Nexo-Classic Space: David Alexander Smith

We're back for another day of Classic Space builds inspired by some of the new LEGO® parts released this year. Following hot on the trail of Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe, Tim Goddard and Jeremy Williams we have David Alexander Smith. I first noticed David because he creates all sorts of odd things in a primitive style but most recently he has become known for his charming series of Space Dinos which emulate not only Classic Space but also other toys of the 1980s.

I sent David the same parts as everyone else except for the white 2x2 wedges, and he used all the supplied parts in one creation. Let's hand over to him now to see what he made...

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The little bag of Nexo Knights elements I was sent immediately got my sci-fi juices flowing. As a Classic Space builder the pieces cried out to me to be used in a whole host of ways, although I suspect a space tortoise wouldn’t be the most obvious choice.

Nexo-Classic Household Appliances: Elspeth De Montes

All week we've been enjoying amazing creations that use a selection of new 2016 LEGO® parts, built exclusively for New Elementary by a fantastic bunch of AFOLs from the UK. It's been all Spacers so far but today we have one last builder who is not a Spacer: Elspeth De Montes. She brought things firmly back down to a domestic setting!

The shape of the Nexo shield caused her to think of an ironing board. "It’s not exactly going to win the Dyson innovation award for Most Stable Ironing Board," admits Elspeth, but it certainly is delightful I'm sure you will agree.

Nexo-Classic Space: Peter Reid

All week we've had excellent Spacers (Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe, Tim Goddard, Jeremy Williams and David Alexander Smith) building gorgeous things with this bunch of new LEGO ® parts. Today it is the turn of Pete Reid; co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future and the designer of 21109 Exo Suit, with its wee adorable robot turtle. Once again he has employed the masterful skills of Chris Salt to hone the loveliness of the imagery.

Grab a cup of tea first. Strong, British tea. You're going to want to scroll slowly. Over to Pete...

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Asteroids

First up, a homage to a classic arcade game, Asteroids. Only a couple of pieces are actually attached to other pieces. I'm not sure laying out elements like this counts as a proper LEGO model.

Nexo-Classic Space: Tim Goddard

Today it is the turn of Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha) to have a play with New Elementary's selection of new 2016 LEGO® parts (hot on the heels of Jason Briscoe yesterday and Drew Hamilton the day before). Regular readers will know that Tim is the co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future but might not have caught up with the fact that he has launched a project on LEGO Ideas, the subject of which may surprise you!

Meanwhile, back in space, Tim used each of the 'classic Classic Space' coloured parts we sent (namely Bright Blue [TLG]/Blue [BL] and Medium Stone Grey [TLG]/Light Bluish Gray [BL]) to create this sweet microscale ship for us.

NEXOGON: Classic Space scene

We left you on a bit of a cliffhanger when we showed you Kevin Levell's initial creations for our parts festival using the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™Combo Power shield. Wait no more: let's blast off into Classic Space!

When I was building spheres for my NEXO Globeships, I heard the news that The LEGO Movie Sequel would be set in space. Surely this would mean 'Benny's space': Classic Space, the 'space' of my childhood? Suddenly my sphere needed to be a dome, a habitat or space lab for spacemen! (It’s probably pertinent to mention that I had just seen The Martian too.)

I’ll admit, I got a bit carried away after I had the ‘Hab/Dome’ built.

Combo NEXO Power shields

The LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ theme introduced many exciting and useful new elements into the LEGO System in 2016 and this trend continues into 2017. Today we look at a highly unusual piece which is set to take your building into totally new dimensions, literally!

Neo-Nexo Ice Planet Knights

It fascinates me that, when planning the LEGO® NEXO KNIGHTS™ theme, the LEGO Group seemingly took inspiration from AFOLs. Specifically, the idea of building new models using the colour schemes of olden-day LEGO themes, such as the Neo-Classic Spacers do. The colour scheme the designers chose for Nexo Knights in 2016 clearly riffs on the LEGO Space theme from 1992 called Ice Planet 2002.

