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Little LEGO goldfish with building instructions

by Thita (admin) on January 4, 2018

At the core of the LEGO building system are basic elements like bricks, plates, tiles, slopes and wheels, but there are also many interesting parts with unusual shapes and connection points. Spending time with these special pieces is always a rewarding experience. As you examine the pieces, turn them and connect them in various ways, all kinds of creatures and magical things can come to life. 🙂

This is exactly what happened for LEGO fan gonkius, who was experimenting with some 2×2 curved slopes with unusual angles and ridges. Gonkius had four of the pieces in orange, and while playing around with them, suddenly a goldfish appeared!

The cute little goldfish turned out to be quite popular, so gonkius also provided building instructions. As you can see, most of the pieces used are basic; a handful of small plates, tiles, and jumper-plates (1×2 plates with one stud in the middle), a few 1×1 bricks with studs on the sides, some curved slopes, and four of the 2×2 modified slopes (for the head of the goldfish).

To make the instructions more clear and easy to follow, gonkius used different colors for each type of element, but of course, you can use any color. I actually like the rainbow colored goldfish a lot! Or, is that now a rainbow fish?

Playing around with special LEGO pieces is a good challenge that can exercise your imagination and help you improve your building skills. You can even organize building challenges and contests with your friends and family centered on creatively using special LEGO elements. Such an event is always full of delightful and surprising discoveries. And if you need a bunch of loose LEGO pieces to work with, check out the LEGO Classic selection at the Online LEGO Shop.

What do you think? How do you like the little LEGO goldfish? Are you planning to build your own? Do you experiment with interesting LEGO pieces to see what you can build with them? Which are your favorite special and unusual LEGO pieces? Feel free to share and discuss your own discoveries in the comment section below! 😉

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LEGO Downtown Diner designer-video

by Thita (admin) on January 3, 2018

in LEGO Modular Buildings

The #10260 LEGO Creator Downtown Diner, the latest in the LEGO Modular Buildings series, was released just a couple of days ago. I don’t have the set yet, however as soon as I do, I plan to review it in detail. In the meantime, LEGO released the designer-video with LEGO Senior Designer Mike Psiaki and LEGO Designer Carl Merriam. Both Mike and Carl share some interesting details about the development of the set, so let’s watch the video and talk about this a bit. 🙂

Previous LEGO designer videos introduced a new set by simply sharing some of its features and highlights. However, recently LEGO changed the format of these videos, and now we learn a bit more about what happens behind-the-scenes, as well as the designers themselves. I do like the new format, as it allows us to learn more about the process LEGO designers go through to bring a new LEGO set to life. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of showing off the set in more detail. I hope that in future videos LEGO will find the balance between showcasing a new set and letting LEGO designers share about themselves and their work.

I found it very interesting how much the set changed from the original concept to the final product. As Mike said, it all started with the idea of an Art Deco-style car dealership that later morphed into a diner by the suggestion of Carl. And they were also able to include at least one car, from Mike’s original car dealership idea. I’m actually looking forward to see someone taking up the challenge of turning the diner back into a car dealership!

Mike also talks about bringing back teal, a LEGO color that was retired a long time ago (or more accurately, “killed” by LEGO designer Mark Stafford). We talked about this here: LEGO Downtown Diner & The Return of Teal. Funny thing is that Mark Stafford tweeted this a few days ago about the set: “Looks awesome… shame about that weird blue-green color that looks like it should have died many years ago…” That’s highly amusing, if you know the history of teal (see article linked above).

It’s also interesting that at the beginning of the video Mike says that the LEGO Modular Buildings collection doesn’t have a hotel, right after showing the long retired #10182 LEGO Creator Café Corner (with the giant hotel sign), the very first LEGO Modular Building from 2007. This immediately made LEGO fans speculate that the next LEGO Modular Building might be a re-release of the #10182 LEGO Creator Café Corner. I know many LEGO fans would be very happy with either a straight re-release of both the Café Corner and the #10185 LEGO Creator Green Grocer (from 2008), or updated versions. Mike’s teaser, and some recent re-releases of large sets like the #75192 LEGO Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon and the #10256 LEGO Creator Taj Mahal, are starting to make LEGO fans very hopeful about the return of the oldest Modulars.

It is also worth noting that while most of the LEGO Modular Buildings were designed by Jamie Berard, the #10260 LEGO Creator Downtown Diner was worked on by other designers. Many LEGO fans are attached to the work of Jamie, so they may not like the change, however it is nice to get some unique and fresh ideas from other designers as well. Mike Psiaki is a very talented designer himself, as demonstrated by his portfolio.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the #10260 LEGO Creator Downtown Diner was released just a few days ago, and some LEGO fans already call it their favorite, or one of their favorite sets in the LEGO Modular Buildings series. If you would like to check it out in more detail, visit the LEGO Creator section of the Online LEGO Shop.

What do you think? How do you like the #10260 LEGO Creator Downtown Diner? And what do you think of the designer video? And the possibility of the earliest LEGO Modular Buildings coming back? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below! 😉

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Little LEGO goldfish with building instructions

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