While almost fruitlessly searching brickshelf for highly blaggable content, your author and special train correspondent stumbled upon this diorama of some part of Rome by brickshelf user lucajuventino. The diorama seemed quite impressive at first glance but, upon a second and third glance, your humble author was forced to reconsider his initial considerations.
Strongly favoring 6 wide trains himself, your author even went so far as to automatically assume that the tram was narrower than it actually was. Much to his dismay, it was actually 8 wide. Woe, woe was him. Upon his fourth, fifth, and sixth glances he began to notice subtleties that had previously escaped him. This made him quite frustrated. In fact, hatred began to curl around his temples, like a Caesar hat, which was actually quite befitting considering the diorama and tram are supposed to be in Rome, despite the fact that reference pictures look nothing like what lucajuventino built.
Such subtleties were must notably the stripes. As clearly seen in this picture, lucajuventino used stickers to achieve the otherwise impossible with legos thin stripes. While your author could care less about the use of stickers, he could care that the builder was incredibly inconsistent in maintaining the thickness of said stripes. Here, dear reader, you can see in this picture that the red and yellow stripes are half the thickness of the dark green and sand green stripes. On the incredibly well documented real thing you, dear reader, can see that they stripes are nearly if not the same thickness. Again you can find the same sort of problem when it comes to the little orange light thing, which, as you again can see in the real thing, is actually quite smaller than what lucajuventino built; a simple hollow stud would have sufficed. But enough technicalities, let us now criticize more important things.
A problem often faced by a builder of any theme is clearly evident in this tram's trans-clear windows. When this technique (here your writer would normally link who came up with it first, but he cannot find the original for the life of him) is employed, the windows are not so clear, and your writer does not mean from finger prints. No, dear reader, the problem comes from the clearly visible studs to which the trans-clear bricks attach. This problem seems to plague train builders, whose subjects (trains) often have windows. The displeasing studs are clearly visible in this picture. Click at your own risk, dear reader, for it is truly revolting.
Were your writer incompetent and hypocritical enough to switch to building 8 stud wide trains, he would have employed a technique not too dissimilar to this technique by slightly less incompetent 7 stud wide train builder dagealka. As you can clearly see, the window is perfectly clear and unobstructed by nauseating studs. Lucajuventino's train, however, seems to not have an interior besides the small area for the driver, which is nothing surprising, considering it is part of a diorama. Because of this, he surely should have made use of the voluminous empty space in order to achieve near perfect lines on the clear windows. But enough negative things, dear reader. Surely you came here to read some positive things.
One thing your humble writer can appreciate on this tram is the near perfect part usage of 6x2 wedges for the angled ends of the tram. As the masses would say, NPU, lucajuventino! Another detail/NPU your writer can appreciate is the use of the light reflector dish part as the light reflector dish on the real thing.
In conclusion, 5.4/10. Good job, lucajuventino!
I could care less about this blog post.
ReplyDelete