NEXOGON: Coronae Softworks

Another of the 14 featured builders in our parts festival using LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ piece 'Rotor w/ 4.85 hole' makes his premiere today: Christian Benito (a.k.a. Little Brick Root). He lives in Portland, Oregon, as do two other builders I chose... by sheer coincidence!

When my Nexogons arrived, I was in the midst of a pre-convention building frenzy and I barely had time to do a bit of fiddling. With the con behind me, I had a particularly interesting tablescrap that I just didn’t know how to use. It uses Nexogons to make a really interesting shape, but nothing has come of it yet. Then in one of Tim’s articles I saw six Nexogons arranged in a star. A building came together in my head and Coronae Softworks was born.

NEXOGON: Our parts festival begins

Our next parts festival, NEXOGON, is progressing nicely! The new LEGO® part 27255, a.k.a. "Plate, Modified 6 x 6 Hexagonal with Pin Hole" or "Rotor , w/ 4.85 hole, No. 1" or the "Combo NEXO Power shield" is found in several 2017 sets from the NEXO KNIGHTS™ range. Bulk amounts of this part are now on their way to 14 select builders around the world and indeed some of the builders have received them already. One of them, Gary Davis, was so excited he immediately sent me this picture... so I guess the festival is officially underway!

LEGO® boxes: are they important?

The LEGO® Group want to know what fans think about the way that premium, expensive sets are packaged. They've created a surprisingly detailed survey for everyone to use. As someone who saved LEGO boxes from an early age, I found it rather fun to complete! The survey closes on March 6, 2017.

Top 10 LEGO® parts and colours

The Pick and Build (PAB) walls found inside LEGO® Stores are extremely popular with AFOLs, being a great source of bulk parts. Choose a small or large cup and fill it with whichever parts you wish - well, whichever are available on the wall at the time. However with so many LEGO elements in existence and so few slots available on the walls, you're unlikely to find that exact piece you wanted, or that rare colour you need in bulk. That could change; a new initiative means that American fans might see more of what they really want in 2018.

Call for builders - get hexagonal!

In my previous post, I analysed the new hexagonal LEGO® plate (Design ID 27255) and discovered some of its potential, but I want to see more ideas, and more hexagonal plates! Therefore I'm planning another New Elementary parts festival called Nexogon, based around seeing what can be done with this element in bulk. I'll be relying on a few of the great builders who have helped out in the past but I also want some new faces in the lineup. If I sent you a few dozen of these, do you think you could do something amazing?

[EDIT: I have received so many applications, I've now closed the selection process and will decide soon - but you can still participate by using the hexagonal plates you've bought yourself. Read more below.]

LEGO® Leicester Square

You've most likely seen many pictures already of the new flagship LEGO® Store in Leicester Square, but I thought I would share mine too. These were taken the day before the official opening at the AFOL-only VIP event.

My favourite thing in the shop is this incredible diorama.

It's not flat; sections of it project outwards.

The New Black: Venice 1486

Having already designed many small models that highlight new LEGO® parts for The New Black parts festival, Jonas Kramm returns today with a fully-fledged MOC, which he built with another Jonas!

The parts festivals here on New Elementary are all about sharing ideas with the community as top how new parts can be used, and it is always great to see builders with unique building styles and ideas use the given parts in different ways.

So I was glad when I got visited by the talented Jonas (Brick Vader) one weekend in August to talk about the LEGO hobby and to inspire each other. We started building a small scene from the game “Assassin's Creed 2” that takes place in Venice in 1486 and it turned out to fit perfectly some of the details I already built with the new moulds. In addition we added further details that also feature these new parts.

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.