Revival Project: Expansion

The main city area

I am very glad to say that Revival Project is really starting to look amazing. As you can see from the image above, I have added in the Ghostbusters HQ and Sanctum Sanctorium sets which both make the city look much more complete.

Hogwarts

Hogwarts is still the same, however I will eventually replace the boxes with some sort of lego structure that closer resembles mountainous terrain.

The Bridge

The bridge will also be replaced with a lego structure and I am currently unsure of how it will look.

Within Atlantis

Although this area technically isn't Atlantis, I have made it so that the only way of getting to it is through Atlantis. I will place the castle on green baseplates to make it look like an island.

Aircraft hangar

I will add baseplates beneath the Milano and X-jet but other than that, I have no plans for this section.

Main aircraft hangar

This section will be covered in baseplates and besides from that, I have no further plans for this section.

Aircraft hangar

This area will be covered in baseplates and I might add an extra ship, besides from that I have no further plans for this section.

The Quidditch pitch

This is how the area will look once I have found a home for my Brickheadz. I plan on covering up all white surface and adding a second layer to the pitch to add terrain and texture.

The forest entrance

At the moment this area looks too cluttered and unorganised. I will add a second layer for terrain and possibly a third layer for things such as paths, however this could be incorporated into the second layer.

The fairground and river

The Silent Mary looks amazing on the river and the fairground no longer feels randomly placed. I have inhabited it with the figures from the new series 18 minifigure series to act like the mascots you get at funfairs and theme parks. As you can see, some of it does enter the river, however this will be solver once I add the second layer. I plan on adding transparent blue pieces to the river and a variety of greens to the fairground.

Atlantis

Atlantis looks great on the baseplates. I will keep an eye out for more aquatic creatures such as the dolphins and add them to the river. I will also get another big boat and possibly a couple of small ones to make the river seem less empty. I might even add a small ghost city section.

The centre of the world

The fire temple looks amazing ad everything is starting to fit together and look much more displayed than it did. I will add some kind of path whether it be a wooden bridge or stepping stones to cross the river to add access to each section. The main practicality problem at the moment is that the baseplates come out of place when stepped on. Hopefully this will be solved when I add the second layer.

The forest

In the forest, I have added Yoda's hut, a rhino, and I have moved a couple of things so that I could place the hut. The forest is now feeling more full although it does greatly need baseplates to create a far more green image. I will also add more trees.

The forest entrance

I have moved The Burrow and added in its place a mansion. I will add a path between Bag End and the mountain cave which leads to the main forest area. I will also add a second layer to create terrain.

Inside Atlantis

There isn't much inside Atlantis right now. I may add invisible stands to make it look like various creatures are swimming. I will add some sort of path to make the floor more interesting.

Aircraft Hangar

I will add baseplates and I might try to connect the carbon freezing chamber set to the side of the Death Star.

Aircraft hangar

Hogwarts

The Fire Temple

I will try and cover up as much carpet as possible plus I will add terrain. The fire temple works very well with the samurai X cave set which I have placed behind it.

Weathertop

I will add baseplates and grassy/mountainous terrain.

Brickheadz

So far, these are all of the Brickheadz I have. I wasn't planning on collecting them... now I am. Unfortunately I don't have a home for them just yet, however I am working on it.

The empty space

I have no big plans for this area at all... I will put down as many baseplates as I can, however I can't put them next to my door because if I do, it won't open. I will create a dirt track leading to the mining area from the fence I placed at the end of the road and I will put up fences around the power miner HQ.

Aircraft Hangar

Bleeker Street

In the city, I will add pavements and stand everyone up. I will also add baseplates in-front of the pizza place.

Bleeker Street

Aircraft Hangar

I will add baseplates and minifigures to all of my aircraft hangar sections.

This post has shown the majority of areas in my lego world. The areas I haven't shown are the coastguard section and a couple of other aircraft hangars. Unfortunately the light wasn't great whilst taking the photos and I was rushed for time which is why I haven't shown them in this post. I will create another post eventually and hopefully make some big changes to my lego world, mainly adding terrain. I really hope you have enjoyed this post, please let me know what you think and if there is anything I can improve or change.