This made me wonder what a modern-day AFOL of super Space-building skills... say, Tim Goddard... might create for Ice Planet using Nexo Knights pieces. Thanks (once again) to the excellent support of the AFOL Relations & Programs team at the LEGO Group and Tim's incredible building skills, the idea has now come to fruition... so let's see how he got on!

I was given an interesting brief for this article: “the Nexo Knights range has a definite flavour of Ice Planet 2002: explore”. There is no denying the colour palettes overlap greatly; you just need a little white to mix with the blue and orange shades and you are almost there, albeit with a medieval twist to the theme. So I have created a few models investigating how the new pieces in the range can be used to add a bit of frostiness to spacey creations, how useful these new moulds are, plus a few other observations along the way.

Nexo-Classic Space: Drew Hamilton

We have a fun week ahead! In January the LEGO® Group sent a delicious selection of new parts, mostly from the Nexo Knights theme, for New Elementary to play with and we will be publishing the results over the next week. Come back every day to check it out. As you can see below there were a lot of Neo-Classic Space colours in there so I couldn't resist asking a bunch of Spacers to come up with something Spacey!

Nexo-Classic Space: Jason Briscoe

Welcome to part two of our investigation into some of the new parts the LEGO® Group have released in 2016. In part one, Drew Hamilton created a Utility Bot in a suitably Spacey room. Today it's the turn of Jason Briscoe (Brizzasbricks) to see what Spacey stuff he could make with the selection and he really went for it! Thanks also to the awesome Chris Salt, who did some awesome photoshoppery to make some of Jason's builds even Spacier and awesomier.

Citroën DS-inspired Rover

"This was my favourite build and the one that I spent the most time on. Whilst it does not look much it took a few iterations to get to the final version. It uses four pairs of the white 2x2 wings (Design IDs 24299 and 24307): one pair for the front spoiler, two pairs for the front and rear mudguards and one pair for a pillar screen support. I also managed to squeeze in a couple of the 1x1 plate with vertical tooth (15070) to create some retro rear light clusters. The styling is late Classic Space and takes a few design cues from sets like 6842 Small Space Shuttle Craft from 1985."

PdC Parts Festival: Day Two

AFOLs from all over the world took part in our first ever live parts festival in June in Portugal at the Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend. Each day, 15 builders had just over an hour to explore what might be done with a range of new LEGO® parts. See the parts selection here, but today let's look at what the second round of LEGO fans came up with.

Amy Fennell

The New Black - Peter Reid: Blacktron Assault Tanks

I asked readers to send in pictures of models they've created that use some the LEGO® parts featured in our current parts festival, The New Black. Perhaps having got the bug when he took place in our previous parts festival, Nexo-Classic Space, Peter Reid (legoloverman) surprised me with some microscale tanks he built especially for New Elementary readers.

Blacktron Wolverine Assault Tank

The latest addition to Kazak's army of darkness, the Wolverine assault tank is a remote-controlled, mobile missile launcher. Each unit carries a devastating payload of eight tactical nuclear missiles.

Nexo-Classic Space: Jeremy Williams

It's day four of our investigation of seven new 2016 LEGO® elements. So far Drew Hamilton, Jason Briscoe and Tim Goddard have all taken on our super Spacer challenge: today, it's the multitalented Jeremy Williams (Bricking It). Without further ado I will hand over to Jez.

Pilot seat

This uses the Nexo Bot torso element (Design ID: 24078) as a control column, allowing me to attach two levers and a display.

The newer style of 1x1 tile with clip introduced in 2013 which has a C-shaped clip (15712) fits onto the torso nicely, whereas the old, more angular clip (2555) doesn't fit as well, for some strange reason. This warrants further investigation!

I also placed the seat in a mockup cockpit, shown below.

The New Black

Every now and then, world-class LEGO builders experiment with some of the newest LEGO elements to examine their possibilities here on New Elementary. I call these “Parts Challenges” (although I’m less and less happy with this phrase, given that the task is a non-competitive affair. What should we call them instead? Maybe a "Parts Festival"!) Thanks once again to the super support of the LEGO Group we have a new round of posts coming up over the next month or so looking at some new elements from 2016 sets.

