Ideas Research Institute revealed

Alatariel Elensar, the creator of the forthcoming eighth Lego Ideas set, 21110 Research Institute, has posted an advanced review of the set, revealing its final form to the world.

The original proposal

The original proposal for this set was a "Female Minifigure Set", Elensar proposed numerous vignettes demonstrating females in all sorts of roles, to help balance out the persistent inequality in the Lego world. As the proposal neared the ten thousand supporter mark it had to be narrowed down to a small selection; three of the more science based roles were chosen, hence the final set is a multi-disciplinary research institute.

The final set has stayed remarkably close to the original vignette designs, with just a few minor refinements to polish them off. We get a palaeontologist with a fossilised T-Rex to study, an astronomer with a big telescope, and a chemist with her lab.

You can see more photos, and Elensar's thoughts on the final set, in her review.

While not their main focus, Lego does quite a good job of representing science in at least some forms, be that astronauts or exotic expeditions. Plus of course many of the previous Ideas/Cuusoo sets have been inspired by real world scientific devices. The closest comparison I can think of to this lab environment is one of the first Friends sets (and one of the least stereotypical roles for the Friends girls), 3933 Olivia's Invention Workshop. While that was a nice little set, I'm very happy to have a female scientist (or indeed several) that doesn't have to live in a pink world!

A Lego bus stop in London

Lego and Transport for London have teamed up to build a whole full size and real bus stop in London, just outside the Hamleys toy shop on Regents Street.

The one-hundred thousand brick build will be in active use as a real working bus stop for the next four weeks. It comes complete with Lego signage, huge transparent Lego windows, and really comfortable looking Lego benches.

Photos via Transport for London on Twitter, and Lego's Facebook and Twitter. More after the jump:

Lego bridges reality and the virtual world in Fusion

Lego have announced Fusion, a new range of construction and virtual play sets which build upon the strengths of the Lego brick and video games. Launching in August and September will be four building games: Town Master and Resort Designer (the latter based on the Friends theme) allow you to build up virtual cities from your creations, having to look after the citizens of your settlements. Battle Towers is a castle-theme defence game, and Create and Race, a racing game. Each comes with a specially designed base plate which can be recognised by the Fusion mobile and tablet app, allowing players to build a set and then capture it and recreate it virtually.

The real world models must be 2D facades, within a 16x16 brick block to be captured. But once in the virtual world the software extrapolates a complete 3D building from the design. Once captured, players can then go on to build more models in the real world, with their creations now part of a growing virtual world. The game also comes up with tasks and challenges to keep the player engaged.

On top of that different players can interact and compete with each others virtual realities over the internet.

Continue after the jump for a closer look at each set:

UPDATE, but first here's a video from Lego demonstrating all four:

Brick Like Me, the Lego Simpsons episode

This weekend will see the first airing in the US of Brick Like Me, a special Legofied episode of The Simpsons. Ahead of the release there's lot of promotion about, giving us a look at the Lego version of Springfield, and a somewhat frustrating vision of what The Simpsons characters look like as proper Lego minifigures - Not the molded head creations that have made it into production in the Lego The Simpsons range (oh how I long for a Marge Simpson hair-piece I could use on any minifigure).

The episode appears to take place in version of Springfield where being made of Lego is the norm. Through interesting with a Friends-esque construction set, Perky Patty's Princess Shop, Homer starts to revert to his normal 2D animated self.

Here are two trailers. The shorter first one highlights some of the Lego Movie-style humour, while the second longer trailer is more dramatic:





Continue after the jump for the episode poster, stills, and clips!

Review: The Lego Movie

From day one hearing of The Lego Movie I was pretty excited; I love Lego, I love animated films, and perhaps most excitingly, the movie has been created by the people behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, one of the most visually rich, creative, and funny, animated films ever made. In those capable hands I felt sure The Lego Movie would be pretty great. Then trailers started to appear, I felt even more sure about it, seeing the attention to detail and fidelity of the on-screen Lego world only made me more excited. So when I came to actually see the film my expectations were pretty high, and yet it still managed to surpass them! To shoehorn in the film's theme-song, everything in The Lego Movie is AWESOME!

