LEGO launches Remake
Posted by Huw,
LEGO has launched a new microsite today: Remake.
Essentially, its purpose is to provide instructions for building alternative models from official sets that have been designed by fan builders, of which there are six involved at the moment, including Jason Allemann, creator of the Ideas Maze.
Builds are categorised into 'full' and 'partial' remakes: the difference seems to be that the former use the majority of parts in the donor set whilst the latter do not. Full instructions and parts lists for the models are provided which I am guessing are created by someone in LEGO given their consistency and high quality.
There is not much content there at the moment, about 30 builds from 7 donor sets (all City) and unfortunately the standard of photography is pretty poor in most cases which detracts from the site's design somewhat.
It's an interesting foray into a realm that has traditionally been well served by fan sites, the best one being Rebrickable. I don't think there will be much there to tempt AFOLs to visit the site regularly, but I guess if it's promoted more prominently on the main LEGO.com site it will become a useful resource for kids and should prove that even if you have just one LEGO set you can do so much more with it than just build from the included instructions. That has to be a good thing, right?
Thanks to Adam at BricksFans for alerting me to it.
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16 comments on this article
What about ReBrick? They already have that, too....
The instructions I looked at were just LPUB from the LDRAW toolset. Not Lego quality. Interesting concept but I think the curation of alternate builds will be more work than they are expecting.
Yes you could be right, I'm no expert. In which case, the fan designers are putting in a lot of effort. I hope they are remunerated.
I guess if LEGO is only accepting submissions from a trusted set of contributors it might not be so bad.
Seems like a ridiculously specific site.
LEGO are generally very good at interacting with their fans, but I don't see this ending well. What's on the site is not up to LEGO standards (or Rebrickable standards), and all something like this really does is dilute the value of fan sites.
If actual LEGO designers were creating the alt builds, that would be cool. Instead, we have a corporation co-opting a corner of the online fan space. Nobody wins.
I though this was something to ask for old sets to be made against based on how many votes it gets (Tie Bomber, Republic Fighter Tank, Tie Interceptor, etc).
I hope they come out with instructions for licensed set, too. Haven't seen any so far. :(
Meh, I won't be using it.
Seems to me a thing to promote current sets only. My guess is the guys get a free copy of the set for their work. It's a good idea and I'd love to contribute to something like this. But it's going to be hard for LEGO to scale this up if they want to maintain any sort of quality.
@ Lordmoral
My thought exactly. This would be great thing (I want Haunted House!)
oh I miss the official alternative mode
BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some of the Submarine alt models are quite interesting. However, most of these aren't well-made or very interesting... should they expand this to Creator, Technic, and such, this would be much more interesting.
I have been involved in the development of this site as a partnership with Rebrickable. I'm surprised to see that it had been launched actually. I can confirm that there are more designers and sets involved, this appears to be an early version of the site. I'm waiting to hear back from lego but can only assume it was a mistake to launch in its current form.
That's what the "just imagine" thing on instructions are for - wait, forgot that alternate models no longer appear on the box or instructions
StevieDaniels21:
Boy, howdy, do I miss the alternate models on the boxes. Those fostered so much creativity in me as a kid, and got me completely out of the "only build the kit one proper way" mindset.
Le sigh.