Iron Builder: Round 1 results

The world heavyweight of LEGO® building contests, Iron Builder is underway and the results of the first round in the Iron Forge are in! There were 120 entries from over 60 builders and only the top 20 progress to Round 2, which whittles the 20 down to eight.

The seed part was minifigure legs. Here are the 20 winners in no particular order, other than that we have arranged them into the groups they will be completing within in the next round. Bring on the NPU!

Top 20 builders, Iron Forge Round 1

Ted A.

Some builders are bred for greatness, and others are just bread to be toasted. It's a Wonder some have even made it this far... "Boom! Toasted!"

Iron Builder: the LEGO® building contest is back

Iron Builder returns! And you can participate. This is great news for anyone who is still looking for advanced LEGO® building challenges (if Ryan Howerter’s REC puzzles and New Elementary’s “Switch Up My Lantern” contest aren't enough for you, that is!).

We love Iron Builder for its mind-blowing NPU and cheeky sense of humour and we intend to share a lot of news about it here on New Elementary. To kick things off, we figured it has been gone for a while and many of you may have no idea what we are talking about. So we collared two of the Iron Builder admin team, Simon Liu and Markus Rollbühler, to give us the lowdown on IB 2020 and how – for the first time ever – anyone can get involved.

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Days 6-17

We are a little behind with sharing Ryan Howerter's REC puzzles with you (been too busy organising our own building contest!) so here is a bumper crop to give you a challenging LEGO® challenge to fill your days. Want more? They appear on Ryan's Instagram at 11am Mountain Time every day (and we also try to publish them on New Elementary's Twitter at the same time).

Welcome back to the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short. Simply look at these small LEGO builds, and try to figure out how they are built. Always assume the hidden side is identical. The colours are irrelevant. No rubber bands and no flex tubing allowed! It's not a contest, there are no prizes – think of it more like a daily crossword puzzle. Solve as many as you like, at your own pace. Solutions are posted every Sunday at https://linktr.ee/rhowerter.

REC17 Halhi141 

Bottom looks like the top.

Contest: Switch My Lantern Up

This contest is now closed. See the amazing entries here!

Time to see what you readers can build; yes it's a new LEGO® building competition!

We're asking you to make an amazing creation using a new piece; we want you to "switch up" the lantern element from the DC Comics CMFs by building something completely different with it. Don't use the lantern as a lantern – instead, impress us with your imagination and ingenuity!

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Days 2-5

On the weekend we mentioned Ryan Howerter is running an advanced daily building challenge and showed you the first one. They appear on their Instagram at 11am Mountain Time every day but we know not everyone uses Instagram, so we've started publishing them on New Elementary's Twitter and now here are a bunch of them for those of you who are yet to catch up! We will try to keep this up but if not, there's always Ryan's Instagram!

Welcome back to the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short. Simply look at these small LEGO builds, and try to figure out how they are built. Always assume the hidden side is identical. The colours are irrelevant. No rubber bands and no flex tubing allowed! It's not a contest, there are no prizes – think of it more like a daily crossword puzzle. Solve as many as you like, at your own pace. Solutions are posted every Sunday at https://linktr.ee/rhowerter.

REC5 by Ryan Howerter

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Day 1

If you’re looking for some fun and good LEGO® building challenges and ideas, we can help! Today there’s a piece of great news for advanced LEGO builders: our friend and contributor Ryan Howerter is launching a daily building challenge on their Instagram. It will give your LEGO brain a good workout and definitely teach you new techniques.

It’s called the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short, and you may be familiar with the concept already as four of these have been run on Flickr in the past. Here’s how it works.

Ryan posts a small LEGO build, and you try to figure out how it is built.

21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay: Designer interview with Milan Madge & Austin William Carlson

The next LEGO® Ideas set, 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay, seems to be dividing opinion in the community. Regardless, you will be interested to hear what its designers, Milan Madge (set) and Austin William Carlson (graphics and minifigures) have to say about their adaptation of Pablo Jiménez's original design. And for this exclusive interview they've also shared the seven prototypes showing the model's development!