The film shares the bright and wacky feel of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It also vaguely reminded me of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, not just for the clueless lead, and pink haired love interest, but the constantly changing settings and unreality of the universe. There are also some very pleasing flashes of Wes Anderson when you are pulled right out of the reality of the film to wide-shots of locations created at completely different scales, and with some silly "unrealistic" animations and sounds. The film is not afraid to poke fun at both the medium of Lego and its own choices of animation style.

The world of The Lego Movie is staggering in its Legoness. Everything is Lego; cars, buildings, people of course, but then the sky, and sea, huge landscapes and tiny details. Even the explosions have been modelled as if they were meticulously crafted stop motion animations using real Lego pieces. While most of the film is CGI it's amazing to think that, with sufficient quantities of Lego and time, you probably could, with the exception of the facial animations, make it all as real stop motion animation. The film makers have made the decision to animate the film within the rules of Lego; if you couldn't achieve a design or movement with real Lego than it's not in the film, and that gives it a unique look and charm that sets it aside both from other animated movies, and from most of Lego's previous shorter CGI promo animations.

We are also treated to whirl-wind tour of Lego worlds. If you're not that familiar with Lego then you'll just enjoy the random assortment of genre locations, but if you know your Lego stuff you're treated to a plethora of cameos and call backs. These worlds are also inhabited by a huge variety of characters that reflect many aspects of Lego: From the bright brick-built Unikitty in her equally bright and wacky Cloud Cuckoo Land, to the brilliantly retro spaceman Benny and his obsession with the Lego space-ship style of the past, and the most prominent (and scene stealing) licensed character in the film, Batman, who gloriously pokes fun at his own emo approach to life.

Aside from being a beautiful homage to everything Lego the film is unrelentingly hilarious. Much of this comes from the animation style and limitations of the Lego world. My favourite jokes came from the film making, in particulr the manipulation of time; when the film skips forward with intertitles to denote the time passing. There's also the strength of the identity of each of the major characters, all offering different takes on identity, conformity (or lack there of), and how to exist in the Lego world. Their great variety, each offers something unique and positive to the Lego world, even the bad guy, all feeding into the film's message on creativity.

If you're a fan of Lego you should love this film, it revels in its subject matter. It should also appeal to anyone interested in film making, particularly animation, as it's very cleverly and wittily made. And finally it's also one of the funniest films I can remember seeing, from what it gets from both the previous points, and so much more. I couldn't recommend The Lego Movie enough, it really is fantastic. I hope the franchise of Lego films to come after this can maintain the very high bar it has set.

Theme Guide: Mixels

Mixels is a new animated series co-developed between Lego and the Cartoon Network. The first Lego sets are expected to be released in March 2014. Each of the sets will be one Mixels character, each with a colour-scheme and theme based on a natural element.

Common between all the sets are lots of the new ball-hinge parts, as well as many other clip joints. All the characters also seem to have big googly eyes, either printed on balls, or round plates. Teeth and claw parts are also quite common, along with more unusual and visually distinctive parts such as flames and lightning.

The first wave of nine sets includes three sets of three characters which appear to be based on fire, rock, and electricity. The three sets for each element can be combined to create a larger character to represent each theme.

Here are the sets in wave one (packaging images via Hoth Bricks), the guide continues after the jump:

41500 Flain

41501 Vulk

41502 Zorch

41503 Krader

New Minifgures Online trailer

Funcom have launched a new website for their forthcoming Minifigures Online game. The website has a few partially populated sections, such as character profiles, revealing each minifigure's special abilities, and a guide to the "worlds" of the Minifigures game (although so far only Pirate World is previewed). You can also sign up to take part in the beta testing of the game. And they have released a new trailer demonstrating some of the game's features:



For more on the Minifigures game, see my earlier report, with the previously release trailer and screenshots.

