AFOL Classifications

An engineer by profession my area of specialty is water resources which, in laymen's terms, means I design water and sewer systems.  The other day as I was working through some calculations involving microbial growth in a waste water treatment plant I encountered the scientific names and classifications of several different types of microorganisms.  This reminded me of the obligatory unit that all of us who endured high school biology went through which sought to give us an overview of the monumentally complex system of categorizing the different types of living things on the planet that the scientific world has developed.  Words like "genus" and "species" that I had not considered in years spontaneously emerged from some deep forgotten memory banks. 

On my drive home, with classification still on m mind, I began to think about the AFOL community and what categories those of us who comprise it would get put into should some scientist seek to map the genus-Lego-obsessed.  To be sure within the community there are a variety of different "species" if you will, made up of people who enjoy certain distinct aspects of the Lego habit.  Overarching I think there would be three major groups, call them species, that all of us fall into:

Collectors

This first species is made up of those whose primary interest is collecting.  What they collect may vary (classic space, poly bags, castle, etc.) but ultimately what they are after is not so much building original creations but having the most complete and thorough collection possible.  They do very little original building but require a ridiculous amount of pages on Brickset to catalogue their entire collection.  These are the people who pay exorbitant prices on EBay to get that unopened set and then never open it (a concept I must confess I cannot grasp).  The displays these people can put together with their collections are truly awe inspiring. 

MOCers

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Collectors are the MOCers.  For these people sets are merely a way to acquire the parts they need for original creations.  There are some amazing talented (and I would venture bank account drained!) people in this species that keep the sellers on Bricklink in business.  These people posses thousands of bricks that they craft into breathtaking original creations. 

Hybrids

This last species is squarely between the two extremes and it is the one I fall into.  We hybrids dabble in a bit of both.  We love boosting our collection's size but also get great pleasure out of making our own creations.  However, the sentiment jack of all trades master of none applies.  I have a big collection, but not compared to the die hard collectors.  I make some cool stuff, but can't hold a candle too many of the MOCers out there.  So my collection is not that noticeable on Brickset and though I am a frequent customer on Bricklink no seller is going to out of their way to solicit my business. 

Obviously within each of these larger categories are a thousand little ones.  Almost no collector, for example, tries to collect every theme.  Each theme (and many sub themes) has its die hards who have crazy collections in that area but next to nothing in others.  Star Wars, trains, mini-figures and classic space seem to command the most die hards but almost every other theme has a loyal group of passionate collectors too.

MOCers too fall into numerous categories.  Some do sci-fi, others focus on mecha, still others do modular buildings, castles or some other structure.  Some are passionate about little details, others go simply for size.  Many model scenes or vehicles from movies or popular culture while others rely solely on their own imaginations.  There are even professional artists who use Lego as their medium.       

And finally us hybrids break into a bunch of categories too.  I myself love trying to make my own sets.  I don't do big creations (though I have in the past) but I substantially enjoy trying to create detailed and complete worlds whether by populating it with sets or with original creations.  The result is a collection of original works intermixed with official sets.  

My Collossal, Unnamed Spaceship

The pictures of some of my creations included in my last entry sparked some interest.  So, the following are some more pictures of the large space ship I created back in high school (10 years agon now, wow!).  What is funny is that I could never come up for a name for this thing, to this day I think of it as "the big ship"; no name I could come up with ever seemed right.  Any suggestions?

Statistics:

Length: 5.1 feet long

Width: 3.1 feet at widest point

Average Width: 1.5 feet

Height: 2.25 feet at talles point

Some "Big Picture" shots:

I had always wanted to build something big enough that it
could include a monorail.  This was it.

This picture was actually taken from on my roof looking through
the window.  Model was too big to move.

This front part housed the hanger, labs, bridge and officer's cabins.

This middle section was crew quarters (the yellow section) and
connecting walkway.


The following pictures show how the model opened so that you could access the inside.  My goal was to make it 100% playable (a requirement for all my MOCs) which meant 100% access.  I succeeded. 

This shows everything opened and all the removable floors removed.

The crew quarters.

