Something different for a change

There is admittedly a strong theme of the highly marketed memes in here.

But Lego is so much more than that; here's some ideas that were sparked when the "class cuddly"* came to us for the day.
You can make many things with Lego: cake and animals too. The odd looking lump in item #2 is the contribution from the Creator's sister. You may have to squint. 

Mr Otter gets a Lego birthday cake.

And here are several Lego Otters

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The Influence of 'Potter makes itself felt

Before the happy day when some gen-yoo-ine actual Harry Potter Lego arrived, there was nevertheless a pressing need to express some Dementor related scenarios. So, something got done.

This is put together from some Star Wars lego, with You-Know-Who* getting the "Battle Damage Darth Vader" head.

I particularly like the re-purposing of the Ewok flying machine stand ...

Scene of great ersatz drama.

*Voldemort

Occasionally, out of the maelstrom of smaller items, cobbled together to fit the whim or the theme of the current drama, a bit more time is spent to get a more detailed creation together.

Maybe later I'll pull something together on the key place that the "special pieces" play in the whole enterprise. Nothing though that the marketing bods hadn't already considered, I'm sure...

Quite a complicated number: yes, there is a co-pilot in there.
And I don't know why there's a small racing car on the back.

Troopers, Troopers, Troopers

Arguably the array of Troopers in the Star Wars universe is "pre-bewildered" to borrow from Major Quimby.

They come in the varieties: Storm, Shadow, Clone (Early/Late variants), Snow, Senate, Rocket, Heavy and the list goes on.

Nevertheless, the opportunities are rarely overlooked by the Creator to make the bewildering array even more so.

It's a cop: a StormTrooper cop with an "enhanced" gun.

Handy for getting at those "hard to reach" rebels.

Actually, I'm not sure what purpose the re-breather is serving...

Never caught out by attacks from above.

May have been inspired by the "Bounty Hunter Rockets" red brick.

A Buzz Trooper.

A Skeleton StormTrooper and "Darth Skeleton"

... And yet more 'Droids

Some more strange 'Droids: the flow has only slowed, not stopped.

This one was an ad-hoc creation today: pound for pound, it has quite a high outlandishness rating.

This poor fellow needed quite a lot of help standing up...

And another victim of the rampant Gun inflation; I fear a similar fate as the Sabre toothed tiger awaits.

Though in the event of enemies needing shooting and spearing with a little help this fellow is your man.

I  just can't do this!

Are we going to stay static or go Multimedia?

hmmm. tough call :P

Not sure about this one, either

Seriously what is this meant to be? I think all parties have forgotten.
I should suffix this by pointing out that although Lego is a great medium for abstract patterns, the Creator is not one to lean in that direction - everything is a Proper Noun, no messing about.

Any ideas?

'Droids, 'Droids, 'Droids

The 'Droids seemed to be most apt for creating some mini-figurine "Island of Dr. Moreau" - those parts do go together in quite a few different ways...
Here are a few.

The battle 'Droids quite often develop Shiva-like attributes...

I think this is essentially a very complicated light sabre.
Health and safety violations abound, such needing to hold them by the blade.

This guy is either getting awesome 'phone reception,
or can hear a pin drop from orbit.

Not to be out-done, this was the nadir of the arms race.

Relatively tame

Tuns out this idea didn't have legs.

An attempt at even greater fidelity to the films.

You can do just about anything for the heads of these things.

For a while, there was a strong emphasis on greater size for everything,
leading some very serious limb / gun inflation. 

Ships, Ships and more Ships

Another one of the memes that has come and gone was the "small ships" idea.

One of the many "Water Back Speeders"

All bases covered

This is either a Ship or a 'Droid

Some of these look frankly quite uncomfortable

Not to mention the overcrowding... 

The panorama of pride

One day, the creator decided to build all his kits.

One of many dioramas

For future generations, and the "hard of cultural reference" - it's the Death Star, with Tie fighters and I think some Star Destroyers.

I did help a little with the Death Star, I must confess.

meme parade

One trend I discern is various memes around categories like say, ships, and droids.

