22 February 2018

London AFOLs: Real-world

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We had a box of LEGO® pieces left over from our Skærbæk Parts Festival (which Jason Briscoe kindly drove back to London, thanks Jase!) and so we took them to a meet up of London AFOLs, for more building adventures. London AFOLs are - you guessed it - a bunch of adult fans of LEGO who meet in London. In a pub! It's very friendly and informal, and new and international visitors are always welcome. They meet on the second Monday of every month, so check out the group on meetup.com/LondonAFOLs

Over three posts, we will show you just a fraction of what was built that evening. Today we start with some real-world objects the builders dreamt up. Our parts were added to London AFOLs' existing brick stock and head honcho Richard Selby had the idea of restricting build time to just 20 minutes! Then everyone would move tables to try out the different parts on offer. Many of the featured 'seed' parts from the festival had previously been gobbled up by Skærbæk builds, so you'll notice more of the supplementary parts from the festival in these builds. A lot of these were rare or new recolours of existing parts, so I will point some of these out as we go.


Now that both the hinge base (6186045|3937) and the accompanying 2x2 top (6167644|6134) come in Reddish Brown (in sets like Brickheadz 41595 Belle, available at Amazon USA) we thought it would be a useful supplementary piece. This builder combined 10 into a wheel which inspired this gorgeous microscale mill scene. I love the use of the 8x8 round tile with 4 studs in Earth Blue [TLG]/Dark Blue [BL] (6200046|6177), which only comes in 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V. (Read Elspeth's review.)





A Battenberg cake! This makes use of an element that returned in 2017, having not been sighted since Belville sets of the 1990s. If you believe BrickLink it's a tile with studs on the edges, and if you believe TLG it's a plate with 26 knobs.... but at least we can all agree it's 6x16 and White (Element ID 6186682 | Design ID 6205). You'll find it in Friends 41322 Snow Resort Ice Rink (currently discounted at Amazon USA) and I'm sure it will be popular with Hoth fans.



When this model was presented I was a bit like errr... okay...


 

...until it was pointed out that it is a die! Sides 1, 2 and 4 visible here. I suspect its roll may be somewhat biased though.





Another microscale scene involving the brown hinge and round blue tile! So simple, so cute.



This cute little clock makes use of a couple of not-new-but-fairly-new parts, both in Black. Apologies for the soft focus!

There's the tassel (6156679|25375) which was introduced by the Ninjago theme in 2016 and, remarkably, has remained there – at time of writing, all 19 sets the piece appears in are Ninjago-themed. LEGO parts often start as exclusive to one theme but obviously it is in the company's financial interest for as many designers to re-use moulds as much as possible. Perhaps it was felt that this part is just "too Ninjago" to use elsewhere. If you want to see more uses of it, check out the parts festival we ran in 2016 called The New Black.

The tassel is attached to a round tile with bar with pin hole (originally 6167933|20482, now 6186675|31561). Elspeth examined this piece in greater detail for us back in 2016.




A neat 180º reversal of two Garmadon hats (Design ID 26007). See more ways of using of Minifig, Headgear Hat, Conical Asian with Raised Center from the Skærbæk workshop.



And to finish, another 180º reversal of two Garmadon hats!




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5 comments:

  1. Pretty cool builds. I especially like the mill and the clock.

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  2. Thanks Tim, great to see this here after a bit of a wait. Didn't you join us in October? As Tim says, London AFOLs love to have visitors. So if you're passing through London, look us up on Meetup.com We meet 2nd Monday of the month.

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  3. Frances Hendry27 Feb 2018, 19:34:00

    Wow! I built the chap in the last picture. I am quite excited to see my little guy on here.I was at the meetup and everyone around me is making epic models and there is me just fiddling around with a few pieces! Very happy (and suprised) to see him again!! Thanks for showing him!!

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    Replies
    1. He was so funny, the perfect expression, and great to see those hats put to good use! Thanks Frances

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