The hallway, the crew quarters were accessed via hatches in the floor
(you can see the red in the floor, those are them)

You can see the monorail dock and the rear access door here

And now a few detailed pictures of the interior.

The hanger, it was so big I could (and did) stick my head in it.

The engine room with the reactor front and center.

The mechanical room.

The greenhouse.

The first floor of the medical wing.  The hatch to the right accessed the
mechanical room and crew quarters.

Top floor of medical wing.  This was before sites like bricklink so I had to use
printed tiles for lack of plain ones.

Inside view of the hall looking from the front to the rear of the ship.

Crew quarters, 3 stories tall, sleeping was on the left and workout room
was on the right.

Officers quarters off the bridge.

The bridge and stairwell to the officer's cabins.

The model was very intricate.  Working pathways for minifigures existed throughout.  Their was a large working elevator in the hanger as well as the working monorail.  To date it is the biggest model I have ever done. 

A couple of final shots.

 

Is My Kid Too Old For Legos?

I was chuckling to myself the other day as I pushed back from the computer and surveyed my work.  I had just completed a list of the Lego sets I have acquired since graduating from college (6 years ago now).  I knew the list was going to be long but I was still shocked at its length as I passed my eyes over the finished product; it contained 50 sets.  And most of these were not small, 18 sets were over the $85 mark and another 8 (so over 50% total) were over $50.  What made me laugh though was not the fact that I have spent more on toys for myself in the last 6 years than many of my coworkers have on their multiple kids combined (is that funny or sad?) it was remembering back to 1997 and the turmoil that had engulfed my home. 

In 1997 I was 13 years old and my parents were worried.  For the previous 10 years, since my dad brought back my first set in 1987 from a business trip, I had had a single passion: Legos.  The problem was that my parents were getting worried, wasn’t I getting to be a bit old for these children’s toys?  Wasn’t it time for me to start pursuing more “big boy interests”.  As the oldest (and therefore the guinea pig as all first borns are) my parents were not sure if I would ever snap out of it and was therefore setting myself up for ridicule as I moved into middle school and high school.  To their credit they came up with a clever way to handle it.  They imposed a limit, $100 a year, which I could spend on Legos.  Their thought was that as my money from mowing lawns was freed up I would eventually explore other interests.  I was horrified when the new rule was announced.  $100 a year was one big set or at most two medium size ones.  What other interests would I want to pursue anyway?  My dad suggested I get a guitar and work on learning music (that also makes me laugh now, I am many things but a musician or even one who can pick out good music from bad is not one of them).  There was palpable tension.      

In hindsight  none of us could see what was already in the works.  As I had grown my skill with building had steadily increased.  Even as the rule was being imposed I was in the process of disassembling my collection, gathering their varied parts for some serious large scale building.  What none of us perceived at that time but saw clearly within just a couple short years was that the Lego habit, although not going away, was morphing.  What my parents were ultimately afraid of was that I would keep playing with Legos, zooming M:Tron and Blacktron ships around my room, and that my growth into a mature adult would be stunted.  For most kids they stop having an interest in playing with Legos about the age I was, so what was wrong with me?  The answer was nothing; I was losing interest in playing with Legos right on schedule but this was hidden by the fact that unlike my peers for whom no longer playing with them meant no longer being interested in them at all the nature of my addiction to those small plastic bricks that inhabited every corner of my room was changing.  I was shifting from playing to modeling.  I disassembled my sets in 1997 and only recently embarked on reassembling them in preparation for my own kids to be old enough to play with them.  But for over a decade they were parsed out into a variety of containers.  Why?  Because I needed the parts.

Over the next five years until I left home for college at 18 I embarked on a series of increasingly more complex projects.  I constructed robots and programmed them.  I built a Rube Goldberg machine for Science Olympiad.  And I modeled, first a pirate ship then an even larger and more detailed modern tanker, followed by my Mona Lisa: a colossal space ship. 

