Siegfried

Well it bothers me slightly... but there's no real harm in it providing the colour is readable. (Yours is.) However if the screen hurts your eyes you might have a bigger issue; eyesight, monitor, room lighting... that kind of stuff. I stare at screens all day with no problems at all. I find that the default monitor setting is always too bright.

Very true. I really should go for smaller ones myself!

Good find indeed! I've become more interested in this as it seems it's largely powered by one small motor thus it must have an interesting transmission. I still want better photos of the mechanics though... and I'm worried about the price.

I think "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (which what the song is based on) is more significant. It highlights the evil that can be committed by the species.

Happy Birthday! It's great to have you back around. It can make a mess of the system... and there really is no need to.

Great work as always! As others have said the droid head work well! I'll have to try and find the time to go thought the whole gallery. Good luck! Well hopefully you're wrong and it's just a opus magnum...

...and she dresses very interesting too...

One really must keep up...

That? Oh that's even less impressive. Does this help? 4 of those wheels, two 2-axels and a 3 long pin. The only trick is that I've blocked the other side so it locks in the middle on both sides. I've noticed. It's interesting as TLG claims that they love to show studs yet they release a model like the Emerald Night... I'll see what I can do...

Yeah? I saw it more as light blue than dark blue, but I thought the light blue was too light. Eitherway, I had a serious piece problem while making this; it took almost all my big blue plates, and all of my small ones. 1x1s in particular became quite rare; that's why I use round ones around the turret. Thanks for your opinion! I saw it as the perfect size and I went through several designs before I went for this but I'll give it some more thought later. I sized the turret using this picture... ...which I took from a TV! Well sort of. I can't change much at this stage as I'm out of pieces! I might make some minor changes from time to time, but that'll be long term. My next plan is to look into making a diorama... That was my plan, but the scale ruined it. I might still do it using Fabuland figs... Thanks for giving it a look. Several of my figs I wanted just to be mean to! Harry Potter suffers a lot too... They are generally known as drive sprockets and er... ahh.... it's a piece! I was going to build something but this looked so close already! (Yes, the tank does roll normally.) Well this is a tank so it's hard to not make it look blockish... but unfortuantly for me I've never disliked blockish things. (For example I prefer the old Transformers over the new. ) Thus my MOCs will probably never be that popular... Perhaps! It's a common problem these days and I not really for it. I like my MOCs to have studs. All things considered they could be back soon... As I said earlier, I'm considering making a diorama.

I was there yesterday and bought a 7649 MT-201 Ultra-Drill Walker. 534 pieces for $149.99! That price makes me want to abuse my admin powers and swear... but I'll just say WTF instead.

Oh this is beautiful! I've been wondering why Captain Siegfried hasn't been hanging around in Arctic W... and it seems he's found a new love. The hull works great, and I especially like how you've done the prow. That deck is cool and it's also the first ship I've ever seen with a tiled roof! Thanks for the birthday wishes; I better go off clamming now... (Jipay never looks happy at parties; he really needs to chill out some more. Maybe he should put down that sword and pick up a drink... ) The steamboat hull is very nice... but it's a bit hard to use. It's generally too short and the sides are too high.

Lord Siegfried eh? What a distinguished name... and a cool ship too! With that bare chest Siegfried some-what reminds me of Kahn. I like how you did the bit below the cockpit; I can find it hard to make that area interesting sometimes. Overall, it reminds me of an overweight Jedi-starfighter! The undercarridge, the engines, and the overall shape is similar, but scaled up. Like Quarryman, I think the undercarridge would have been better as skids, but I've always preferred that solution for fighters. Considering you were obviously short on time this is pretty darn good! (Ya know, seeing it's a present for me, you probably shouldn't have called it a "long range cruiser"; surely you recall that I always rant that small ships will never be able to be high endurance... ) Déjà? But I agree! Actually it's a smaller one... and I can't bare to break my Slave 1!

Indeed. With the exchange rate back around 0.8 it's a viable option again. Eitherway this will probably be a lean LEGO year for me...

Thanks! I was having a debate/discussion with a friend yesterday about how big this was in comparison to the ISD... and look what magically appears!

How about now? (I've really got to buy some of those from BrickForge. )

I do it when I get the chance. Last month I went to a local Sci-Fi convention and here's a photo of me as a Ghostbuster... I (unsurprisingly) made that myself, but I have some friends who spend thousands on Batman and Star Wars costumes...

Thanks everyone for the greets! It was a good day; a bit more busy that I would have liked but that's life I suppose. OK, OK! Well first off, my wife and I haven't run a tight ship with presents for a long time. It all started while we were in the navy as we often wouldn't see each other on the respective days. Thus the way it kind of works is that I get more LEGO around the time! Still with me? Well, keeping that in mind, in the last week or two I got; 8295 Telescopic Handler (At almost half price!) 8019 Republic Attack Shuttle 7683 Fight on the Flying Wing 8957 Mine Mech 8397 Pirate Survival Thus a decent haul. I do get a lot of LEGO throughout the year, and there hasn't been any new sets in my area for a while. I'm decently sure the wife would approve a fast purchase of the new Pirate ship if it turns up soon.... I was more perplexed than amused! Danke vielmals!

I'm a fan of Anime... and a fan of role playing games, and a fan of tactical games so Valkyria Chronicles was a perfect game for me! (I've finished it twice.) So perfect that it inspired me to make Edelweiss, the main tank from the game. I'm normally not one to make MOCs rigidly based on other peoples work (fiction or non-fiction); the last I did was the Unimog road-rail vehicle. Here's what I was trying to recreate (I have more reference pictures here)... ...and this is what I ended up with! The funny thing about this MOC is I planned to make it mini-fig scale... but I failed to make that my priority while building. While building I set the scale based on the tracks... and that was my mistake. But more on that later! At first I was going to use the standard large technic cog as the drivers, but I decided to change it to the wheels as I felt that they looked closer. (This did ruin my plan of making the tank remote control as well.) The turret rotates 360 degrees and the barrel elevates and depresses. What's the deal with those grills? In the game all tanks have heat radiators there as a deliberate weak point. While moving they glow blue. I wanted to do that but I had substantially less trans-blue than I thought. Thus I went for the 'inactive' look! The tread skirts were a huge pain to design... and I was never 100% happy with them due to fragility issues. (The model is sturdy, but not fully kid-safe, which is generally my goal.) This photo shows (but not as well as I hoped) the depth of the turret. Most tanks have turrets like this so it was a goal of mine. You can also see the wacky inside of the turret top. It was hard to achieve the shape I wanted while allowing a entrance. In the end I was largely happy with this, and it ended up being stronger than I expected. It took several rebuilds though... (I have photos of the build process here.) Getting back to the scale issue, this is the scale I ended up with. Belville girls playing with a tank wasn't what I had in mind, but it's a case of liking or lumping it! Here's a comparison with my other 'tank'. It's substantially bigger, and seeing I knew from last time that the standard tread is too big for most mini-fig scale tanks I should have taken the hint from other tank builders and used the thinner chain link. So why didn't I? I don't have that much actually! To make this I had to scrap my Tie Crawler... So I'll have to Bricklink some chainlink and give building tanks another go later. Since I went for pre-history last time, history/present this time, perhaps I should go for future next! On the subject of dwarves, the tank has simple suspension so it goes over small objects without lifting the tank. However, while hunting larger prey such as oversized mutant mice... ...there will be lifting which annoyingly can affect targeting. This model is considered finished, but I'll probably be tweaking it from time to time. If you think I could do anything better feel free to post suggestions. Build Process Photo Reference

Actually I'm more of a Bourbon drinker; I was just drinking the "Kahlua" as a recent wedding depleted my supplies!

Thanks everyone! I got loads of LEGO... and some socks... I'll be off to a late lunch with family and friends in a few hours, other than that it'll be (hopefully) quiet...

Good article. I didn't know about the merger details. I read the whole thing and I think it's enough about LEGO that it can stay here. Thanks for posting it.

Aircraft extraudinaire Ralph_S is proving yet again that he's no one trick pony by building a stunningly realistic M1A1 Abrams tank. See more here. (Oh, and in other news our old interviewer Stauder is back! )

Yay! Staudies back! Let's frontpage it!

Welcome to EB! I look forward to hearing more from you about Brickfilming. It's becoming more and more popular on EB.