The first thing many people will say is that the final product diverges significantly from the original fan model. How did you come to the decision to make these changes, and was there much input from the fan designer?

Milan: The first step was building the fan designer Pablo’s model, but it became obvious early on that I was missing a lot of elements. Many of the pieces have been out of production for some time, so we had to get creative. The biggest hurdle was the raised baseplate, which meant a total redesign of the structure of the model, but even tiny changes such as the new boat hulls being wider than the ones in Pablo’s submission meant that all the proportions needed altering – a real headache!

LEGO® DOTS: Inside The House of Dots

We have an event report today from a new contributor, Michael Studman (yes, his real name), who is active in the London AFOLs LUG. We asked him to report on the launch of LEGO® DOTS, especially to check out the new parts in the sets and the never-before-seen opalescent colours. 

It’s not uncommon for a LEGO-lover like me to have an emotional connection with established LEGO themes, from childhood, or later in life as an AFOL. What is more unusual is to have an emotional connection to a new LEGO range even before it has been revealed to the public, and to have had a small but exciting part to play in its launch.

This thought occurred to me as I excitedly waited with fellow fans, reporters, and influencers last Tuesday 28 January in Kings Cross, London for the public unveiling of LEGO DOTS, their newest theme.

Recycle my Bicycle: The winners!

Time to reveal the judge's five favourite entries to our recent building competition, where we invited you to use the new LEGO® bicycle frame (Design ID 50015) in a clever way.

We had 33 lovely entries. (Didn't see them? Check them out here!) We thank you all for building and hope you all had fun. Jaime Sanchez, the LEGO Element Designer who created the new bike frame (as well as the mountain bike frame from 2018), messaged us to let us know he's been following the results, "and the results have been excellent. Great contest and I look forward to seeing the winners."

Recycle my Bicycle: The entries, part 2

Here is the second half of entries we received to our recent building competition where we invited you to use the new LEGO® bicycle frame (Design ID 50015) as something different. The five winners will be announced tomorrow, but who is your favourite? If you missed the first half, check them out here.

Double Headed Dragon

Ben Tritschler (modestolus)

Once I went to the flea market and found something for my living room. It was a small model of a "Double Headed Dragon" which now is hanging on the wall in the living room - as you can see on the first picture.

Recycle my Bicycle: The entries, part 1

Our recent building competition invited you to use the new LEGO® bicycle frame (Design ID 50015) as something different. It closed last week, and before we announce the five winners we're going to show you all 33 entries; half today and half tomorrow.

2019 Skærbæk Workshop: Batman bits

In September 2019 we ran a workshop at the Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark. 60 AFOLs were given two hours to make interesting stuff using some of the newest LEGO® parts, and a supply of mostly random brick stock. Of the hundreds of models and tablescraps created, we are presenting some of the most interesting to inspire your own creations. My thanks to the SFW organisers, the New Elementary team on the day and our cheery photographer, Andrew Tipping.

To finish our selection of workshop builds we look at Mini Accessory, No. 10 (40598 | 6266155) and Mini Accessory, No. 11 both in Silver Metallic/ Flat Silver (50018 | 6266977); two accessory packs from Batman sets that contain amazing pieces and proved so popular, you get an extra-long post!

Edward Eggens “Light tank”

Torbjörn Kristiansson “Dark Pearl Palace”

2019 Skærbæk Workshop: lots of bits!

In September 2019 we ran a workshop at the Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark. 60 AFOLs were given two hours to make interesting stuff using some of the newest LEGO® parts, and a supply of mostly random brick stock. Of the hundreds of models and tablescraps created, we are presenting some of the most interesting to inspire your own creations. My thanks to the SFW organisers, the New Elementary team on the day and our cheery photographer, Andrew Tipping.

Rather than highlighting particular elements, today's creations use various seed parts from the array in ingenious ways.

Erik Smit “Deer”

2019 Skærbæk Workshop: the round grey bits

In September 2019 we ran a workshop at the Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark. 60 AFOLs were given two hours to make interesting stuff using some of the newest LEGO® parts, and a supply of mostly random brick stock. Of the hundreds of models and tablescraps created, we are presenting some of the most interesting to inspire your own creations. My thanks to the SFW organisers, the New Elementary team on the day and our cheery photographer, Andrew Tipping.

