The Brothers Brick

From vignettes to mecha, many wonderful LEGO ideas have originated in Japan. Several of the most respected builders, such as Sugegasa, MOKO, and Takeshi Itou are Japanese. Although LEGO fans throughout the world can enjoy each other’s creations by looking at pictures, language remains a barrier. My purpose in creating this blog is to break down the language barrier and give English-speaking LEGO fans a view into the world of Japanese LEGO fans.

Moko recently posted pictures of a new idea for articulated legs on a minifig:

Classic-Castler Anthony Sava has combined this building technique with a Viking head and torso, Ron Weasley’s hair, and grill pieces in just the right colors to create a highly amusing Highland Berserker:

Well, he’s pretty small, so it would probably be fairly easy to take his life (just pull his head off with your fingers), but I imagine taking his freedom would be a bit more challenging…

Bruce writes: “Fifty years ago, in a quiet act of bravery, Rosa Parks stood up for her rights by sitting down. Today this “mother of the modern civil rights movement” was laid to her final rest.”

From concept to execution, this is great work.

From the buildings themselves to the snowy background, this little creation is absolutely perfect:

This is the saddest, cutest little Gundam I have ever seen:

EDIT (11/1/05): Moko has titled this creation “Gundam without vigour.” I assume this is a translation of the Japanese “Genki　nai Gundam” (「元気ないガンダム」). The word “genki” can mean several things in Japanese, including “energy,” “spirit,” “health,” and “cheerfulness.” I think the last one is the most correct in this context, so “Depressed Gundam” or “Gundam with the Blues” is probably a more accurate translation. Hope that doesn’t sound too pedantic… I fault Moko’s dictionary. ;-)

Brickshelf user nias has posted a really cool wheelchair:

I like the construction technique nias uses for the wheels:

We’re buying a house! We close on November 7, and we’re probably moving in the next weekend (in between, we paint, install appliances, and fix various minor issues). It’s a nice big house built in 1952, in the Lake City area of Seattle. The full daylight basement has two (mostly) finished rooms, one of which is huge:

We’re not quite sure what to do with this room, so for now it’s going to be the “LEGO room.” My LEGO will finally be out from underneath my wife’s feet. We’re both very happy.

Unfortunately, this also means my LEGO is all packed away, and I won’t be updating my blog with my own creations for a while. Hopefully, other people will make interesting things I can blog.

I had a migraine around 10:00 P.M., so faced with a choice between painful insomnia and highly caffienated insomnia, I chose the latter. The result is my first BrickWiki article:

Caring for LEGO

I tried to put my technical writing skills to use in describing how to prevent fading and dust, and how to clean and store LEGO. BrickWiki is a very cool project. It has the potential to be the sum total of knowledge about LEGO. Right now, there are still a lot of holes, and the existing information needs some serious editing. Plenty of other late nights for that, though…

I’m not quite sure when he posted these, but Classic-Castle, FBTB, and EuroBricks (etc.) user Bloody Jay has created a fantastic set of four Monty Python vignettes that fit together:

Clockwise from the left, I presume these are “The Ministry of Silly Walks,” “Smoke Shop,” and the vicious gang of keep-left signs at the end of the “Hell’s Grannies” sketch. I really like the construction technique he used on the keep-left signs and the fire hydrant. I also like how it’s mostly studless. My one critique is that it would have been nice to see another vignette in the fourth “quadrant.” There’s certainly enough source material!

(I really hope I get the Monty Python DVD box set for my birthday next week…)

And for my last post of the night, I give you Space Vikings:

I was inspired to try putting various things into their helmet holes by Classic-Castle forum user TwoTonic Knight’s Wild and Crazy Viking. I’m quite proud of the results. Heh heh…

Local girl Brandi Carlile is hands-down my new favorite singer. Don’t let her great looks or the widespread hype dissuade you from giving her a listen. Since this is a LEGO blog, I added her to my Music folder:

My 7018 Viking Ship vs. the Midgard Serpent arrived from Amazon.com a couple weeks ago, and I also won an eBay lot of fourteen Imperial Guards and Imperial Soldiers minifigs. Last weekend, I set about making several new historical and literary characters. First up, George Washington:

And from left to right, Horatio Nelson, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington:

I also made Erik the Red (not “historically accurate” with the horns, I know) and Beowulf:

Bruce has explained how the vignette “genre” seems to have begun in Japan about a year or so ago. I recently got a comment from Japanese LEGO blogger kazzen, and perusing his blog for a bit I found a second blog in which he sets forth a fairly interesting idea — a diary illustrated in LEGO.

