April 4, 2020 - Looking back at past year

After long long time I'm bringing you few lines in blog to let you look in my LEGO workshop. I'm gonna begin with the most important events that happened from last report till now. Then I will mention the most interesting models I built and finish with few things that you can look forward to in future.

In December 2018 I went to Denmark to participate in AFOL Designer Program (ADP) organized by Bricklink (the largest online marketplace to buy and sell LEGO parts) and LEGO company. It was competition with goal of releasing limited amount of sets designed by adult fans of LEGO (AFOLs) and definitely the most remarkable project which I participated in last year and half. In general it was very similar to LEGO Ideas concept. The main difference was in set designs - LEGO Ideas takes just an idea and LEGO's designers create new set based on this idea while ADP was about taking original design from AFOL and creating building instructions for it. I didn't participated as contestant in it but as member of jury and external consultant together with few other distinguished builders, LEGO designers and Bricklink representatives from all around the world. It was awesome week spent in Denmark full of building, reviewing and fixing design issues of selected models that went in crowdsourcing later. Besides ADP I also worked on models and building instructions for two Christmas promotions in Albert (Ahold) stores in Czech Republic.

Another news is indroduction of premium building instructions that I began selling via website rebrickable.com. Currently there are 4 premium building instructions available for sale there - each of them is for big LEGO Technic model built out of approximately 700 to 900 parts. I want to continue releasing such building instructions for big models in future to get money for operating website buildinst and buying new LEGO sets. Instructions for small models will stay for free. The last news is change of software I use for building digital models for my building instructions. I definitely stopped using obsolete SR 3D Builder and began using Studio from Bricklink. Studio is intuitive and easy to use software ideal for building out of System bricks. It is not very suitable for building from Technic parts so I use LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) for Technic models. And I still use LPub for generating building instructions.

So let's look at models now! I would like to begin with this trio of LEGO Technic models - after shark from set 42066 I built helicopter from set 42077 then wheel skidder from set 42081 and recently snow groomer from set 42094. All of these models are pretty big and they are among the best models which I build out of LEGO Technic so far. Helicopter is built out of rally car and features spinning rotors, fake engine with moving pistons and main rotor can be tilted by lever in cockpit. It is also really huge - about 70 cm long! Wheel skidder is big too and new tractor tyres fit it perfectly. It features articulated steering, working decking blade, dual-function arch and grapple. Snow groomer is the smallest out of trio. It is big bro of snow groomer that I built from set 9391 six years ago. Snow groomer features lifting snow plow and clever mechanism for lifting rear blade - I used two shock absorbers to keep rear blade in two positions - up and down.

Speaking about models from System bricks I would like to highlight alien queen built out of set 70827 (Ultrakatty from the second LEGO Movie) and almost twenty alternative models from set 31087. I got inspiration for building alien queen from amount of thorns and spikes included in set and also wish to build real alien instead of those creatures from Duplo bricks. :-) I would call set 31087 as successor of set 31056 (at least untill release of set 31100). It contains lots of all-purpose bricks same as set 31056 so you can use it for building many varied models from motorbike to parrot. My best alternative models from this set are wheel barrow, wheel excavator, parrot and agricultural trio.

And what can you look forward in future? I began building my first supercar from set 42056 and new model from Mindstorms EV3 waits just for making video. I also have crazy idea for modification of tyrannosaur from set 75936 and I want to build some cool car from Mustang 10265.