Cuusoo Curiosity Rover

Lego have revealed the final design for the forthcoming fifth Cuusoo set, 21104 NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, which is set for release in January. Here's the set and box art:

Here's Lego's description from their announcement blog post:

This LEGO version of the highly advanced mobile laboratory features lots of great details, such as 6-wheel rocker-bogie suspension, articulated robotic arm and multiple camera sets, plus a display plate complete with LEGO brick Martian rocks – perfect for testing out the rover’s go-anywhere suspension! Similar to other LEGO CUUSOO sets, the building instruction booklet also includes background information about the fan builder, the history of Mars exploration, and the real Curiosity Rover.

The final model is remarkably similar to the original Cuusoo concept model. Here's what was submitted to Cuusoo, and the real thing, for comparison:

Lego's announcement also includes comments from Stephen Pakbaz, a NASA engineer who worked on Curiosity, and submitted the set idea to Cussoo, there are also pictures of him building his own copy of the set.

Minecraft goes minifigure scale

It would appear that the Minecraft sets have been quite the success for Lego. After three "Micro World" sets (the first a Cuusoo project), work is now under-way to expand the series even further, and at a larger minifigure scale. Here's a teaser image from the Lego Mincecraft Facebook page:

Lego plan to do a series of sets at minifigure scale, and have solicited for fan feedback on exactly how they do that, as this video explains:



The "cobuild" has already kicked off, which Lego posting a gallery of prototype designs for the Creeper character, again on Facebook. They are asking for a vote by "like" for the best of the six options on offer. I'm still pretty ignorant of Minecraft, but on a purely aesthetic level, I rather like this version:

One assumes they will continue offer other opportunists to shape the new Minecraft sets via Facebook, so keep an eye on the page!

More The Lego Movie sets revealed

Hot on the heels of the new The Lego Movie trailer, Lego are starting to reveal more of sets tied into the film. Including series 12 of the Collectable Minifigures, which are all characters from the film:

There look like a great set of characters; I'm glad to see being tied to The Lego Movie hasn't reduced the range of figures on offer this series. Brick Fanatics released the image, and as well as details of who all these are:

• Calamity Drone
• Gail the Construction Worker
• Larry the Barista
• Abraham Lincoln
• Panda Guy
• Velma Staplebot 
• William Shakespeare
• Taco Tuesday Guy

• “Where are my Pants?” Guy
• Wiley Fusebot
• President Business
• Wild West Wyldstyle
• Hard Hat Emmet
• Scribbe-Face Bad Cop
• Mrs. Scratchen-Post
• Marsha Queen of the Mermaids

Of course all these characters also give us some new insights into the film. We've got several western characters here (I love Wyldstyle's dress!), and several robots (two indeed fit into both groups), as well as plenty of city people and some more fanciful and historical characters.

Talking of fanciful, Yahoo Movies have revealed another of the sets based on the film: The gloriously colourful and pretty absurd 70803 Cloud Cuckoo Palace, which includes the brick-built Uni-Kitty (who it appears has a new tail element). There's also another robot in there, alongside Emmet, Wyldstyle, a snail, and a flower catapult!

UPDATE: Hollywood Reporter have revealed another set, 70809 Lord Business' Evil Lair, which comes with the extra tall Lord Business (with his extra long cape). Also included are Emmet and Vitruvius, and some new characters; Ma Cop, Pa Cop, wrestler/master builder El Macho Wrestler, and Biznis Kitty, a different (corrupted?) version of Unikitty. The set appears to include a TV set for Where-Are-My-Pants Guy, a corporate boardroom, and a massive tube of glue (powered by a massive nine-volt battery), surely used by Lord Business in his nefarious plans. Note Ma Cop and Pa Cop seem to have been glued, with an excellent use of the Toy Story army men bases in clear as a blob of glue!

There are seventeen sets planned based on the film, continue after the jump for a reminder of the other sets so far rumoured in the range: