Bravo Three One Eight

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I am sure that many people, upon seeing these models, would cite them as proof that LEGO® have lost their way "since I was a kid, when it was just bricks". Whilst these are indeed new parts, the fact is that the changes that brought them into the LEGO System occurred in the 1970s.

The New Black - Tim Goddard: Blaze mech

Another of our regular contributors has joined in The New Black parts challenge of their own volition! Today Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha) pens a love letter to one single new part released by the LEGO® Group this year. 

Ah, Plate 1X1 Round W/3.2 Shaft (Design ID 26047). I thought I was dreaming when I first saw it but it was real! The semi-circular end is made for rotating, it allows you to attach anything with a clip any which way you like which is just perfect for the legs on my mini Blaze mech.

The New Black: Weapon No. 11

I screwed up when I sent the builders the parts for The New Black; I omitted one of the most interesting new elements I had chosen! So I guess it is up to me to tell you about the piece that the LEGO® Group have named "Weapon No. 11" (Element ID 6134781 | Design ID 24144).

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Delicious Leftovers

He's been astonishingly prolific but today we have the final contribution from Jonas Kramm to The New Black, our celebration of new LEGO® parts. 

After talking about lamps, fences, furniture, Venice and the Alien, you get now the leftovers that did not fit into one of these categories but could be of interest nevertheless. My first is a small tree in autumnal colours that makes use of the bar holders with clip (Element ID 6015891 | Design ID 11090) and the new bar holder with handle (6143318 | 23443) for the trunk. These connect to each other via pneumatic T-pieces and, in addition, strings make the structure look more organic.

The New Black - Peter Reid: Blacktron Assault Tanks

I asked readers to send in pictures of models they've created that use some the LEGO® parts featured in our current parts festival, The New Black. Perhaps having got the bug when he took place in our previous parts festival, Nexo-Classic Space, Peter Reid (legoloverman) surprised me with some microscale tanks he built especially for New Elementary readers.

Blacktron Wolverine Assault Tank

The latest addition to Kazak's army of darkness, the Wolverine assault tank is a remote-controlled, mobile missile launcher. Each unit carries a devastating payload of eight tactical nuclear missiles.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Alien

Jonas Kramm has already created many models using new LEGO® elements for our parts festival, The New Black, and today I'm honoured to present yet another remarkable creation from him; a model of the Alien based on H. R. Giger's creepy design. The detail Jonas has achieved at this scale is incredible and the new elements he used are perfect for the model.

The New Black - Chris McVeigh

After all that London-based excitement, let's get back to our global parts festival, The New Black, with a trip to Canada. Today it is the turn of the multitalented Chris McVeigh (powerpig) to get inspired by some of the new parts and recolours that the LEGO® Group have released in 2016.

I was thrilled to be asked to participate in The New Black parts festival, but due to work demands, I wasn’t able to take on that challenge until this past week. I really wish I’d gotten to it sooner – I had an absolute blast! I love part challenges because they encourage me to build things I just wouldn’t attempt otherwise; figuratively and literally, The New Black gave me a chance to spread my wings.

Swing Set

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 - Tim Johnson: Skeleton

Just a quick follow-on from yesterday's post by Tom Poulsom for The New Black where he was inspired to use the new LEGO® part Plate 1X1 Round W/3.2 Shaft (Design ID 26047) as feet. I had exactly the same thought, so this seems like an appropriate moment to post my version.

The New Black - Tom Poulsom

Our parts festival, which consists of experiments with some new Black and Transparent [TLG]/Trans-Clear [BL] LEGO® parts (as well as some Black recolours) continues today. I'm glad to welcome British builder Tom Poulsom (detomaso77) who is best-known for designing LEGO Ideas 21301 Birds but likes to turn his attention to all manner of things including cars, trains and all manner of animals, as you are about to discover...

I was very kindly supplied with some brand new LEGO elements by Tim and was really excited when I received them, as I am regularly on Brickset to keep an eye on what fancy new pieces and colours LEGO have to offer. I was sent all sorts of exciting new elements, and you can see what I used some of them for below.

Animal parts

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Indoor items

Jonas Kramm is back with his third instalment for "The New Black", our celebration of a selection of new and recoloured LEGO® parts here on New Elementary. The ones Jonas picked for this post can be seen to the right, and as you can see he branched out to include the two Transparent [TLG]/Trans-Clear [BL] elements that I sneakily added into the mix, just because they're so lovely.

After talking about building outdoor objects in my last two posts, it's time to go indoors.

Most of the new elements used here feature the 3.18 bar attachment, which allows for a lot of possible connections when combined with clips. Some of these possibilities were used in my first idea, a chair design that was based on using the recoloured handlebar (Element ID 6078610 | Design ID 98397) as legs. This part is the centrepiece of the chair as it holds not only the arm rests but also the seat, which are made of a square street sign (Design ID 30258).

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.

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.