UCS Hulkbuster?

Lately I have seen something which I find to be really exciting. Two photos have been released of a Lego Hulkbuster set box which hasn't been announced and it looks like it will be the biggest Hulkbuster set to date. For those of you who don't know anything about Marvel or the Hulkbuster Iron Man suit, it is the suit Tony Stark, A.K.A Iron Man, uses to fight the Hulk, a big strong green person to be overly simple about it, and it is one of the most iconic Iron Man suits.

Currently there has only been one Lego Hulkbuster suit, as pictured above, and it cost around £30. The set included Iron Man, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Ultron, the Hulkbuster suit, plus a small cage build.

Due to the Hulkbuster suit being featured in the upcoming Marvel film 'Avengers: Infinity War', Lego are going to be releasing another Hulkbuster suit. As you can see in the image above, the set will feature Bruce Banner, Falcon, Proxima Midnight, an Outrider, the Hulkbuster suit, and a turret. This suit looks slightly bigger than the old one and more head heavy than chest heavy like the old one.

The two pictures above are those of the rumoured new Hulkbuster set. I am going to presume that they are real as the box design is perfectly matching to what would be expected. It's odd that the picture seems to have been taken in a Lego store (the yellow colouring implies this) but Lego haven't announced the set... However the one thing going against this being real is the fact a Hulkbuster set is scheduled for release around Infinity War. Having two of the same thing out at once would potentially decrease sales so I think, if this is genuine, it will be released around July to give the smaller Hulkbuster chance to sell. From the box you can see that the set comes with an Iron Man figure and it looks like you will be able to place him inside the Hulkbuster suit. The box also indicates that a light brick will be featured in the chest of the suit and that you can swap one of the arms like in 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'. There could potentially be a second version of this type of set some time after Infinity War. This set is labelled 'Ultron edition' which could mean that they might make an Infinity War edition. The Ultron edition set could cost around £160 as that is what the Lego Batman Tumbler Batmobile cost when that was released and I think this could be a similar set to that.

Lego news and rumours 2018

Hello! In this post I will not be going through every single rumour and every bit of Lego news, just the good stuff. To start off with, on January 28th it was the official birthday of the Lego brick and this year it has turned 60 years old. To celebrate this Lego have created a set which features four classic sets in micro scale. The good news is that this set is free, however the not so good news (depending on how you are with money and Lego) is that you have to spend over £100 at the Lego shop online.

As you can see, the above image shows the series 18 Lego minifigures! They were either announced or leaked, it doesn't matter which as either way we now know what figures will be included. In other minifigure news, there are rumours of a new Disney minifigures line, however I couldn't find any detail to the rumour, plus there are rumours of a Harry Potter minifigure line which sounds interesting as rumoured characters include a few of the Hogwarts ghosts. One rumour which has been confirmed is a Unikitty minifigure line which will consist of characters from the Cartoon Network Unikitty programme. There is speculation that this line will be similar to the Mixels series.

In addition to the potential minifigure series, it has been announced that there are going to be three Harry Potter sets and three Fantastic Beasts sets. There has been rumour of a UCS Hogwarts, however, as there is going to be a Great Hall set, I think its safe to presume there won't be. Besides from the Great Hall set, there will also be an Aragog set and a Ford Anglia set. 

Unfortunately, there shall be no summer wave for Nexo Knights. This most likely means that the Nexo Knights theme has been cancelled.

The infinity war sets have all been leaked/announced! I will do a post on what I think of them, however I will say that I am excited to see the set in the image above in more detail. The set above will be the largest in the wave and there will be six sets in total, one for each infinity stone. There will be another Hulkbuster mech and another very orange looking Milano style spaceship.

