Brick And Me - A Lego Blog - Tuesday, August 11, 2009

I have recently seen a number of great Lego creations with Oceanic background, and in each of these work, there is a common part that caught my attention, and I also notice that this particular part is also frequently asked in many Greater China forums.

I first notice the blue 32 x 32 Baseplate from my Spiderman set - 4856 Doc Ock's Hideout  - but at such as high price nowadays, that obviously is not a economical way to get the blue baseplate, then I found 9286 - Large LEGO Baseplates - this set is not cheap either, but it is very targetted, you get exactly what you need.

The Old Gray 48X48 baseplate is a classic, I can't even figure out how much it worths today, the two 32X32 green baseplate are very useful too, and with the blue plate (now I have 2), it is a ok price to get them at USD 40.

Now I can start thinking of a new MOC idea, an oceanic one probably... 

Malaysian PhotoBucket user jztrain1 mix Chinese literature with Lego art in recording his dream manifested in an impressive storyline.

Source: http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll227/jztrain1/dream%20story/

The story is about a young girl rescued by a hermit, and when the girl grown up, they got married and live happily, but suddenly the girl was found to be a missing princess, and was asked to return to the kingdom to inherit the throne, but then things go for a sharp turn...

It is a wonderful work presenting Lego with great photographic design, but what our western friends will certainly miss when reading this will be the poem, I was truly impressed by the artistic composition.

I have not been travelling for a long time and really wish I can have a relaxing moment somehow somewhere, although tropicial climate is not my favorite, I do like this interesting creation by Flickr user 74louloute

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74louloute/3775178845/ 

More interesting are the notes on the picture, which lead us to realize what the front of the guy looks like:

Source: http://www.bricklink.com/PL/973pb585c01.jpg

There has been a lot of great Predator Lego creations being made by experts everywhere, but the fascination on this legendary character is so strong that it would never be enough, another Lego master from Taiwan, cezov0514 created the following Predator model using Bionicle parts.

Source: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=333315

And what can more irresistable than an Predator model like this? It definitely has to be an AVP, I wish the author could have taken more pictures to depict this thrilling scene

Source: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=333315

One of the places that I enjoyed visiting when I was in Taipei definitely had to be the Taipei 101 building, I spent a wonderful hour there, including a mind refreshing moment watching a beautiful sunset on the roof of the building.

Lego player RMing has not only recreated this giant structure in Lego, he has also recently built a mini version of the famous Grand Hotel in Taipei.

Source: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=RMingTW

Source: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=RMingTW

Please feel free to visit RMing's BrickShelf gallery to enjoy more of his impressive creations.

Our Hong Kong Lego Ambassador Tsang Yiu Keung created a Lego Eiffel Tower using a part that you may have never been able to imagine: Binoculars

I feel that at this scale the model is even more attractive than the official set, especially with some nice supporting models as nearby environment and background. I also learnt the microscale way of forming the group of trees, which fits extremely well into the model.

Please check out CK's Brickself gallery for more of this great creations

I found this Pirate Captain Bag Charm today and it looks quite interesting! It is a Duplo and it seems that the product line is already stopped, I don't think this will be used, as it will be kept as Souvenir. Lego does offer a lot more than sets and bricks, and it is fun to see many interesting items today at ani-com.

Did you once come across this? Or do you own one?

There were recently some heated discussions in Hong Kong regarding the preservation of a traditional Chinese art - Yue Opera (粵劇) , Yue (粵) is the shorthand name for Guangdong, a southern province in China where Hong Kong originally belongs to (and Guangdong dialect is the local tongue here), the dialect, culture and life style of Guangdong is quite different from the northern part of China, such as those from Beijing, where they have the Beijing Opera (京劇). These opera usually depicts the stories of famous personalities in ancient history, and Yue Opera used to have a large number of fans here a few decades ago, but not any more.

I am not a fan of Yue Opera, in fact, I would switch TV channel when I saw it on TV (when I was a kid), but I strongly agree that such cultural art should be preserved, and this creation from Vincent Cheung (fvin) is truly astonishing! I am not surprised at all to see it featured in brothers-brick!

The work represents a character (with face mask made-up) and the decoration usually involved in a Chinese Opera show, the character is General Kwan (關羽), a famous personality from the Three Kingdom era (around A.D. 200), who is also a symbol of Loyalty and brotherhood in Chinese history, please note his famous weapon, which has a special crescent moon shape. General Kwan is popularly idolized as Master Kwan and served in many homes here in China, I believe that many police departments in Hong Kong also do that.

This creation is one of the 20 finalists in the Lego Hong Kong MOC Competition, I believe that it should be in top 3, and is a true champion material, but I think the meaning of this work is more than Lego skills, I deeply appreciate that Vincent choose this topic, which is both challenging, and helpful for the young generation to understand a shining page of Chinese art.

And I think this creation also proves again the feasibility of a Lego Chinese Theme, looking forward to see more exciting work like this from fellow Lego players in Hong Kong.

While a review for a minifig pack like this can be boring, I tried to add some flavors to it to make it more interesting, I hope this works.

But let me answer a few key questions first:

Q. Can the tiles on the Tic Tac Toe plate be removed?
A. Yes, I did it, but the plate of course is glued seems uneasy to be removed, I have not forced the issue for fear of damaging the box, can someone who owns the older Tic Tac Toe sets share some clue? I think I may have made the wrong conclusion earlier (my fault)

Q. Are they regular minifigs?
A. I believe so, see the anatomy of the selected minifigs below

Someone who leads by being the Sample (for anatomy analysis)

Who should I choose from the pirates side? well, believe me, this is a random choice

Q. Is it fun to play with?
A. if you really play Tic Tac Toe with it, it is. But.....

The full cast in close up:

And the packaging is quite smart, you can fold it this way for easy storage:

How about playing a game first?

So far so good, nothing weird yet...

Oops, someone got hot tempered...

Looks like we have a tie as usual, really boring....

But wait....

Someone cheating!!!

Things are getting out of hand!

It is truly sad that peace cannot prevail...

At the end, nobody wins....

What a mess....

Actually all these can be avoided, the conclusion: DO NOT play Tic Tac Toe.

So how can we use this thing?

How about a dance?

Grab a set of Lego Pirates Tic Tac Toe, and have fun in a way - whatever way you can imagine...

At today's Ani-Com, the Lego booth has two great display sections, one is the Starwars creations section, the other is the display area for the 20 finalists of the Local MOC Competitions!

It is really great to see so many impressive creations by local Lego masters in one place, so here I am sharing my snapshots of these great works:

I wish I can take pictures with much better quality, but the venue was quite small and I did not want to block the passage, I believe that the owners themselves should have better photos of their own work, and you may easily come across them somewhere somehow.

There are a few creations that I especially appreciate, and some of them exhibits the oriental cultures and are the kind of work that most people in Europe and US rarely sees, I'll try to elaborate on a few of them in the next few days.