Brickheadz: LEGO® Batman Movie

This week we are doing early reviews of LEGO® BrickHeadz, a fun range of brick-built, heavily stylised pop-culture figures. They are released on March 1 priced £9.99/ US$9.99/ 9.99€ but VIP Early Access started on February 15. To get inside their headz and see what makes them up, we welcome back Sven Franic.

BrickHeadz are a novelty in the LEGO collectors’ world, and if other collectable series are anything to judge by, the first series is usually the one that ends up being most sought after, whether this was the intent or not. Series 1 of BrickHeadz so far consists of 10 buildable figures: four characters from The LEGO Batman Movie, four MARVEL Super Heroes and two Disney characters.

 Today, we will look at what comes inside the four LEGO Batman Movie figures: Batman, Batgirl, Robin and the Joker.

Peter Reid's 'bar with towball' idea

Our brief re-exploration of the LEGO® piece 3.2 Shaft W/5.9 Ball (Design ID 22484) seems to be turning into an unexpected parts festival! I was pleased to hear from Peter Reid with a new creation that uses this part. He calls it The Digital Ombudsman.

NEXOGON: Mini-Reactor One

Jeremy Williams (Bricking It on Flickr) has written for New Elementary many times and also took part in a previous parts festival. He's more excited about the Combo Power Shield than any other recent LEGO® part, and so he returns for our NEXOGON parts festival.

You may remember seeing my Reactor One model on Flickr last year, or 'in the brick' at Skaerbaek Fan Weekend or The Great Western Brick Show at STEAM. Well, I decided to use two Nexogons to create a miniature version of Reactor One!

The New Black - Jason Briscoe: Milagre Hoverbike

When I launched The New Black, our latest parts festival here on New Elementary, I welcomed anyone to let me know if they have built stuff using the parts I selected. I'm glad to say we already have some great images from people and so I will post some of them during the festival. Today we have one from the lovely Jason Briscoe (bizzabricks), who also was a part in our previous festival, Nexo-Classic Space.

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Space ranger Nino speeds majestically across the vast capim grass plains of Milagre.

New versions of shield and mermaid tail

Recently, David Gregory of IndyLUG got in touch with us about a couple of interesting finds at LEGO® retail stores.

If you’re familiar with the Build-A-Minifigure bins at LEGO® retail stores, then you’ll be aware that those bins can sometimes be a source of otherwise rare minifig parts and accessories.  In June in Illinois and Indiana, USA I came across two parts that are from known molds, but have new printings – or lack thereof.

The first part is an unprinted version of the mermaid tail in Dark Green [TLG name]/ Green [BrickLink name] and the second is a new print on the large escutcheon shield.

Cave of colours

It's been a long time since we looked at a LEGO® Elves set, which are always full of new parts and vibrant recolours. We begin to redress that today with a review by Andrew Barnick of a 2016 set, 41175 Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave.

LEGO Elves may have even surpassed Bionicle as my favorite new theme of 2015, with a fantastic range of colorful and magical-looking sets and a heartwarming story and characters. So I’m happy to return this year with reviews of some new Elves sets. This year’s Elves sets focus on Emily Jones and the Elves’ quest to rescue the Dragon Queen from the evil Elf Witch Ragana, and feature both adorable baby dragons and fantastic brick-built adult dragons to accompany the Elves on their journey. And like last year’s sets, these sets include a plethora of new and rare elements in an array of bright colors that are far less common in other themes. So without further ado, let’s take a look at what 41175 Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave has to offer!

3x3PO Parts Fest: Introducing the elements

Not long ago a Jawa Sandcrawler rolled steadily into New Elementary Farm. Myself, Caz and Ben (Davies, not the old Kenobi) needed someone who spoke Bocce, so we got three copies of LEGO® Star Wars™ 75398 C-3PO. 

In the end we lost our interest in speaking Bocce pretty soon, so we demolished the droids to make MOCs. So welcome to the 3x3PO fest, the hottest MOC-building festival in this galaxy not that far away. But before we show you what we made, I'll show you the interesting parts in the set. Be ready for many pearl gold recolours!