The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Fences

Jonas Kramm returns today for another instalment of "The New Black", our celebration of a selection of new LEGO® parts. Builders have been challenged to come up with interesting uses for the (mostly) Black parts from 2016 (mostly) that I chose, and the ones Jonas used in this post can be seen to the right.

After my first idea, to create some lamps, the next theme that popped up in my mind was fences. This idea was heavily inspired by the wish to use the new skeleton leg (Element ID 6124849 | Design ID 23769) as it just screamed to be used as a fence. To do so I only had to add a 4L bar in Black, and furthermore I played a bit with the stone wall that frames the fence segments.

The New Black - Jason Briscoe: Milagre Hoverbike

When I launched The New Black, our latest parts festival here on New Elementary, I welcomed anyone to let me know if they have built stuff using the parts I selected. I'm glad to say we already have some great images from people and so I will post some of them during the festival. Today we have one from the lovely Jason Briscoe (bizzabricks), who also was a part in our previous festival, Nexo-Classic Space.

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Space ranger Nino speeds majestically across the vast capim grass plains of Milagre.

The New Black - Huw Millington: Beasties

Today it is the turn of Huw Millington of Brickset to show us his first builds for our parts festival, "The New Black", where we examine a selection of new and recoloured parts that the LEGO® Group have released in Black this year.

The 'Mini Pony Tail' (Element ID 6129476 | Design ID 22411) is a wonderfully organic piece that lends itself well to other animal parts. My first thought was ‘insect legs’, so here’s a small beastie:

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Lamps

Today we have the first results from "The New Black", New Elementary's latest celebration of new LEGO® parts. Selections of pieces (see my previous post to read about them) were sent to various builders and first up we have one of several posts by Jonas Kramm featuring his interesting little builds and observations about the parts. Jonas is well-known as Legopard on Flickr and can now be found on Instagram as @jonaskramm. If you are not already familiar with his work, you must check it out! Recently Jonas has also become the ambassador for German LUG Imperium der Steine.

It felt like Christmas in July when a package from the Royal Mail arrived here in Germany. Luckily, I was picked to test some new LEGO pieces for New Elementary. The brief Tim had chosen was “The New Black” and was obviously affected by the majority colour of the elements. Exceptions were only the two colourless parts in trans-clear.

I was warned that the pieces would arrive unsorted, but that wasn't too bad. Because while sorting I got the first ideas what pieces I could use for what purpose. I was really flashed by the selection Tim has chosen, as it contained a lot of new moulds and recoloured elements that I had totally missed in the part update in June.

The New Black

Every now and then, world-class LEGO builders experiment with some of the newest LEGO elements to examine their possibilities here on New Elementary. I call these “Parts Challenges” (although I’m less and less happy with this phrase, given that the task is a non-competitive affair. What should we call them instead? Maybe a "Parts Festival"!) Thanks once again to the super support of the LEGO Group we have a new round of posts coming up over the next month or so looking at some new elements from 2016 sets.

Seventh Heaven

Today we have an extensive review of the parts that come in LEGO® Ideas 21307 Caterham Seven 620R, peppered with comments from the designer of the original concept, Carl Greatrix. I could not be happier for Carl, who is a top bloke and a remarkable builder. He’s also fun at parties.

New Brickset features

A quick post to alert you to two fantastic community resources regarding LEGO® colours and parts which Huw Millington has now integrated to Brickset, making the world's most popular fan site about LEGO even better!

Nexo-Classic Household Appliances: Elspeth De Montes

All week we've been enjoying amazing creations that use a selection of new 2016 LEGO® parts, built exclusively for New Elementary by a fantastic bunch of AFOLs from the UK. It's been all Spacers so far but today we have one last builder who is not a Spacer: Elspeth De Montes. She brought things firmly back down to a domestic setting!

The shape of the Nexo shield caused her to think of an ironing board. "It’s not exactly going to win the Dyson innovation award for Most Stable Ironing Board," admits Elspeth, but it certainly is delightful I'm sure you will agree.

Totally Swooshable

I recently found myself quite appalled with myself. I came across a LEGO fan site called Swooshable, which has been around for years and is utterly superb, yet I wasn't aware of it. How did I miss this for so long? In case you're as deprived as I was, I'm writing about it today and the site's creator, Linus Bohman, has kindly answered some questions.

Pull Together With Polybags

Here's a box of about 100 polybags, collected from people from New Elementary and London AFOLs and destined for Germany where they will be personally handed to refugee children. It's not too late to donate some yourself!

1x3x2 inverted half-arch

Over the next few weeks I'll be publishing articles about new LEGO® parts that have come out this summer - "with a little help from my friends". Yes, these new parts have gone out to a handful of the UK's finest builders to see what they make of them. The first of the three parts under the microscope is the new small inverted arch, offering Bart Simpson a slightly less dangerous skateboarding experience than before, as Simon Pickard shows:

Fairy Bricks limited edition set

As you may recall, we love and support Fairy Bricks here at New Elementary. They raise funds, use them to buy LEGO sets at discounted prices to make the most of , then donate the sets to children's hospitals and hospices around the world. Their latest fundraising endeavour is a limited edition kit of the Fairy Bricks logo in 3D, designed by UK Certified Professionals Bright Bricks. There's only 500 available and you can buy set FB001 now! International customers, it's probably best to contact Fairy Bricks direct at contact@fairybricks.org.

LEGO® colour chart reference

I have wanted to discuss LEGO® colours more often on this blog but it's a horribly complicated subject. Happily there are those more qualified than I; one is Ryan Howerter, who has produced several valuable resources for AFOLs, which he explains for us today. But for the ease of your future reference, I'll list them up front:

• LEGO Color reference spreadsheet with BrickLink & TLG names
• Brick Colorstream, a visual catalogue - also including additional rarities
• LEGO Color Timeline showing years of production for all known LEGO colors

There are always more LEGO colors than you expect.

With the help of a few other AFOLs, I’ve been attempting to catalogue every color that LEGO has produced. I’m not the first to do this (see Peeron, Isodomos, BrickLink, Brickset, LDraw…), but in combining the existing lists and frequent updates I hope to have a reference for the AFOL community that is as complete as possible.

That soft, rubbery look

How do you like the feel of a woman's soft hair? No, really, the LEGO® Group (TLG) would like to know. They are seeking feedback from fans on those soft rubbery hairpieces used in the Friends and Disney Princess themes since 2012.

Kim Thomsen from CEE explains: "Feedback can range from touch and feel to usability and play value. All is valid, we want the negative and positive feedback. The purpose is to supply LEGO Quality with valuable insights on the soft hair elements from high affinity consumers (that's YOU - our experts)."

So this is your chance to tell them what you think about such elements. The deadline is by end of play this coming Monday, 12 January 2015.

COMMENTING IS NOW CLOSED ON THIS ARTICLE.

Birds is the word

1 January 2015 sees the launch of the next Ideas set, 21301 Birds, designed by British LEGO (and bird) fan Tom Poulsom. I had the pleasure of meeting him last week at the massive Brick 2014 show in London, and can bring you some of his insight in this review of the set. Being sort-of-British myself I can't help feeling proud that two Ideas sets released within months of one another are by British fans, and it's an interesting coincidence that unlike other Ideas sets, neither are based on existing intellectual properties (IPs).

AFOLCON 2014

Just a note to say I've no time to put a post together this week... as AFOLCON/Brick 2014 is here in London, and today consisted of some 200 or so adult fans enjoying seminars and setting up displays in the MAAASSIVE exhibition hall. However I'll try to post bits and bobs on social media, so keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Here are some tidbits from today.

The best thing about today was someone quietly pointing out that the minifig heads from Minecraft are 'in System' after all, so I was wrong in my recent post on the subject. By placing a 1x2 jumper and a 2x2 jumper next to each other, two Minecraft heads align. Now that is nice.

Fairy Bricks Big Raffle 2014

I'm involved in a charity called Fairy Bricks; the idea of which is to raise money to buy LEGO® sets for children's hospitals and hospices - so far, over £20,000 (US$34,000) worth! It began life as a raffle on Brickset last year and is now a registered charity in the UK, but assists hospitals all over the globe. The Brickset Forum is full of AFOLs who know where to get heavily discounted LEGO, so the funds Fairy Bricks raise is used to get the biggest possible LEGO bang for the buck.

Exo Suit: tease and reveal

Having been starved for the best part of a year, in the last fortnight AFOLs have enjoyed a glut of information about the next LEGO® Ideas set; 21109 Exo Suit, redesigned by LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford based on the submission by AFOL Peter Reid. There are already several set reviews online so I'm mixing mine up a bit by interspersing it with a review of the teaser marketing campaign driven by fans.

The final competition entries

New Elementary's contest to design your own vision of LEGO® House closed on Thursday and judging is now well underway! The two winners will be announced on Friday.

I'm glad to say we had 30 entries, from 21 people, and they've all given us judges something to think about! I'd like to thank every one of you for taking the time to build - I wish I could post everyone a prize - but most of all, I hope you had fun building.

An entrant pointed out to me that Stupid Flickr doesn't display all the entries on our Group page if you are not logged into Flickr with an account. So I thought I would put them all here for everyone's enjoyment - click any pic to see the alternate shots on Flickr, plus some contestants write interesting comments about their designs.

LEGO® Ideas Exo Suit: the logo

Exciting news today; the LEGO® CUUSOO team have given New Elementary readers this exclusive first look at the official logo to be used on their forthcoming set, the Exo Suit! The set will be released in August 2014. Knowing how special the Exo Suit is to the fan community, the CUUSOO team took the unusual step of deciding to work hand-in-hand with AFOLs to decide how the set should be packaged and marketed. So the designer of the original Exo Suit, British AFOL Peter Reid, assembled a team and I was fortunate enough to be included.