do. Although I’ve found that Legolas is one of my favorite to play. Is that on purpose I wonder?

One thing I like even better than LEGO Batman 2 is that it is much easier to find the special silver bricks and items. In Batman I got a little tired of trying to find all the specials. I didn’t completely finish it after I went around the city for what felt like the 50th time.

You will probably get a little tired of traveling around here too as there is a vast assortment of items you need to collect. It is a little tiring traveling around all over. I feel as if I’ve gone on the long journey that the fellowship took. Here its easy to go on the map and actually select where you want to go and have the helpful transparent travel studs to show you the way. The only time I’ve found it hard to see them is in the snowy mountainous areas.

If you don’t want to wait for the game, but want to see all the “mini movies” you can see it here:

If you aren’t familiar with the story (and who isn’t really?) then there might be a few spoilers. There’s the now classic TT Games humor as well. But I have to warn you, it is an hour and a half long. So in essence, its really a full length movie.

So my over all opinion — get it! It might be a tad scary for the little ones, although they’ve skipped over a lot of the truly scary parts of the story. It would be a great Christmas gift for any little (or big) kids to play.

Here’s hoping (and I bet it will) that there will be a LEGO Hobbit the Video Game in the future.

LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game out Nov. 13th

Here’s a look at the LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game play. Its now slated to release November 13th, two weeks later than originally. But, now that I’ve watched the video, I’m not as excited as I was about this game. I personally am not a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I much prefer the Hobbit, as its more adventure and less darkness. And I doubt it will be as fun as LEGO Batman 2, as that went above and beyond my expectations on the coolness factor.

But don’t worry, I will be getting it and reviewing it, once it finally is out. I’m just less excited than I was. We’ll see how it actually plays once I’ve got it.

Sorting — What not to do

I don’t know if you’ve seen this video or not. On one hand it looks impressive. And sure, a huge pile of LEGO poured onto the floor and then sorted out is pretty impressive to the uninitiated. A true AFOL however, is not uninitiated. If you have any sort of large collection and if you’ve bought any large quantity of LEGO at one time you’ve done your own fair amount of sorting.

Now lets examine the video. Sure there’s 100 LEGO boxes, but from the looks of it, they are all the same LEGO box. And sure, ripping open all the plastic bags and dumping them on the floor may look dramatic, but its not very effective or logical.

LEGO bricks come in sets of bags in a box. These bags are either sorted by steps (i.e. — 1, 2, 3, etc.) or in size. These sets look to be one of the basic creator brick boxes. So its just basic bricks in different colors and sizes. If they are in fact the same LEGO set, as these seem to be, the more logical thing is to open all the same types of bags. So then instead of going through a huge pile you have a smaller pile but with all the same types of parts.

What is more difficult is when you have to sort an assortment of various sets that have very little in common. Now of course everyone has their own process of how to sort and store their LEGO. I even wrote about sorting a couple of years ago.

I am in fact currently in the process of sorting quite a lot of LEGO. Its not 100 sets, but its probably in the range of at least 30 and up to maybe 50. I’m not sure as I didn’t really count the amount of sets. But these are not the same set and that makes a big difference in how I sort them. In this case, you have to do levels of sorting. Not just one large sort. You can’t even really do that with any sort of practicality, there would just be too many pieces. And, you have to remember, I sort everything by piece and color.

So my first step is to sort into — plates, bricks and “other.” Something like this –

And before you ask, yes those are full and no, that isn’t all the LEGO I have to sort.

Once all the elements are in their pre-sorted state. I go to the next level. The bricks and plates get sorted by size — 1×1, 1×2, etc. Then they get sorted by color and get put away (yay!). The “other” is more complicated. I sort them out into tiles, slopes, minifig accessories, etc. Then I sort them out by size or style, then by color (if needed) and finally they get put away too.

So your sorted elements can look something like this:

I know it sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but when you need to be able to get the exact part you want, exactly when you want it, as you are building, it makes all the work worth it.

Dynaway Sorting Plant

I know I could certainly use one of these.

I’m not a Mindstorms person, but I love seeing what other people can make with them. BrickIt has created a Brick Sorting Plant. It only works for 2×4 and 1×2 bricks, but it does sort them in both size a color.

It’s build for a company called Dynaway (www.dynaway.com). They use this model to demonstrate their manufacturing execution system. The model is designed to fit inside one large flightcase, for easy transport. The model is the second model we’ve build for Dynaway.

I’d love a sorting machine, only mine would need to be much bigger and sort every LEGO element in every color. Hey, one can dream right?

Brick Built Life-Sized Dalek — and what they did wrong

Now let me first emphasize that this is not a LEGO built model. It was created by the Character Building Company and made with their building blocks.

For this year’s Toy Fair, a 280-kilogram, 2-meter-tall plastic Dalek will be unveiled to strike fear into patrons’ hearts. This project required four people, 328 hours (almost two weeks) of effort, and 157,460 separate Character Building bricks.

Via — io9.com

As a Doctor Who fan, seeing a life size Dalek built out of bricks is cool.

But watching the video as a LEGO Master Model Designer, I see a lot of things wrong with the model. Not that I want to bash them too much mind you, but they made that model way, way too heavy. 280 kg is just a little over 617 pounds!

When I, or any other properly trained Model Builder, designs a model we want to make it as light as possible. Even when they are only made of bricks, with no metal armature, a large model can get heavy very quickly.

If you’ve watched the video all the way through, watch it again. On this second go round, notice the interior. They’ve built solid walls criss-crossed to give structural support. Although this will give support, it will also make it much heavier than it has to be.

In contrast, look at the hidden interior of my Perot Museum

Granted this is a smaller model being only 2 1/2 feet cubed, but you can clearly see the difference in sheer quantity of brick used. My model is just as structurally sound but instead of being hundreds of pounds, it only weighs about 60.

For further perspective check out this life-sized Ford Explorer made by LEGO

You can see that there are spaces in the interior structure, allowing strength with less weight. Even so, the Ford Explorer still weighs about as much as an actual car.

As more and more companies have a building brick line (clearly copy-cats of our beloved LEGO) they want to create their own “impressive” large models. This has been done with mixed results. I’ve seen some that resemble what they are supposed to be but that do not have the beauty and well crafted design of a LEGO sculpture. This Ironman by Mega Bloks is a good example:

(although I’m hoping for a stunning Super Hero model to surface now that LEGO has the DC and Marvel licenses. )

This Optimus Prime created by Kre-0 really impressed me at Comic Con last year

But, in talking with the designer, I found out that she is also a former LEGO model builder.

I’m not saying that only LEGO trained Model Builders can build great models — the vast array of MOCs (My Own Creations) created by Adult (and child) LEGO fans is proof of that — but it helps.

3,000 Bricks, 46 seconds, One LEGO Face

Check out my friend Master Model Builder Ryan  Ziegelbauer as he builds the face of Sarah Chan winner of the  the Junior Master Model Builder Ultimate Build Off  in January at LEGOLAND California.

If you miss it the first time watch it again to see all the fun extra stuff that travels along Ryan’s desk as he builds.