In the technology world of Lego, it is rumoured that there will be two Lego videogames this year. These are rumoured to be a Lego Batman Villains game and a Lego Incredibles II game. If these rumours are true, it can also be presumed that there will be a line of Incredibles sets at some point in the future. Also, there is rumour of an app controlled Batmobile.

Apparently, there is going to be another Lego Star Wars Sandcrawler, however it isn't going to be a UCS one which is good because it will be more affordable, however it will be smaller and possibly loose the detail of the old one. Another rumour is that there will be a UCS cloud city set. I have no idea how they will do this and I have been told that it would only work as a normal set. I have seen some interesting MOCs but think it will definitely be tricky to turn into a UCS set, escpecially without losing some key rooms. The rumour is that it will replace the current Death Star and be designed in a similar dollhouse structure.


That is all for now. I will do a couple of posts saying about particular things in detail, for example the infinity war sets, the chances of a Harry Potter minifigure line, and the Incredibles sets. My next post will either be on Saturday the 10th of February or Sunday the 11th of February, I will aim for the tenth.

LegoLad Reviews update and future plans

Hi! I am glad to announce that I will (hopefully) be posting once a week, every Friday. If I know I can't post on Friday, I will post a notification on twitter which will say that the new post will be on the Thursday of that week. If I can't post on Friday due to something unexpected or the post taking longer than anticipated to make, I will post it on the Saturday or Sunday. If you don't know my twitter account, here is the link:

https://twitter.com/LegoLad_Reviews?lang=en-gb

I am very happy to announce that I have just reached sixty followers and so I thank all of the sixty that have chosen to follow me! I know sixty isn't at all many when it comes to followers but as this blog is still relatively new, I am very grateful for this number.

If you have any suggestions for what I should post about, please let me know by either commenting on this post or contacting me on twitter. My next posts will be a review of a Lego book I have bought, posts on sets featured in the book, revival project updates, revival project digital updates, and Lego news as there are currently a few rumours floating around.

'The Lego Story: Brick by Brick' Review

On Sunday 31st December, Channel 5 aired a documentary called 'The Lego Story: Brick by Brick'. As you can probably guess, it was a documentary that went through the history of Lego, it's highs, it's lows, and why it is such a well known success.

When watching the introduction, I was very surprised as to how good it seemed. The music was great as it was fun, bouncy, and creative; the adults, whether they be film critics, structural engineers, or financial experts, all seemed very passionate when talking; and most importantly, it didn't give too much away. For me, the introduction seemed almost perfect, the only thing that could have made it better was if they featured more shots of Lego models.


The documentary interviewed an interesting and wide range of people. They interviewed Craig Stevens (Film Critic), Tyger Drew-Honey (Actor), Russel Grant (Astrologer), Simon Hugo (Lego Author), Anna Williamson (TV Presenter), Jordan and Perry (Dancers/Diversity members), Roma Agrawal (Structural Engineer), Andrew Collins (Writer), Mark Dolan (Comedian), Dr Shini Somara (Mechanical Engineer), Sarah Herman (Author, A Million Little Bricks), Dominic Frisby (Financial Expert), Jon Tickle (TV Presenter), Simon Pickard (Lego Fan Builder), Deborah Jaffe (Author, The History of Toys), Tom Poulsom (Lego Fan Builder), and Tom Craine (Comedian). I find it amazing that they interviewed eighteen different people for a documentary on the history of Lego and it's even more amazing how different their professions are. This offers the documentary a wide range of opinions and perspectives which are effectively used.

I found that the documentary used a good blend of interviewing, saying facts, and showing old footage of adverts and potential news reports. The facts were really interesting as they really show just how big Lego has become as a company. Examples include Lego being the worlds largest tyre manufacturer, Lego bypassed Ferrari as the world's most powerful brand, and there are 100 pieces of Lego for everyone on Earth. I was surprised with how many facts they included that I didn't already know.


An extremely unexpected thing which the documentary did was include very old footage of LEGOLAND Billund being built and old Lego TV adverts. It even showed a clip from a different documentary which showed the Lego HQ being put into lockdown because there was a camera crew trying to look through the windows. That particular segment made it seem very bizarre how secretive Lego are.