They start appearing - I swear the lightbulb that goes on above the Creator's head is visible, and he vanishes upstairs, to be followed shortly by the sound of Lego being sifted.

Remote working *will* be the future

There are quite a few like these, but this one is the epitome.

Pushing the available figurines and seating space to the limits results in this.

It has been determined that in the future public transport will be crowded.

There was a flurry of ideas like this at one point, which seems to have died down. There were ships and speeders of various sizes with largely one or two passengers/ pilots. This one is an extreme example.

Something of a departure

As time passes, and the master plan unfolds, I think we'll see some themes emerge. I may need to start catering for that with tags based on date/obessession, or some convolution thereof.

In anticipation of that, here is something that I came across and actually had me scratching my head for a bit.
I'd obviously gone to some trouble to capture this one in its glory: note the  kitchen paper "studio backdrop" (classy!) and a pretty decent focus for a macro shot.
All very "un-me".
Plus, I just could not place this thing.

Then the sun came out.

It's a Dalek. All the distinctive features are there.

The "bumps" - very important. The eye stalk, the "plunger" (yes, everyone calls it that) and the gun.

It's one of the more minimalist works, which seem to grab the Creator's fancy and get thrown together on a whim quite quickly.

Das Boot - serious competition for the Creator

Das Boot

This is my boat!

Ok, I'm now pushing it by extending to "same parent  company", but she was rather proud of it.

It's strikingly nuanced, and I couldn't resist the pun!

Sometimes, tiny things just appear...

Sometimes, tiny things just appear....

Like these I found on the windowsill.

What exactly are these?

Very fragile; obviously a lot of effort went into them. The designs are a bit of a departure for the Creator.
They're gone now: sometimes it's like that.

First Sighting

Here is what I believe is the very first creation from the Creator's little sister.

At her age, it's a bit of a habit of neurotic middle class parents to monitor them too much. And they can be good at "commanding attention" (euphemism alert).

So, when I heard the cry of "Yay, I did it!" and saw what she'd been diligently putting together,  I couldn't resist taking a snap.

First Creation

Now, I'd heard it said LEGO was targeted at the dexterity and available manual force of a 3-year old, so to see the mini Creator snap these together was a bit of an eye-opener.

I think also, that if you squint and look from the right angle, there's a certain aesthetic flair betraying itself.
Or is that fatherly pride :P

One of many: The Claw Monster

Ok: it's Sunday - morning - just, and it's time to explain myself.

Fantastic LEGO creations are everywhere.
I trip over them or sit on them or find them languishing under the sofa. They are left, gargoyle-like peering at us from bookshelves; sometimes they are arranged into baroque dioramas that require arcane interpretation from the Creator*; they come and go and fall in and out of favour - disassembled / re-assembled or mutated at a bewildering rate.  They may or may not figure in the current narrative playing in the Creator's head, or might just be some whimsy realised in LEGO.

When my fancy takes me, and I happen to be passing past something that takes my eye, I snap it. Every year this just gets easier and easier as the cameras, smart 'phones and web cams proliferate along with the creations.
And as the Creator grows and changes, the variety in the creations both grow, though in some ways the themes stay the same. Some of these evolutions will be very familiar to an educationalist, but this is not an academic blog and I'm not here to generalise, merely document.

So, without further ado, here is the creation that was current at the time I decided to start this blog; the Claw Monster.

A Claw Monster: he has trouble standing up.

These things are quite small. and it's hard to do justice to the extreme nature of them, but trust me on this one: in real life close up in LEGO mini figurine-land, that's one big Claw!

To some degree I'm interested in what leads to the inception of these creations, but this is a forlorn hope; the moment will often have passed and all we have left is this evidence; a flavour of what was going on in the Creator's mind.

Occasionally I ask about these creations and sometimes I do get some kind of a consistent answer, which I note for fun.

Sometimes, we just have to observe.

* the Fantastic Lego Creator, that is.

Hello to one fantastical world from another

Coming soon: the world of fantastic LEGO creations, as imagined by the Creators.