10 March 2020

Minifig Posing Stand: Kevin Levell's Fishy Fun

Posted by Elspeth De Montes
We sent a few builders an interesting new LEGO® part and following on from Jonas Kramm's analysis last month, UK-based builder Kevin Levell reveals what he made of these small but useful angled bar and stud elements.

The new posing element (Design ID 65578) is officially known as "Handle, No.1", while BrickLink call it "Minifigure, Utensil Posing Stand, Bar with Hollow Stud" and Rebrickable have gone with the neat "Bar, Angled with Stud on End" and can be found in 71026 DC Superheroes Collectible Minifigure series. It looks to be another wonderfully versatile addition to the selection of small LEGO parts.


It comes only in Transparent/ Trans-Clear (Element ID 6285587) so far. As a builder, generally speaking, sci-fi is my area of interest and so black, grey or silver would strike me as the next most useful colours for this part, although I can definitely see that in brown or green shades it would be useful in organic builds.

Dabbling with geometry, tablescraps and earworms


This wasn’t the first time I had noted the part’s appearance; blurry photos of the DC minifigure series first leaked late last year, I was eager to get my mitts on some. 


The simple geometry of this part is a bar set at 45° angle to a stud.

As Jonas noted, if you have eight of them you are bound to create an octagon.


Multiple permutations of this part married to an appropriate partner (such as the 1x1 Headlight Brick) will result in an octagonal array of outward-facing studs.


I think it definitely offers some interesting possibilities for building off at 45°.

Baby Shark



“Baby Shark, doo, doo, doo, do!” - Sorry.

The angle reminded me of projecting eye stalks. I also used another recent transparent 1x1 piece with bar here, to attach the tail.

Goat Head Moth



Then there’s this strange little goat-headed moth thing, which developed as a result of putting four posing elements into the side holes of a Dalek Brick (Brick 1x1 with 4 Knobs - 4733) forming the connections for the eyes and Curled Whip horns.

Geodesics

Of course, we don’t have to twin the 45° angle of the 65578 with 90° bar holes in ‘studs on the side’ SNOTs or the anti-studs on the Headlight’s back; we do have many, many other angles at our disposal. I've used the Ninjago Weapon Holder Ring in Transparent Brown/ Trans-Black (Holder No.1 - 6109312|20612) in a geometric build before; Nexogon Globeships back in March 2017!



 120° between bar holes gives us a tripod.



















Sadly my available spare parts don’t allow pursuing this to a fractal extent.



I did create a geodesic something...




















...that mutated into a cyberpunk tree?

Something Fishy

After trying to clad the geodesic ball with alternate parts, I found myself heading into unfamiliar waters...



While all the posing elements are hidden, they do allow for some subtle shaping due to the ability to alter the exact position of parts.



The strange thing was that I had created this background for the previous parts festival, trying desperately to use the Accessories, Marine Life, No. 1 in Vibrant Coral (49595 | 6262127) and the coral elements, but they just weren’t working with the things I had built. This cross little chap, however, went swimmingly!

Something robot


Finally, I wouldn’t be doing my job if there wasn’t a little robot in amongst all this somewhere!

What do you think about these small versatile action-posing elements?  What would you use them for? 




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Products mentioned in this post were kindly supplied by the LEGO Group. All content represents the opinions of New Elementary authors and not the LEGO Group. All text and images are © New Elementary unless otherwise attributed.

9 comments:

  1. Great part usage.
    But is that a cyberpunk tree, or did you create the corona virus?

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    Replies
    1. Can't tell whether it looks like a tree, but it doesn't have any corona so it is definetly not a corona virus....

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  2. This would be really useful in silver as a lightsaber handle

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  3. For the octagon with headlight bricks, can the headlight bricks be rotated? Because if so it could for the base of custom-sized cones, which would be immensely useful.

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    Replies
    1. Ah, I see what you mean. I guess the headlights could be too offset to be securely placed on studs underneath, though...

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    2. Shouldn't be a problem. The socket on the back of the headlight brick is centered on the stud on the front, so those connections line up the same no matter how you rotate the headlight bricks.

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  4. I used them as arms for a trans clear robot in a monochrome vignette (due to a lack of trans clear minifigs, I made the robot from 1x1 headlight bricks, 1x1 round bricks and an assortment of other small pieces.)

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  5. I'm up to four in use at this point. After making a few tweaks to Starro the Conqueror, I was able to eliminate one of the pair used to attach Aquaman to the upper left arm (combined with Green Lantern on the top arm, that makes two). A third is used to hold Batman in a more actiony pose as he charges forward to take on spore-controlled Superman, Captain Marvel, and Plastic Man. And a fourth ended up being used to hold Duke Caboom's motorcycle upright because I was at a show and didn't have anything else handy at the time.

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  6. Pretty sure that octagon of headlight pieces is just an Arc Reactor :3

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