Today's selection of creations feature interesting uses of the various circular Medium Stone Grey/ Light Bluish Gray pieces we included in the seed parts: Sphere 3X3X11/3, W/ Knob (49308 | 6263183), Plate 4X4, Circle, W/ 2 Knobs (32627 | 6250188) and finally Motorcycle Rim Ø 75 Solid (46334 | 6268590). Of course the builders used other seed parts too, but hey I've got to string these posts together somehow.

Patrick Koningh “Mad Scientist with Death Ray”

2019 Skærbæk Workshop: the crook bit

In September 2019 we ran a workshop at the Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark. 60 AFOLs were given two hours to make interesting stuff using some of the newest LEGO® parts, and a supply of mostly random brick stock. Of the hundreds of models and tablescraps created, we are presenting some of the most interesting to inspire your own creations. My thanks to the SFW organisers, the New Elementary team on the day and our cheery photographer, Andrew Tipping.

We were surprised how popular the shepherd's staff, or crook (Tool, No. 10 in Medium Azure – 49492 | 6256157) proved at the workshop, so what better way to start this Parts Festival than to look at the creative ideas people came up with. Sadly the curved section is thinner than 3.18mm and so clips cannot connect to it, but that didn't stop them.

Axel Meyer “Curtain”

LEGO® House videos: fans and their models in the Masterpiece Gallery

Following on from our interview with fan builder Simon Hundsbichler & LEGO® Senior Experience Designer Stuart Harris, here are some videos that LEGO made on the day that AFOLs installed their models in the Masterpiece Gallery, which we have been given permission to publish.

They feature many of the builders chosen to display in LEGO House and the fabulous models. Even if you have been lucky enough to see these models in the Masterpiece Gallery already, you will enjoy this as many models are out of their cases and there are some 360° spins in there too.

LEGO® House interview: Fan designer Simon Hundsbichler & LEGO Designer Stuart Harris

On 26 September 2019, LEGO® House threw a party for AFOLs to mark the second anniversary of its inauguration. Among the events was the reveal of the fan models chosen to appear in the Masterpiece Gallery for the coming year, including three creations by Simon Hundsbichler (Simon NH) from Austria who you may recall participating in our 2018 Parts Festival. We met up with Simon for a chat and were joined by Stuart Harris, Senior Experience Designer at the LEGO House, for some context and information about how AFOLs and their artworks are chosen.

What are the intentions of the Masterpiece Gallery, Stuart?

Stuart: When Kjeld was dreaming up the idea of doing LEGO House, the fans were an integral part of his plans so they’ve been involved in everything – even reviewing the architecture and giving us input, which is why we have this giant 2x4 brick on top of the building. So they’ve always been planned in, to be a permanent part of the LEGO House. We have a number of places where the fans can showcase their work and the ‘main’ showcase, if you like, is here in the Masterpiece Gallery. This is the one place where we put together fan collections.

Contest: Recycle my Bicycle

This contest is now closed. See the amazing entries here!

Time to see what you readers can build; yes it's time for a new contest! (You must be 18 or over.) We're asking you to make an amazing LEGO® creation using a new piece; we want you to recycle the bicycle element to build something completely different with it. Impress us with your imagination and ingenuity!

2019 Parts Fest #1: Introducing the Elements

It is Parts Fest time once more here at New Elementary. We have posted a lovely selection of new-for-2019 LEGO® elements to some of the most innovative, inspiring builders we know and love. This time our featured builders are from Ireland, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, USA, Poland, France and Sweden; each with their own style and techniques to bring to our parts festival.

In this first post,  we wanted to introduce the elements included in this parts festival. All the elements are new to 2019 and almost all are completely new element moulds. Without further ado, let's meet the elements.

2019 Kockice Convention workshop: part 2

Today we're continuing the highlights of our workshop in Croatia earlier this year which was a part of the Kockice Convention in Zagreb. If you missed part 1, see it here.

“Modern Living” by Vesna Todorovic