The Olec my tanker, she was finished throughout with a full working interior

At the time this was the most detailed model I had done

Every florr was finished out, this was the bridge

My pride and joy: over 4 feet long and 2.5 feet wide

This thing was so big the back of it is out of focus

She was fully finished out, this was the hanger, yes it had a monorail in it

What had been the staple of my play as a child became my respite, my detox as a maturing adult.  While my peers relaxed by playing video games or watching sports I exchanged my childhood Lego table for a work bench and shelves full of my sorted bricks.  To this day almost nothing relieves my stress better than modeling with Legos.

So I laughed because I remembered my mom and dad’s concern that I would regret all the money I had spent on Legos when I lost interest in them.  I can honestly say after 25 years of collecting Legos (and still going strong) I have never regretted a single purchase.  As I have matured the Legos roles has continually morphed but in each new stage they have found a way to remain part of my life and activity.

Perfecting 4184 The Black Pearl

When the first images of this set appeared the response from the AFOL community was largely disappointment bordering on disgust. 

I personally felt, and still feel, that this was unfair.  To Lego's credit, with the parameters they had to operate in, I thought they did a pretty good job.  There is a front deck (unlike the Brickbeard's Bounty) and the rear cabin is enclosed (unlike the Queen Anne's Revenge).  There are three masts and the center one has three sails (unlike any of the older ships).  On top of that you get some exclusive minifigures, if that floats your boat (pun completely intended) or could get it even cheaper if you were willing to pass on them (I bought mine on Bricklink for 40% off sans figs).  Furthermore, if you take into account inflation this set costs the same amount in today's dollars as the original good guy boat: 1989's Caribbean Clipper. 

Put those two side by side and I wager you will begin to think that maybe the Pearl isn't so bad after all!  For the price you pay I think you get an excellent model.  Thank you your honor, I rest my case!

However, if you compare the Pearl to the ship as seen in the movies, or even the Lego video game, even I will admit that it is not at all a faithful recreation.  The cost of the exclusive parts for the minifigures and the pressure to maintain the $100 price point meant something had to give.  Accordingly, movie accuracy was sacrificed. 

So I set out to see if, without adding hull sections, I could make the model more movie accurate. Along the way I added a few details that I think all Lego ships should have and the result was fantastic.  Below are some pictures illustrating what I did. 

I completely redid the back.  I added more windows and changed their color as well as making the entire shape more accurate by cantalevering out the cabin and adding the sloped roof.  The ship in the movie also had decorative supports underneath the windows which I mimicked using minifigure megaphones.

I added a working mechanism for the anchor to the front, extended the deck, added stairs up to the deck and installed hatches to access the hold below which I sealed off. 

The middle section was finalized by adding a walkway from the front to the back which tied into the stairs that came as part of the original model.  You can also see the cantalevered windows in the back and the redone shape of the top deck.

Just like when I modified the Queen Anne's Revenge I also made instructions for how to do these modifications so I will be able to recreate them in the future.  Overall I really liked the improvements and felt that they make a great ship even better.

My Next Project?

I was 9 years old in 1993, and like most I don't have a lot of clear memories from that long ago.  Among the few that I do have is one that happened in the long defunct K-Mart store that used to be on the west side of the Indiana town I grew up in.  Not sure what brought us to that store as my mom almost never shopped there (the town’s Target was much closer to where we lived) but for whatever reason I ended up in the Lego aisle that day and can distinctly remember, with photographic clarity, holding 6286 Skull's Eye Schooner in my hands. 

At $126.50 in 1993 (which is equivalent to just shy of $200 today in 2011) this set was well beyond even the most remote chance of ever being added to my collection.  I dreamed of owning it there in the store and then put it from my mind to instead focus on the plethora of sets which were within the realm of possibility.  But as attested to by my razor sharp memory of holding that box, the Skull’s Eye lodged itself in my consciousness.   

Through the years I have kept an eye out for it.  I remember looking at auctions in the early days of eBay, and have also checked bricklink.com for it through the years.  After over a decade of this searching I can say with certainty that I am not the only one who has been haunted by that set as I have never, even if the model was incomplete, seen it sell for less than $200.00.  Still sealed I have seen it go for over $1000.  Its rarity is further demonstrated by the fact that I have never seen it assembled in person.  Whether in Lego stores, the Mall of America, store displays or friend's houses there a very few sets that I have not seen in person at least once, but the Skull’s Eye is one of them. 

