Studs with Studs

For today's instalment in our Parts Festival, we have some analysis. Elspeth De Montes (azurebrick) has noted a similarity between three of the elements and has enlisted help from three little friends to show them to you.

It may be considered slightly controversial to call a 1x1 round plate a ‘stud’ as apparently there are a few other nicknames used by AFOLs. Personally, I only ever knew these to be called studs until recently when I heard other nicknames including ‘dots’ and ‘pips’. I’m not sure if it’s controversial to call a handsome man a ‘stud’ but these fine young male minifigures are happy to be complimented in such a manner.

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.

Neo-Nexo Ice Planet Knights

It fascinates me that, when planning the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ theme, the LEGO Group seemingly took inspiration from AFOLs. Specifically, the idea of building new models using the colour schemes of olden-day LEGO themes, such as the Neo-Classic Spacers do. The colour scheme the designers chose for Nexo Knights in 2016 clearly riffs on the LEGO Space theme from 1992 called Ice Planet 2002.

This made me wonder what a modern-day AFOL of super Space-building skills... say, Tim Goddard... might create for Ice Planet using Nexo Knights pieces. Thanks (once again) to the excellent support of the AFOL Relations & Programs team at the LEGO Group and Tim's incredible building skills, the idea has now come to fruition... so let's see how he got on!

I was given an interesting brief for this article: “the Nexo Knights range has a definite flavour of Ice Planet 2002: explore”. There is no denying the colour palettes overlap greatly; you just need a little white to mix with the blue and orange shades and you are almost there, albeit with a medieval twist to the theme. So I have created a few models investigating how the new pieces in the range can be used to add a bit of frostiness to spacey creations, how useful these new moulds are, plus a few other observations along the way.

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.

Nexo-Classic Space: Peter Reid

All week we've had excellent Spacers (Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe, Tim Goddard, Jeremy Williams and David Alexander Smith) building gorgeous things with this bunch of new LEGO ® parts. Today it is the turn of Pete Reid; co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future and the designer of 21109 Exo Suit, with its wee adorable robot turtle. Once again he has employed the masterful skills of Chris Salt to hone the loveliness of the imagery.

Grab a cup of tea first. Strong, British tea. You're going to want to scroll slowly. Over to Pete...

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Asteroids

First up, a homage to a classic arcade game, Asteroids. Only a couple of pieces are actually attached to other pieces. I'm not sure laying out elements like this counts as a proper LEGO model.

Nexo-Classic Space: David Alexander Smith

We're back for another day of Classic Space builds inspired by some of the new LEGO® parts released this year. Following hot on the trail of Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe, Tim Goddard and Jeremy Williams we have David Alexander Smith. I first noticed David because he creates all sorts of odd things in a primitive style but most recently he has become known for his charming series of Space Dinos which emulate not only Classic Space but also other toys of the 1980s.

I sent David the same parts as everyone else except for the white 2x2 wedges, and he used all the supplied parts in one creation. Let's hand over to him now to see what he made...

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The little bag of Nexo Knights elements I was sent immediately got my sci-fi juices flowing. As a Classic Space builder the pieces cried out to me to be used in a whole host of ways, although I suspect a space tortoise wouldn’t be the most obvious choice.

Nexo-Classic Space: Jeremy Williams

It's day four of our investigation of seven new 2016 LEGO® elements. So far Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe and Tim Goddard have all taken on our super Spacer challenge: today, it's the multitalented Jeremy Williams (Bricking It). Without further ado I will hand over to Jez.

Pilot seat

This uses the Nexo Bot torso element (Design ID: 24078) as a control column, allowing me to attach two levers and a display.

The newer style of 1x1 tile with clip introduced in 2013 which has a C-shaped clip (15712) fits onto the torso nicely, whereas the old, more angular clip (2555) doesn't fit as well, for some strange reason. This warrants further investigation!

I also placed the seat in a mockup cockpit, shown below.

Nexo-Classic Space: Tim Goddard

Today it is the turn of Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha) to have a play with New Elementary's selection of new 2016 LEGO® parts (hot on the heels of Jason Briscoe yesterday and Drew Hamilton the day before). Regular readers will know that Tim is the co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future but might not have caught up with the fact that he has launched a project on LEGO Ideas, the subject of which may surprise you!

Meanwhile, back in space, Tim used each of the 'classic Classic Space' coloured parts we sent (namely Bright Blue [TLG]/Blue [BL] and Medium Stone Grey [TLG]/Light Bluish Gray [BL]) to create this sweet microscale ship for us.

Nexo-Classic Space: Jason Briscoe

Welcome to part two of our investigation into some of the new parts the LEGO® Group have released in 2016. In part one, Drew Hamilton created a Utility Bot in a suitably Spacey room. Today it's the turn of Jason Briscoe (Brizzasbricks) to see what Spacey stuff he could make with the selection and he really went for it! Thanks also to the awesome Chris Salt, who did some awesome photoshoppery to make some of Jason's builds even Spacier and awesomier.

Citroën DS-inspired Rover

"This was my favourite build and the one that I spent the most time on. Whilst it does not look much it took a few iterations to get to the final version. It uses four pairs of the white 2x2 wings (Design IDs 24299 and 24307): one pair for the front spoiler, two pairs for the front and rear mudguards and one pair for a pillar screen support. I also managed to squeeze in a couple of the 1x1 plate with vertical tooth (15070) to create some retro rear light clusters. The styling is late Classic Space and takes a few design cues from sets like 6842 Small Space Shuttle Craft from 1985."

Nexo-Classic Space: Drew Hamilton

We have a fun week ahead! In January the LEGO® Group sent a delicious selection of new parts, mostly from the Nexo Knights theme, for New Elementary to play with and we will be publishing the results over the next week. Come back every day to check it out. As you can see below there were a lot of Neo-Classic Space colours in there so I couldn't resist asking a bunch of Spacers to come up with something Spacey!

Bow and arch

The best thing about doing this blog is meeting people who like it! A noticeable amount of these people mention that their favourite post is "that one about the arches", which I wrote back in March 2014 detailing the ways in which the part designers were raising up the interior curves in arched bricks. If you haven't read it you may like to do so first, as I have a little more to say on the subject today, but first we need to take a look at a related part which Gary mentioned last time, in his review of 41101 Heartlake Grand Hotel, the bow window.

Scrollin' along

Somewhat later than intended, here is the second of three reviews of new parts that the LEGO Group (TLG) have released this summer. First up we looked at the new inverted half-arch; today me and the gang are back to examine the...um, what to call this piece? I seem to have ended up referring to it as 'the scrolly thingy' but that's a bit rubbish... although much more descriptive than the official TLG name, 'Design Brick 1X1X2'. BrickLink (BL) are typically long-winded but accurate with theirs; 'Brick, Modified 1 x 1 with Scroll with Open Stud'. I find BL names too tiresome to write repeatedly, so I will go with my sister's exotic suggestion of 'the curlicue'.

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: