Showing posts with label Technique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technique. Show all posts

29 August 2021

5x5 fest: Tom Loftus' VIDIYO spaceship MOCs

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Tom Loftus (@inthert.lego) continues to focus on new LEGO® VIDIYO elements in day 3 of his contributions to our 5x5 fest, incorporating them into original spaceship designs.

As a general rule the larger an element gets, the harder it is to integrate into a MOC, but also true is the fact that any part is a spaceship part. Let’s put that to the test shall we? 


Today I will be taking a closer look at two new elements introduced in the LEGO® VIDIYO theme - though in all honesty a closer look isn't strictly necessary because they’re both huge!

  • Plate 4X5X5 1/3, W/ Hor. Fork in Black (6317524 | 65132)
  • Box 8X8X2 in Bright Yellowish Green (6317519 | 65129)
Let’s start with that supersized bracket.

28 August 2021

5x5 fest: Tom Loftus' VIDIYO canopy MOCs

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Tom Loftus (@inthert.lego) continues his daily contributions to our 5x5 fest today, turning his attention to another highly specialised element from the LEGO® VIDIYO range.


Today we’ll taking a look at another element introduced for the LEGO® VIDIYO theme, Box Front 8x8x5 2/3 in Transparent (6317507 | 65128) or the Vidiyo canopy as I’ll call it from here on in.     

Devoid of studs, Technic holes, bars, clips, click hinges and anti-studs, this new mould instead features two previously unseen connection types: Firstly an extended base tab on each side featuring a trio of tiny rounded cutouts, and secondly, a pair of apertures that resemble supersized Technic axle holes. Both of which are intended only for use in conjunction with other Vidiyo elements. For a detailed look at how these work, see Caz Mockett’s review of the Vidiyo BeatBoxes.

27 August 2021

5x5 fest: Tom Loftus' turntable snap MOCs

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Tom Loftus (@inthert.lego) is our final 5x5 fest contributor, and instead of one long article he divided his creations up. So, to complete this festival of MOCs using new-for-2021 parts, we have an article from Tom every day for the next four days! Be sure to check in.


Turntable, Female, W/ Snap in White (6317514 | 65146) is one of the smallest elements introduced in the LEGO® VIDIYO™ theme.

It immediately struck me as a potentially useful detailing piece. The key word being ‘potentially’ because while it does belong to an existing element family, its system connection points are extremely limited and so remains a rather specialised entry in the LEGO parts catalogue. Today I’ll be proving this little part’s worth by discussing its closest relatives, exploring some unusual connections and combining the two in a micro-MOC.

08 August 2021

Old Elementary: Eero Okkonen's LEGO® tidbits

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Eero Okkonen (on Instagram) continues his occasional series of articles today looking at LEGO® parts and their associated techniques which he likes to use in his own creations. Today's 2 selections are much squarer parts than his previous choices... however Eero is here to give you fresh insight into their potential usage!

Plate, Modified 2 x 2 with Pin Holes (2817)


Plate, Modified 2x2 with Pin Holes (2817) is one of those pieces most builders have dozens of, and they're waiting for a beautiful day to get used. They’re found in a great number of sets (more than 600) in 11 colours.

12 July 2021

Old Elementary: Eero Okkonen's ball turret and deltoid

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Eero Okkonen (on Instagram) continues his occasional series of articles today looking at techniques using specialised LEGO® parts he likes to put in his own creations. In previous articles he examined Windscreen 9x3x1 2/3 Bubble Canopy and Wedge 4x3 Cut Back with Cutout; then Wedge 4x3 Open with Cutout and the two 3x4x1 2/3 Curved Vehicle Mudguards. Today's selections, dating from the 1990s and 2000s, have no particular similarity other than being the kind of LEGO part that some people complain about being too specialised!

Cylinder Hemisphere 2 x 2 Ball Turret Socket Base (part 44358) and Cylinder Hemisphere 3 x 3 Ball Turret (44359)


Cylinder Hemisphere 2 x 2 Ball Turret Socket Bases, introduced in 2002 LEGO® Star Wars Episode II sets, are a deceptively useful part. They’re currently available in 37 sets, used mostly as ball turrets as their name suggests, but also as eyes, catapult buckets and pots.

12 March 2021

LEGO® 75551 Brick-Built Minions and Their Lair: Lee's alternate builds

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Lee (cityson on Flickr) creates MOCs for you today using only the parts from LEGO® 75551 Brick-Built Minions and Their Lair, a 2020 set containing many interesting new moulds. Buying this set? Consider using our affiliate links: UK LEGO Shop | USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop (for other countries 'Change Region') or try UK Amazon | USA Amazon. New Elementary may get a commission. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

Last October, Tim Johnson took quite a thorough look at all the interesting parts in the 2 released LEGO® Minions: The Rise of Gru sets. While fans are still waiting for the postponed movie and its tie-in sets to be released, I have taken some time to see what alternate models can be rebuilt from the lovely set 75551 Brick-Built Minions and Their Lair. 


Sadly, I found myself running into a classic creative block. On the bright side, the set has given me 3 Minions minifigures, so I decided to outsource my task to Kevin, Stuart and Bob and see what they can come up with instead.

05 September 2020

Old Elementary: Insectoids eyes

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The eyes have it! In his third and final examination of interesting LEGO® pieces introduced for the 1998 Space theme Insectoids, Duncan Lindbo (donutsftw) takes a 'look' at two parts comprising the aliens' eyes, and builds original creations of his own using them.


Today, we’re journeying back once again to the days of the late 1990s to cast our gaze upon some old LEGO® Insectoids parts. But these parts can gaze back! That’s because we’re looking at Cylinder Hemisphere 4x4 Multifaceted (30208) and Plate, Modified 1x2 with 4x4 Dish at 90° (30209), a pair of parts which were first introduced as ‘eyes’ in the Insectoids line.

14 August 2020

LEGO® DOTS: Cole Blaq's bracelet & tile ideas

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So far Cole Blaq has used the LEGO® DOTS bracelets we sent him to create viruses and sea creatures and for his final post today he presents a collection of tablescraps, techniques and smaller ideas using both the bracelets as well as the printed tiles, to inspire you. Cole is an artist and educator in Germany primarily influenced by graffiti and LEGO. The Dots products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

I received three copies each of 41900 Rainbow, 41902 Sparkly Unicorn, 41901 Funky Animals and 41912 Love Birds. With such a limited parts selection, I concentrated on the rubber bracelets and on a few selected printed tiles. The available connections for mounting the bracelets are not that easy to integrate with the LEGO System. Therefore I had to get around this, which led to some not-so-smooth solutions. While the studs do have a firm grip, once they are bent (or have no counter-pressure from the rear side) attaching stuff to them is tricky, unstable and often disappointing.


First of all a tribar, or ‘Penrose triangle’.

23 June 2020

Tipper Ends: Eero Okkonen's Aurora Sievert & Hurricane III

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Yesterday, Eero Okkonen examined in great detail the history and geometry of the 'Tipper End Family' of LEGO® pieces, especially Vehicle, Tipper End Flat with Pins (Design ID 3145) and Vehicle, Tipper End Sloped (3436). Today he reveals this never-before-published model he built in February using tipper ends, but first he takes us through earlier models where he utilised these unusual parts that were introduced five decades ago.  

Previous Builds

A more mathematical approach to tipper ends is a new and exciting world to me, but I’ve used them few times before, mostly as armour shells or clothing, something akin to Constraction shells.

22 June 2020

Old Elementary: Odds & Tipper Ends

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We take another trip into LEGO® part history today to discover a kind of piece introduced 51 years ago that is still found in sets in 2020; 'tipper ends'. They're a passion for Finnish LEGO builder Eero Okkonen and today he delves deep into their geometry and reveals building techniques utilising them.

As we all very well know, adults complain 64% of the time that everything was better when they were kids; the only LEGO® bricks were basic angular blocks (and lost behind the radiator probably) and you could build everything based on your own imagination and didn’t have to follow the instructions and it made you a better person in the end. I don’t think like that, and one of the biggest joys depicted here on New Elementary and in contests like Iron Builder (and hopefully in my own work) is finding new, fresh uses to odd and curious parts, no matter what their original use in the sets was.


This article is about what I will call the Tipper End Family; today I’ll introduce the parts and their history, then go through their dimensions with a series of tablescraps and explanatory pictures, then tomorrow show some older builds of mine using these pieces and close with an unpublished build.

18 June 2020

LEGO® Star Wars review & original builds: 75272 Sith Tie Fighter

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Inthert (on Instagram & Flickr) returns today not only to review LEGO® Star Wars 75272 Sith Tie Fighter but to also use its parts, along with his own collection, to create his own fantastic original Star Wars models! The set has 470 elements, three minifigures and is available now priced at £64.99 / US$79.99 / 69.99€.

The Parts

Upon its release at the start of 2020, the Sith Tie Fighter was one of two sets to feature some new wedge plates (alongside Speed Champions 76898 Formula E Panasonic Jaguar Racing GEN2 Car & Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY, which Duncan Lindbo previously reviewed).



07 June 2020

Switch My Lantern Up: The winners

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It is finally time to reveal which five LEGO® creations from our contest, Switch My Lantern Up, will be receiving the prizes of LEGO® Fiat 500s! We were going to announce them yesterday but it has been such a tough one to judge, and there were 88 models submitted using the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581).


This time the judges were Victor Pruvost and Tim Johnson from New Elementary, and none other than the LEGO Senior Designer who actually designed the lantern piece, Esa Nousiainen! We were honoured to have him and he was really impressed with what he saw:

04 June 2020

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 3)

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Today we reveal the final 25 entries to our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581). The judges' decisions will be published on Saturday, unless we argue about it for too long! Hard when there are so many awesome ideas!

Old Diving Suit by GSCLD


03 June 2020

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 2)

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Today we continue revealing the entries to our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581). Let's see what the next 30 entries were!

Peacock by Krakenbrix



In this build, I used the seed part as feathers for a peacock. The feathers are attached to a wedge belt tire (part 2815 and 4185) to obtain the radial design.

01 June 2020

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 1)

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Our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581) has now closed, so while our judges are getting all judgey and deciding which five win the LEGO Fiats, let's look at all the entries we received!


There were a whopping 89 fabulous creations submitted by you lot, and we will reveal them over the course of three days, in the order we received them. Thank you all, for sharing these wonderful ideas.

23 May 2020

Iron Builder: Bryce Dempsey's stud shooter techniques

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The Iron Forge contestant from the Iron Builder challenge revealing their LEGO® techniques for you today is Bryce Dempsey (on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram), from California. Appropriately enough for a builder who creates replica guns from LEGO pieces, last week in Round 3 the seed part was part 15391, the Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Mini Blaster / Shooter. 

My favorite of my own builds for Round 3 using stud shooters as the seed part was the soda machine. The build featured 11 stud shooters in total, with many unique uses.


21 May 2020

Iron Builder: Stud Shooter LEGO® building techniques

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We've been asking the Forge competitors from Iron Builder to highlight the techniques they've used each week with the seed parts. In Round 3 last week the element they all had to use was Design ID 15391, known as the "Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Mini Blaster / Shooter" on BrickLink, "Mini Shooter With Ø3.2 Shaft" on Brickset and "Weapon Gun / Blaster / Shooter Mini" on Rebrickable. Since being introduced in 2014 it has appeared in six colours. Given many would consider this a "specialised element that can only be used for one thing", it was a great choice of seed part by the Iron Builder admin!



Miro78: I found an interesting 'non-connection' with the stud shooters during my Round 3 builds, in the build Zorro where I included some furniture. 


20 May 2020

Iron Builder: Thomas Jenkins' stud shooter techniques

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We have another Iron Forge contestant from the Iron Builder challenge revealing their LEGO® techniques for you today: Thomas Jenkins (on Flickr and Instagram), a Welshman living in Japan who has been building with LEGO for over 20 years. Last week in Round 3 the seed part was part 15391, the Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Mini Blaster / Shooter. 

On my first assessment of the Stud Shooter piece, there were two ways to use it in a model: take advantage of the bar that sticks out at an angle from the barrel of the shooter, or utilize the gaps and recesses that are usually used to house the accompanying trigger element.

Techniques using the angled bar of LEGO Mini Shooter With Ø3.2 Shaft, Design ID 15391

The angle of the bar meant that when used in conjunction with more shooters, it was quite easy to reproduce something akin to a spider’s leg. 


The shooters are connected quite simply with a 1x1 round plate with hole. The spanner seed part from the previous round also found its way into this model!

17 May 2020

Iron Builder: Cab's White Diamond techniques

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We have another Iron Forge contestant from the Iron Builder challenge revealing LEGO® techniques for you today. Cab (on Flickr) hails from Germany but lives in California, and turned eighteen recently... "so I don't even know whether to call myself a TFOL or an AFOL". We don't think it matters really, so long as your techniques are awesome!

Hello everyone, Cab here! I was lucky enough to be among the final 20 contestants in this year’s instalment of The Forge. Now, while the final four compete for the prized Iron Builder slot, I thought I would share some techniques and tricks from my main entry in Round 2, a bust of the character White Diamond from the show Steven Universe. 


Adept builders will probably be familiar with many or all of these techniques, but I hope I can contribute to a few builders’ technical arsenals. 

13 May 2020

Iron Builder: Jaap Bijl's hummingbird techniques

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One of the contestants in Iron Builders preliminary rounds, The Iron Forge, is Jaap Bijl (jaapxaap, found on Flickr and Instagram) from the Netherlands and he is a member of Lowlug and Innovalug. He took part in our 2019 Parts Festival and has now progressed from the Top 20 to the Top 8 in the Forge. We asked him to explain a couple of the techniques involved in one of his Forge builds from last week.

Hey everyone, it’s Jaap here! I’ve been participating into the Iron Forge contest, and made it to the final 20. In that round we had to build using the hammer and/or the wrench minifig accessory pieces. At some point when I was playing around with the wrench piece I found a wrench combination that looked a lot like a bird’s beak to me. So there I started building this hummingbird.


(Yes, for those New Elementary readers who remember it, I also used those big yellow stars from the 2019 parts festival in the flowers!)