The other day I was contemplating different Lego projects I could do.  Having recently scored some excellent eBay purchases which have added to the already fairly large stash of extra pieces from past Bricklink orders I have been feeling the itch to start a project.  As different options came to mind I suddenly had the thought "I wonder if it would be possible to resurrect the Skull's Eye?".  For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo to resurrect a set means that you purchase the raw pieces and assemble the needed collection of parts yourself rather than buying the set whole.  I have done this previously and found that, depending on which set you do this with, it is possible to sometimes obtain an old set for less than its original MSRP and it is almost always possible to do it for cheaper than buying the whole thing from eBay or Bricklink provided the set is more than about 10 years old and does not have too many specialty parts.

The Imperial Trading Post was a past set I have resurrected

I am going to look into this and I will let you know if I think it can be done.  If it is possible and I decide to do this I will blog in detail about the process to serve as a rough guide to anyone who would like to try and resurrect a set themselves, the Skulls Eye or other.       

Perfecting the Queen Anne's Revenge

If you have purchased 4195 Queen Anne's Revenge, first off major kudos to you, and secondly you may have noticed that while the outside is breathtaking the inside is... a little spartan.  There are a few key features that, in order to meet their price point, Lego omitted from this ship.  I recently set about to see if I could remedy those deficiencies and was very pleased with the result.  So pleased in fact that I can honestly say, with these modifications, the Queen Anne's Revenge is my favorite of all my ships (surpassing even 10210 Imperial Flagship).  To do this I cannibalized 4191 Captain’s Cabin for a few specialized parts and added some extra pieces from my own collection. Here is what I did.

THE FRONT DECK

While the Revenge did improve upon 2009's Brickbeard's Bounty in that it did have a front deck the 2 small pieces Lego included are just not satisfactory considering the ship's  size.  I modeled my improvements off the first Lego pirate ship: 1989's Black Seas Barracuda.  That ship included holds beneath both the front and rear decks accessed by hatches.  I created the same thing here. 

As you can see there are two hinged hatches.  I have extended the deck to just before the first cannon port where I have added a solid wall with a ladder built into it.  I moved the anchor assembly up onto my deck and added a simple locking mechanism using a spare hinge piece.  To round it off I added a few small holders for weapons and called it good.  Nothing I did changed anything about the way the ship is built in the directions, I just filled it in.  A future modification I may try is to make the entire front deck removable and add a furnished crew quarters beneath... we will see.  

THE REAR CABIN

What I felt was the most major deficiency of the Revenge was that its rear cabin was not enclosed.  This has been my biggest pet peeve with all of the smaller Pirate and Imperial Guard ships Lego has produced through the years.  The minute I saw pictures of this set I knew that I would be adding a door to that cabin.  The result is, I feel, a door and facade that blends in perfectly with the rest of the ship making it impossible to tell where the original design ends and the modifications begin.


The 6x4 stud brown plate for the door came from set 4191 The Captain's Cabin.

This is the door assembly up close.

THE REAR DECK

In keeping with what I did in the front I also finished out a small rear deck immediately in front of where the rear cabin attachs.  I added two more hatches to access the space beneath and also a small extension out over the cannon well with a fourth large bone as a rail.  The hatches provide access to the area beneath the rear cabin which the instructions left empty but I finished out as the ship’s galley in a similar manner to the rear of the Imperial Flagship. 


You can see the two hatches with handles next to the support for the mast and
the stove for the galley on the left as well as table and supplies on the right.

MISCELLANEOUS

I incorporated many of the special elements from set 4191 The Captain’s Cabin in various places as well as connecting the front and rear decks on the sides of the cannon well using 3-1x8 peg black plates per side.  The end result is a feel a much more complete set than the original.  I am thrilled with how it turned out.


You can see the 1x8 stud plates that I added here, the ones
on the right end are missing for comparison.

The globe from The Captain's Cabin was a great new piece,
I mounted it near the ships wheel as shown here.

I created detailed instructions for these modifications so they can be recreated the next time I assemble the ship.  If anyone is interested in them let me know and I can send them to you.    

Happy Building
The Lego Chronicler