Remake: more information
Posted by Huw,
Yesterday we told you about LEGO Remake, a new area on LEGO.com that provides alternative building instructions for official sets. In the article I mentioned that it was something that the community has been capably providing for years via sites like Rebrickable.
Well, it turns out that Nathan from Rebrickable has been involved in Remake although I get the impression he was as surprised as anyone that it was launched yesterday because it's not yet complete.
He's posted an article about it on the Rebrickable blog. LEGO has also made a statement about it which you read after the break.
"As you might have heard and seen, we launched a new site on LEGO.com called LEGO Remake. The intention with this site is to provide older children with creative inspiration to what alternative builds they can make with existing LEGO sets.
"In order to provide the inspiration, we reached out to 7 amazing fan designers through Nathan Thom, the owner of Rebrickable. The Rebrickable website inspired the LEGO Remake project and over the past 6+ months we have been working closely with the adult fan designers to find a way to make alternative builds to existing LEGO products.
"Together with the fan designers, it is our aim to inspire children all over the world to keep building. The site is meant to be a real life test, to determine the appeal to children. The fan designers have made some really creative builds within some tough constraints and we are really proud of what they have achieved.
"All instructions and images are created by the fan designers based on a number of guidelines for e.g. building instruction design and model design. For now, the site is a pilot and not many builds are up yet, but we have more in the pipeline, pending internal tests."
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I think it's great that is has the community behind it, and perhaps as a result it stands more chance of success. The statement also sheds light on the instructions creation: the fan designers have produced them, which is a lot of work!
What ever next... an official LEGO database at LEGO.com in collaboration with Brickset? I've not received the call yet... :-)
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6 comments on this article
Wait, they launched the site before it was ready? Whatever for?
Like I said before, I mostly want to see this used for Creator and Technic sets... they tend to lend themselves more to lots of alternate models. I'd love to be surprised by what they come up with for other themes, though!
@PicnicBasketSam: Peter Szabo, one of the Remake builders, has done some great Creator alternate builds over the years: http://www.moc-pages.com/home.php/108368 However, his creations specifically got my attention after seeing his Mystery Roadster and Mystery Flying Machine models built from the Mystery Machine set: http://www.moc-pages.com/folder.php/183932
After seeing such creativity with a licensed set that certainly wasn't created with those specific builds in mind, I have a hard time imagining any mid-size set that can't be rebuilt into at least one or two other things, and I'm particularly excited to see Remake expand into themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and Elves. It seems like it'd make particular sense since these themes ARE aimed at older builders than City, which all the current remakes are based on — although on that note, perhaps part of the idea behind remake might be to take sets with a building level aimed at younger kids and make them fun for those kids as they get older.
Speaking of which, that reminds me of one project I'd been wanting to start this year that I haven't gotten around to: trying to make "full-size" versions of some of the Dimensions alternate builds using the "full-size" versions of the sets the other builds are based on (like Kai's Blade Cycle or Laval's Fire Lion). Maybe I ought to stop putting that off and get into the "remake" spirit myself!
Huw, hi, never addressed you before, I'm new around here. I just wanted to say I loved the last paragraph of this article and would love to see that. An official database as thorough as this would be great on LEGO.com, better still if it followed the Brickset model and allowed for consumer set tracking.
I would love to see this come to full fruition. It obviously sounds horribly unfinished but in this day and age, with a lack of alternate builds detailed in the manuals or boxes like before, it can be hard for some children to come up with creative ideas for alternate sets, and this can go a long a way towards that. I like Rebrickable but in my experience it seemed more catered to mixing pieces from multiple sets than building from one.
What i think sucks; is that only lego designers can post there mocs there! It should be like everyone could do it...!