“Illustrated diaries” are a type of diary in which you draw your diary entry. They’re fairly popular in Japan, especially among kids. (In fact, keeping a daily diary was part of my homework at the Japanese school I attended while growing up in Japan. I still have several years’ worth of illustrated diary entries in a box somewhere. I dug them out a couple of years ago and found that I had meticulously drawn several of my early LEGO creations for posterity.)

So here’s how it works:

1. Create a category in your blog called “LEGO Diary” (or create a new blog for your diary).
2. Recreate interesting events in your daily life in LEGO.
3. Photograph your MOC.
4. Post your pictures to your “LEGO Diary” category or your diary blog.

That’s it!

In all honesty, I don’t have time to maintain much of a LEGO diary, but I thought this was a good enough idea to pass on to the English-speaking LEGO community as well.

Kazzen has created a LEGO diary portal (“I just wanted to use the word ‘portal,’” he jokes), and if there’s enough interest among non-Japanese LEGO fans, perhaps someone can do the same in English. (I could do it easily enough with another blog, but a “real” Web site might be better.)

Well, if you’re interested in trying this out, I’d be interested in hearing about it! :-)

Heh heh… Nice.

So NWBrickCon is going on two blocks away from where I’m sitting as I type this, but I won’t be able to go. The weekend also looks chock full of house-hunting activities, so I won’t be showing up for the public display times either. Oh well…

Nelson Yrizarry adds to his collection of fantastic vignettes with his latest — “The Bachelor Pad:”

From the shag carpeting and lime-green couch to the wood-panelled wall and lava lamp, this vignette has it all!

When I named my blog, I did so because I liked how “Blocklog” sounded like “Block Blog.” But recently it’s been bugging me that everybody else calls individual LEGO pieces “bricks.”

Perusing some Japanese LEGO blogs today (links in a new section on the right), I figured out that Japanese LEGO fans call LEGO pieces “blocks” (ブロック). Now it all makes sense! Growing up in Japan, all my friends called them blocks! It just never sunk in that they’re called “bricks” in English. Oops…

Thus “Blocklog.”

Twenty years ago or so, my brother and I spent our free time alternating between building giant castles and giant moon bases. To populate our spaceports and star cruisers, I designed several alien/robot heads and stuck them on my space torsos. My parents wouldn’t buy me a digital camera in the ’80s (heh heh), so these are recreations:

(The image is a link to the full gallery.)

Japanese Brickshelf user MOKO is famous for using parts in unusual ways (among other things). MOKO’s latest creations use parts from the new Vikings line:

Can’t wait to pick up my Vikings…

You can now subscribe to Dunechaser’s Blocklog as an RSS feed. Click the Subscribe! link in the navigation area on the right, or go to the following address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DunechasersBlocklog

Here’s a little political cartoon I created a couple weeks ago.

“The president responds to one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history…by staying on vacation for a couple more days.”

In the last week, this has started circulating:

The similarity is striking, no?

I just uploaded twenty more literary minifigs. Here’s a sampling:

John Thornton and Buck from Jack London’s The Call of the Wild:

Mr. Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

And links to the rest:

1984, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World — anybody see a pattern in my favorite books? Heh heh…

I’ve been focusing on vignettes for a while, but this weekend I thought I’d try building a bunch of new minifigs.

Here’s the crew of the Pequod from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick:

(A note on Captain Ahab: This minifig is an essentially unmodified Hovercraft Pilot from 7045 Hovercraft Hideout. The head even has a scar that spans his face, just as Melville describes. I almost think the designer at LEGO had Captain Ahab in mind when developing this minifig.)

Here’s the title character from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe:

And links to several more:

More to come soon.

Brickshelf user Michael Jasper is a master of using minifig-hands in unusual ways. I’m not quite sure what he updated in his sundries folder, but these jumped out at me today:

I especially like his beach scene (note the bikini top):

I’ve just added a bunch of LEGO blogs to my “Blocklogroll.” (I still don’t know if I like “blocklog,” since most people call ‘em bricks — myself included, but I suppose I’m committed at this point. Oh well…)

I’d just like to highlight klasbricks. Go ahead, click the link.

You back? A DUPLO blog? DUPLO?! Yes, that’s right.