First Review 2.0

Before leaving to hang out with my friends, I finished another video review this morning. The review was for the same set #8956 Stone Chopper.

My original intention was for this second review to be shorter, but it ended up clocking in at about seven minutes long, a full two extra minutes more than the first one.

So from now on, until people tell me they just need one, I will be uploading two versions of each review: 

1. Formal: I will follow a written script prepared beforehand. 

2. Informal: I'll just wing it and say my thoughts. 

Neither of the videos have been uploaded yet, but they're done alright.
Let me know what you guys think of this system. Personally, double the content sounds pretty good to me.

-Will

"legoassassin" imgur Gallery

My awesome "REconCYCLE" Truck! 

Kind of pointless for me to mention, but I added my imgur gallery to the links widget. 

I probably could have mentioned this in the previous post, but I didn't.

The gallery is relatively recent, but I never got around to updating it. I'm sure that'll change soon.

Visit it here.

Hooray for filler posts!

-Will 

"Huai Champ" Brickshelf Gallery tab

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I've been updating the link widget at the top of the blog. There are links to The Brick Zone YouTube channel, my old "legoassassin" YouTube channel, and my old "Huai Champ" Brickshelf gallery. Does anyone even use Brickshelf anymore? No? Just me? Okay then. Go check it out.

There are pictures of cool castles I built when I was little! 

Visit the gallery here!

-Will

First Review Finished

I finished working on my first review today, WOO-HOO!

Sleigh Ride in July

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse-open sleigh.

I spent the whole day working on one review for one small set.

In the review, I take forever to review something that could probably be covered in two minutes. I feel like I should shorten it, but at the same time I spent an entire day working on the thing, so I might as well share the fruits of my labor with the world.

...It's still not done yet though. I still need to add the intro, maybe some other stuff, and I should probably slap on an annoying re-occuring closing video in which I beg people to "like, comment, and subscribe".

In the meantime, enjoy this Sleigh Ride in July my girlfriend set up.

-Will

Tripod

Pretty high-tech stuff.

What's old news to me might be new news to other people:

This is my tripod.

I built this some time ago, probably within the past two weeks. I dug around through some spare Bionicle parts and just threw it together...but in reality I took way more time than I needed to make it.


I'm not sure how much more difficult I'm making things on myself by using this instead of a real tripod.

I guess I'll never know.

-Will

Turntable

It looks pretty plain...for now.

This is the turntable I mentioned yesterday. Turns out the turntable turned out to be my solution to the wibbly-wobbly time machine. Now I can spin the Brick Zone vortex thing full circle without having it wobble all over the place.

I personally think the Time Machine looks a lot cooler, but this turntable gets the job done.

-Will

Progress Update

Sunday night, I was up recording dialogue for a Twilight Zone inspired intro I plan on making. All of the dialogue has been recorded, but I still need to animate the video. I want to use the Twilight Zone theme song, but I don't want to run into copyright issues later down the line. I'll try to make my own song, something similar. Maybe I'll upload a version with the real thing onto my old legoassassin channel.

Tonight, I built my own turntable out of LEGO. It looks like I'll be able to use it for most small to medium sized sets. Not so sure about the larger ones.

I tried making my first review. For a small set, it's taking more time than I originally thought. I kept messing up. I want to sound natural instead of sounding like I'm reading off of a script. It's been pretty awkward. The thing that really stopped me in my tracks was when I was trying to get the camera to focus on the minifgure. I don't want the minifigures to look blurry; I want people to be able to see the details. The battery died before I was able to solve the problem.

I'll try finishing the review tomorrow.

-Will

The Brick Zone YouTube Channel

Success! The Brick Zone YouTube Channel is born. Now all I have to do is make some videos...

Visit The Brick Zone YouTube Channel!

-Will

Boxes

These are the boxes from all the recent sets I've gotten over the past months. I was keeping them to show during video reviews, but over time they accumulated and started to take way too much space. Unless the packaging for a specific set is specially designed or noteworthy, I think it's unnecessary to spend time on it during a video review anyway.  Some sets that I plan on reviewing are old ones I've had over the years; I don't have the original packaging for all of them. With or without the box, I'm sure the reviews will vary.

-Will

Time Machine

I built this time machine for the channel. Originally I built it to use as a turntable to look at minifigs during my reviews, but its still a bit too wibbly-wobbly. There was also the idea floating around in my head about writing a story revolving around it to connect with the reviews or something. Might just end up making stop motions with it on the side.

I think it still looks pretty neat on its own.

-Will

The Brick Zone Sign

One of the first things I did for The Brick Zone was build this sign. I'm not exactly sure when I built it, but it was probably around spring time. I made it mostly to stick in front of each review's intro. More recently, I animated the actual stop-motion intro sequence using it. I'm sure as time goes by I'll update it, but for now it is what it is.

There was no planning ahead with the design for this. It was something I just made on the spot for fun, like most cool things built out of Lego. 

This is an alternate photo of the sign that I was thinking of using for the banner image of the blog. I think the angle on this photo looked cool, but the Es looked a little unclear for newcomers seeing it for the first time. What do y'all think?

-Will 

Update

Hello, everyone!

Greetings from the past. I don't think there's anyone visiting the blog right now, but hopefully by the time someone reads this post in the future, I'll have gained some sort of a following.

At least, that's what I'm hoping.


Anyway, I thought I'd type up a little update regarding the progress of "The Brick Zone".

Progress is slow.

I think I first created the blog towards the end of the spring semester during my freshman year at Rutgers. Even after classes were all done, I never really got around to posting anything else past the "welcome" post.
I still have yet to make the actual channel.

My sluggish pace is most likely due to the fact that it's summer. I've instead been spending time with my lovely girlfriend almost every day while she's been back home.

Despite not having the channel up yet, I have been making some progress worth mentioning. I picked the fonts and colors for the blog to name a few things. Really tough stuff.

I think I'll put up some individual posts about the rest of my progress so the blog doesn't look so dead.

-Will