Another detail I was impressed with are the topics covered. They talked about the history without sparing a detail, they showed how Lego was used as a family and for education, they showed old footage of adverts, they showed military practicality as well as mentioning how it is used in other professions, they talked about the main UK Lego convention 'Brick Live', they talked about the Lego movie and even about the Lego batman movie. They barely left any stone unturned which is very impressive. The only criticisms I have are that they didn't mention Lego branching out onto consoles or TV. They briefly showed vague clips of things to do with the Lego Ninjago movie, however this was not explored in detail. However, the documentary did make up for this by mentioning Lego sales are down again, that they nearly went bankrupt, and went into how they recovered.

In conclusion, I think that this documentary is worth watching whether you love Lego, are interested in it's history, or just want to understand why everyone is so obsessed over it. As I said earlier, the documentary isn't perfect, however it makes up for that in so many ways.

Revival Project Digital: Expansion

At long last, I have finally finished building the mystery building that I plan on having next to the pet shop! The building is the Ghostbusters HQ and took so long because of how many pieces are included. I apologise for not posting for a couple of months but as you can imagine, this post has taken a lot of time to make. Amazingly, Lego Digital Designer hasn't crashed yet whilst I've been building so hopefully I can still build much more into this project. Currently, the brick count is at 10569 pieces. As you can see, I have also built a couple of extra things which I will talk about later in the post.

As you can see, the Ghostbusters HQ is both taller and longer than the pet shop. As the pavement creates a gap between the two buildings, I will extend the path to the back of the pet shop and create a proper garden area for the pet shop and house instead of leaving the back as plain green baseplate. This idea will probably also extend to the back of the shop, plus I will definitely try to extend the shop to make it fit in with the large modular buildings next to it.

If you look through the windows, you can see the internal decoration I have included in the Ghostbusters HQ instead of only building the exterior. On the ground floor, you can see some boxes, on the first floor you can see some beds and tiled floor, on the second floor, you can see a pool table, carpet, and a glimpse of machinery at the back.

I have also build a small police outpost which acts as a border between the main city area and the mines. Originally, I was going to make it so that some of the area behind this point was desert, however due to how little space it would take up, I have decided to make the terrain rocky instead to fit in with the mining area.

I have started work on the track which leads to the Power Miner's HQ, I will try and blend it into the road once I have finished figuring out how to build it. I might include a break in the left mound on the corner to indicate that vehicles can drive left, however, I may do something else instead.

This is what I hope the Power Miner's HQ area will look like in real life, however it might be a little bit too wide with the fences included to fit. The front gates can both open and at the two front corners, connecting the fences, are the bases of what will be two guard towers. I plan on placing many more crystals inside the HQ area, you can see a couple that I have already included. In reality I would have two large mining vehicles in this area, unfortunately as the programme won't et me place wheels on baseplates, all vehicles will have to be left until last. I think this area looks the most completed out of what I have done so far.

As the traffic light that is included in the Ghostbuster's HQ set is facing the wrong way, I might change the corner that lies in-front of it into a T junction and place a building or another corner on the other side of the HQ. If I decide not to do this, I will try and alter the traffic light.

As you can see, I have added lots of green and coloured two of the corner plates. The blue corner signifies roughly where ocean will start and the dark red corner indicated where volcanoes and lava related sets will be. The green area is roughly all of the available space I have for the fair ground. The next steps will be completing the track to the Power Miner's HQ, adding more terrain to that area, and working on the fair ground. I might also start building the area next to the police station, expanding the shop, and adding some non Lego related things, for example the shelves the lie behind the Power Miner's HQ.

I really hope that you have enjoyed this post, again I apologise for how long it has taken to release. I really hope the next post will be released soon. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions, I would love to know how the track leading to the Power Miner's HQ is looking so far and whether or not you enjoy the posts.