TheMagician

Can we please talk about the size of the Ninjago City set? The Lego Shop lists the size as: 24” (63cm) high, 12” (31cm) wide and 16” (42cm). That can't be right? Isn't the set on a square base plate which measures 10” (25cm) by 10” (25cm)? Also, the height would be more than two modular buildings stacked on top of each other...

Spectacular! Is that blue thing supposed to be cheese from a tube?

The monkeys seem to have some kind of rare genetic disease ;) All joking aside: this looks gorgeous - so much variety and detail!

I've been fascinated by this model since the moment I saw Akiyuki's video. Thanks to TheRebricker for reverse-engineering it and to Blakbird for breaking it down and creating an LDraw version of it! I've taken the liberty of re-building the machine as a LEGO DIGITAL DESIGNER FILE. I'd say this version is 99% true to Blakbird's LDraw file. I've used that as a reference and for importing certain simple parts of the machine. All the modules are structured in groups corresponding to Blakbird's review and TheRebricker's videos. In the end I just couldn't get it fully connected - so if you look closely you'll see that there are four distinct positions where I had to move/change one or two pieces in order to "make it fit". I'll use this a the starting point for an idea that's floating through my head - a sunken temple / GBC. I hope someone finds this version useful but all credit goes to Akiyuki, TheRebricker and Blakbird.

When the first images of the set became available a long discussion about the issue started in THIS THREAD (on page 6). It went on for several pages and even included a letter by Adam Grabowski, the designer of the set. It's the amount of small details which are similar between the two builings which makes me doubt that he has never seen the other building before. But anyway, back on topic.

@CarsonBrick: as a magician (see username) I use the psychiological principal which you're experiencing right now quite often in my shows: finding smilarities if you really want to find them. There are two reasons which cause this effect: 1. You are personally involved with / attached to your creation thus increasing the chances that you see similarities to other people's work which others might not see - the technical term for that is "self-serving bias". 2. There is a finite number of how you can do certain things. For example, have 10 people draw an image of a house. 9 of them will draw one door, two windows and even some smoke coming out a of chimney. In your case it's the roof that you can open with a hinge. How many possible (and pracical) ways are there to allow someone to look inside the attic of a LEGO building? One: taking off the roof or two: adding a hinge. It's a 50:50 choice. To take this even further: I believe if you ask 10 people to think about a clichee residential building in Paris which has a restaurant in the first floor and then ask them to tell you what they believe is in the second floor and who/what you find in the attic, most of them will give you the combination: apartment on the second floor and storage / studio in the attic. However, I'm also sure that LEGO desingers consciously or subconsciously are influenced by the images of AFOLs that they see on the internet. To this day I cannot believe that the designer who created the LEGO Haunted House has never seen THIS CREATION of an AFOL before.

As soon as I saw the first image of the set on this page I knew that Jamie was the lead designer on this again - and I couldn't be happier about it. The building looks beautiful. The amount of detail that you find in every corner is amazing. I'm really looking forward to it. Thank you Jamie and team!

Fantastic designs with great details!

This is a fantastic build. I especially love the arch construction which holds the candelabra on the second floor. I'm also very fond of the color scheme and the roof architecture. If those grey two by two plates in the Apple store are supposed to be iPads, shouldn't they be black instead of grey?

Beautiful buildings. Great work!

@skobabe8: Great layout. Do you have any more pictures of it?

I'm really looking forward to your final version of the auditorium and iPhone screen.

The chairlift is another great design - looks exactly like in the game!! Would love to see a small layout with these buildings and attractions

Fantastic work! I love the theatre ... and everything else

About playability: I'm not sure how many AFOLs or buyers of the modular buildings actually play with them. Something tells me that 99 percent of the people just build them and then put them in a row with the other buildings and that's it. The Haunted House for example has a mechanism of opening the building which really adds to the playability. However, you cannot really play with the modular buildings as a whole because you always have to separate the floors for that.