Team J.A.F.

Got around to watching it today. The original show was a bit of a letdown, but the second season is looking more promising. There's more character development, other than Kai going "Oh, I should learn teamwork and stuffs." The jokes can get a little childish, but there's some nice action (as far as martial arts minifigures can go.) Lloyd Garmadon is a little annoying... which is primarily what his character is supposed to do, so I guess good job? Plus, the snake villains have been pretty good. And they've used LOTS of the Ninjago sets. My only worry is that they're going to run through everything so quickly that there'll be nothing left for future episodes. But it was still fun to watch. Yes, Ninjago is kind leaning more towards Power Rangers in the sets and show... but gosh darn it, I liked Power Rangers, and Ninjago is that PLUS Lego, so I'm pleased.

... What, it's the end of the year? I should be doing some sappy, depressing "Oh, I screwed up so much this year I'm worthless I should try harder next year to actually do something worth doing, blah blah blah." Yeah, I've been a real downer before. But hey, I got good grades in classes, I have a fair amount of money saved up (sadly, my summer job seems to have gotten cut with the state budget. Drat!) and I have plenty of Lego to work with. Life could be better, but I'm cool with what I have now.

I just need to figure out which Lego conventions I can attend next year. Bricks Cascades, BrickFair, and BrickCon are all on the list, but I will probably only be able to afford the time and money for two, so I might have to decide between the Fair and the Con. (Cascades, being just across the river, is an obvious go. I would say it's finally in my town, but I'm not in Portland. The Vancouver side of the river is cooler anyway... far less traffic. )

... What was I going on about? Oh, yes, Ninjago. The stupid second season has now made me want to get all the 2012 sets. Curses, Lego marketing department! Your TV show worked!

So today my family was driving past Tacoma and I managed to convince them to stop by this Lego Art Studio known as City Blocks or something. There's this guy on the forum who really likes them, forget who tho.

Anyway, it was a neat little area. They had a cool train setup on display, and lots of mosaics and other models were to be seen. I talked with the owner, Dan, briefly, and he's a cool guy, but he sure can talk alot. And don't get him started on how to sort your Lego parts. And I guess he's very protective about his stuff. I was given a VIP (again, ) tour of the place, but I couldn't touch anything. I guess they were worried about me stealing one of their hundred Royal Guard figs. (Don't they already know that I have, like, 5, and even that's too many of those stupid hair pieces.)

Anyway, it's a cool place to check out, and I guess they make commissions too. If you're a big company who wants a cool Lego model designed for you, then they're the place to go to! Also I guess they do birthday parties and summer camps?

Also, I heard somewhere that the one guy who works there is gonna get a silly Reporter friend of his and they're gonna build a big Mata Nui island model, that's rumored to be like 6 feet wide and 12 feet tall long. That'll be a pretty cool thing to see at either Bricks Cascade or BrickCon or Both!

Anyway, yeah, cool place!

(Good enough for you, Swert? )

Y'know what, I think I'm going to go rewatch them all. Right now.

They were so awesome. Just wish more of them had been released in 2002. (As it is, like 4 of them were posted in December, which meant there were reeeeeeeeally long waits until the end of the year where they quickly rushed the rest of the stuff to us. But it was quality, so whatev)

And so are blogs... kinda.

Well, a lot has happened since the forums went down.

I went to work.
I went to BrickFair.
I went to school.
I went to BrickCon.
I went crazy.

That about sums it up.

It'll be nice to start blogging here again.

No, no, I did not completely revamp my idea. This is a second, sister sub. And by sister, I mean evil twin sister. Yes, an AquaShark submarine!

Back story: I never had any Aquashark sets... I must've got my Aquanaut set a year after it's release, because when I really started getting into Lego the new themes were Hydronauts and Stingrays. But having constructed my Aquanaut sub to near completion (still waiting on a few pieces) I decided that I might as well work towards an opponent sub... and who better than the AquaSharks?

This sub is made on a smaller scale; it's still about 80 studs long, but it's not as tall and not as wide; thus, it has less bricks in it. So far, I've only made an average-sized order to get some of the specialized pieces, so the bulk of this sub is elements that I already own. (As compared to the aquanaut sub, which was made of only like 20% of parts that I already owned) Obviously, I'm still missing a few key pieces, like the octagonal bricks on the bottom, so I will need to make a few more parts orders. But the basic design is finalized, and now I just need to fill in the gaps. (FYI, the color scheme is black, blue, and trans orange. All the yellow / trans lime parts are stand ins and will be replaced.)

Onto the design; again, I compartmentalized this sub so that it can split into separate sections for easy transport and such. They are as followed:

Section 1: The head. The main idea was to create an elongated nose with the classic trans orange Aquashark screen. While I like the basic idea, the bottom of the nose (the chin, neck, whatever) is way to bulky, and thus I need to rework this design. Alot. But I Like where it's going, and the trans orange hinge panels offer a nice space to store stuff... like boxes of crystals. style_emoticons/default/sly.gif

Section 2: The arms. I again used Hero factory limbs and armor to work together some arms, with the same claw and magnet (to be added soon) design as my last sub. Sadly, I don't have any blue armor, so I may force myself to go purchase Surge to get some. Also, since I want to brag about it, I DID use trans orange glatorian heads as the arm sockets. Hey, it works.

Section 3: Quarters / Fins: I got this cool new piece; I 1x4x3 window brick that has an octagonal bracket attached. It was used in the original Aquasharks sets to attach the octagonal windscreen to the side, so I ordered one and put it on this sub. I still need the trans orange windscreens, but the design works. I also added some fins to the side to make it more shark like, and I bulked up the propellers to make them sit on nice and secure. I also create a neat pattern on the top using the display plates that came with the collectible minifigs. Seriously, I had like 50 of those plates, and I managed to use about 40 or so on this MOC. WOOHOO.

Section 4: Storage and Tail: The tail is a basic windscreen design; sadly, the screen I ordered was a little busted, but it fits on, so I just won't be opening and closing it. There will be two fins on the end of the tail; I don't have the bottom one yet, but when I get it, it'll look shark like. The big area in front of all this is the storage area for a small water scooter, which will fit under a windscreen (current one is a placeholder until I can get trans orange ones). And on the wides, I'm using SNOT with this nice long wedge that I got in one of the Exo Force sets they were handing out at the conventions. It has alot of what would be boring bricks, and gives a nice flow to the body of the shark.

Overall, this sub is somewhat smaller (and much lighter) than my Aquanaut sub. And while the other sub is an exploratory sub, made for discovering and transporting crystals, this one is a fast, mean sub, meant for attacking and stealing crystals. My only problem is the crew; I don't have any AquaShark minifigs.

Anyway, hopefully after a few specific and (cheap?) parts orders, I can have this one completed too. style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

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