Next project on the list will be a simplification of the navigation structure for the article section (merging all the article indexes into one).

Highlights:
- Added a test you can use to figure out your own colour preferences, utilize your collection better, and begin collecting more strategically
- Cut out some of the more speculative stuff regarding mixed colours and the 3-colour rule I wrote about in an earlier post.
- I’ve added a page on what you can use colourschemes for.
- I’ve added a couple of practical examples on how you can actually work with colourschemes in real life and get fairly decent colourschemes.
- Finally I’ve added a page with condensations of good colour-advice from CSF and links to further colour-resources.

If you have any links to good colour advice or colour discussions, I’d really like to hear about them because I know there’s so much more out there that I haven’t been able to find (especially on lugnet).

Anyways: Enjoy :)

I don’t know if you’re interested in this kind of detail-highlight, with all the stuff being uploaded to flickr each day, but since I found it in a pretty old folder, a lot of people might have either missed or forgotten these.

As some may have noticed, I’ve updated the left-menu to promote the article section more (not much to see yet, though), and am working on a complete re-write of the colour-tutorial I’ve been posting here in the blog.

While you wait, I thought I’d treat you to a little photoshop job I did for my personal page in danish (yeah, working on that one too, I need a job), but decided not to use anyways:

Ever since I finished my Redscout, I’ve been annoyed that the best moc I’d made was based on somebody else’s design – so it’s an immense pleasure to finally dethrone it with something of my own design (in my book my three best mocs are the Razorback, Redscout, and the Z-Fighter 2).

I’m not completely satisfied with the colourscheme, so I decided to let anyone who wished have a go at it: You can either click the picture below to get a large “paintbook”-version for hand-colouring, or you can find the MLCad-file for it on the instructions page (I’ve spend a lot of time cleaning the file up and reducing it from 220 steps to 141, so it should be much easier to follow).

And yes, this is my entry for the “Show us what you got”-contest on Flickr/Starfighters :-)

Late one day, Mark Stafford told me how he had saved some of my best mocs from heavy damage - or worse! Exhibiting fragile Lego mocs to kids can certainly be dramatic!

Lego World (Copenhagen) was held three weeks ago with more than 36.000 visitors over 4 days.

We were only supposed to exhibit Weltklasse (world class) mocs in the fan-area, so I participated with my Longship, Redscout, Railgun Spider, Boxfighter, Z-fighter 1, 2, 3 the new Z-Fighter 4, and the Razorback fighter I’ll soon be entering into the Show us what you got-contest in the Starfighter group on flickr.
As usual, my mocs are pretty elusive among the pictures taken by the local townies, but you might spot a few glimpses of them on the small space-table next to the Maersk Containership among the pictures taken, enjoy:

Galleries:
http://mocshow.com/thumbnails.php?album=212&page=1
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=368699
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=368446
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=368234
http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/98606
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=369285

Video:
http://vimeo.com/3211616

The small starfighter contest was incredibly inspiring, because

a) the size constraints meant that most people would have time and parts enough to finish an entry
b) the size constraints really begged folding functions and
c) the box-configuration was a an excellent excuse for me to experiment with more boxy shapes - something that I’ve wanted for a long time, but somehow my stuff always end up streamlined and roundish.

A total of 84 people entered the contest, and my fighter didn’t even make it to the “honorable mentioning”-list - I might have counted too blatantly on a combination of a large underslung gun and the “biggest moc always wins”-effect ;)

After I posted the moc on CSF, Tony ‘Halfhead’ Haffner asked me for an mlcad file of the moc, so he could try to create an animation of the unfolding process (would look really cool on a starfield background, still waiting and hoping for it!).

Afterwards, I added the file to my instruction page, so everybody can download it and check it out. To my surprise a few people actually build it in real bricks: Nathan Proudlove made a really cool black copy with tan and sand green stripes, while Mark Sandlin created a compact version from the pictures alone (I got to have some of those canopies!).

Anyways, pictures, it’s been fun cooking up a small scene and photoshopping in a background for once… I wish I had time to do that for all my mocs :( :

Like with contrast and balance it is worth considering colour positioning as a linear scale from scattered to grouped. Both extremes have their possibilities and drawbacks:

Grouping: Mocs with extreme grouping of colours can easily end up breaking apart visually because the coloured sections simply don’t look as parts of the same whole: consider a moc with two strong colours in either end: the design have to be very homogenous to keep the isolated sections together.
The more dissimilar the colours are, the more pronounced this effect would be, while more harmonious colours will decrease it. Contrasting colours might go both ways as they are both attracting and repelling each other.

Scattering: While extreme grouping tend to polarize the design into isolated sections, too much scattering simply dissolves the moc into a flickr of colours that confuse the eye. Frankly I’m not sure that pronounced scattering is generally good for anything, although Peter L. Morris has made some pretty cool fighters with patchy colouring.

Both grouping and scattering of colours have their benefits, but how do you control it? Here’s two suggestions:

Patterning: is a good way to organize an otherwise messy-looking scattered colourscheme: arrange the colours into stripes or other designs repeated across the moc: bonus points for creating logos or symbols and repeating the colours at other sections of the craft.

Bleeding (or inter-penetration): is a good way to break up larger chunks of colours by infusing sections or lines from the surrounding areas or colour-chunks – like a jigsaw puzzle.

That should be the basics when it comes to colour positioning, I hope you’ll mix the concepts freely – how about a colourscheme with a few larger chunks of colours connected by stripes spreading all over the moc?

Simultaneous contrast: A final little trick from colour theory relevant to colour positioning is simultaneous contrast:
Basically simultaneous contrast is about how colours affect each other when placed in close proximity: as I mentioned in the last blogpost about colour balance, lighter and darker colours need to be added in unequal amounts to appear balanced – when you place a bright colour next to a darker one, the brighter colour will shine while the darker colour will vane. This effect is especially pronounced when it comes to contrasting colours:

Yellow sections within a larger purple block will shine, while the reverse will result in a dull greyish purple sections within the yellow, and the same thing happens when you position blue and orange next to each other.

Red and green doesn’t behave this way because they’ve almost got the same brightness, so the most pronounced effect here will be a vibrant, almost glowing seam between the colours (no it isn’t just bad jpg-compression ;-) – which is probably one of the reasons why The Lego Company haven’t changed the Octan stripe and logo for years.

Ok, that was all the colour theory I’d dug up, but as soon as I’ve figured out precisely what to search for and have the time, I’m planning to create a small collection of mocs with interesting colourschemes for inspiration. You can see the previous posts on the subject here:

Colours - bad or misunderstood? (why do we leave most of our collection unused?)
Colourscheme part 1 - Introduction and conttrast
Colourscheme part 2 - Colour balance

Eventually I hope to assemble and rewrite the whole lot into a five-part tutorial for the article-section, but I’m awfully busy with real life stuff, and other lego projects are queing up. Anyways, happy Christmas and keep building!