One of my favourite LEGO® activities is a good old New Elementary parts festival. I love taking part, for a number of reasons. A bundle of lovely new parts arrive, supplied in the kind of quantities that would be prohibitively expensive for me to acquire in any of the normal ways. There are elements I perhaps might not gravitate to buying, and that's a nice challenge to face. There's a shared experience with fellow builders in the creation of MOCs that generally surprise and delight, both from my own build table and those of my co-contributors. They have become rarer in recent years and that too makes them a sweet experience. In short, even as a regular contributor to New Elementary, it's a privilege and an honour to be included.
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About the After-Party Fest
At Skærbæk Fan Weekend, the New Elementary team often run a popular building workshop event where participants are encouraged to experiment with a selection of interesting new parts.
The bat thing is pretty clear here, but that form also reminded me of menpo (Samurai masks), which led to some more layering of wings, here in sand blue. The shapes of fins and gills soon became apparent and spoke of a creature from some murky underwater world! This led to adding more of the other sand blue part in the selection: Large Figure Cover 4 x 5 x 2 with Bar, 4 Studs, Ridged (4986).
This year, Tim and Jonas ran the event and salvaged some of the seed parts. A scheme was hatched to send the parts to three regular contributors and one of this year's workshop attendees, to see what they could come up with at home. Tom has already done a great job of introducing the seed parts, so it's just a case of explaining my investigations and what subsequent thoughts led to my builds.
As always, when I have the opportunity to build things from multiple parts in this way, my approach is somewhat sculptural. I build little experiments to see what things look like and how the parts "speak to me"; there are usually many abandoned tablescraps, that may yield results in the future but that for the moment have not inspired a full creation.
The creature... and bat from the sand blue lagoon
The first parts that really captured my attention were the new wings with three bar attachments (part 4899), as found in LEGO® NINJAGO® sets from earlier this year:
- Sand Blue (6510124) - 2x in 71810 Young Dragon Riyu
- Trans-Yellow (6510123) - 2x in 71803 Arin's Rising Dragon Strike
- Trans-Orange (6510121) - 2x in 71801 Kai's Rising Dragon Strike and 4x in 71815 Kai's Source Dragon Battle
- Trans-Light Blue (6510122) - 2x in 71802 Nya's Rising Dragon Strike
As you see above, it's a similar look to the "EVO wing" part 79898 from 2022, which offers the ability to connect one to another, but I think I prefer the bar attachments of this newer piece.
At least, the ability to make those bar connections led to my initial inspiration to start building something bat-like.
The colourful variants of the wing piece meant I was able to add a much needed splash of colour to my aquatic monster creature's crest.
I also found another use for the potion bottle parts that I reviewed recently. With some careful angling of lights, a "fire" appeared in my creature's eyes!
When I reviewed my initial photos, I was struck by just how bat-like my initial experiment had been and was drawn to further explore that opportunity. It was actually a very simple case of adding a head and some feet.
Cloud tortoise
If my denizen of the darkest depths does dastardly things to your mind, and bats give you the heebie-jeebies, hopefully my third, more whimsical effort will calm you back down again.
I started out trying to build a white cloud from the new part 5518; Plate Special 2 x 3 with Cloud Edge on Rebrickable or as Bricklink would have it: Tile, Modified 2 x 2 with Studs on Edge, Rounded Corners and 1 x 1 Half Circle Extension.
After a couple of abandoned layering attempts, I hit upon a structure using Mixels joints and traditional hinge bricks. The resultant structure made me think of tortoise and turtle shells, rather than the clouds I had been aiming for.
I was initially reluctant to build another creature until I put two of the Large Figure Cover 4 x 5 x 2 with Bar, 4 Studs, Ridged (4986) back-to-back. The resultant head had enough character for me to give in, and just let the bricks take me where they wanted. It was all very Zen!
No prizes for spotting my only usage of the banana peel piece! If you haven't already entered, there's still time to build something for our Mind that Banana contest!
Microscale Classic Space mothership
It's probably needless to mention by this point that I have a penchant for Classic Space. It would be highly unusual if I didn't build something related to that theme when the opportunity even remotely presents itself. In this case, a stack of the white mini-doll shoes looked like twin engines to my sci-fi eyes.
Little builds
The mini-doll shoes also inspired two smaller builds.
The little head above right was another quick tablescrap that used both the mini-doll shoes and Minifig Hipwear Tail, Fluffy Squirrel (5386). As discussed amongst our team, there's a distinct Aardman Animation feel to this little exploration.
Tablescraps
There are always little explorations that don't make it anywhere particularly finished but nonetheless have something that might be worthy of sharing. I have grouped my efforts here.
Cloud tile experiments and a mini-doll shoe ring. This ring was the smallest ring that would hold together, using only the shoes in an alternating fashion. There is a small 'fin' feature between the studs (where the feet are separated) that prevents connection with anything other than round-ended parts.
Speaking of which...
Closing thoughts
This has been another fun parts fest. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my efforts as much as I enjoyed creating them.
READ MORE: See what wonders Caz made for After-Party Fest
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These are amazing. The turtle in particular speaks to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you, I'm pleased you like them. Now I'm wondering what the turtle is saying! :-)
ReplyDeleteI knew that blue harness would be useful somehow in a classic space build!
ReplyDeleteMe too! I think there's still some opportunities for neat use in bigger build as well.
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