The Brothers Brick

MisaQa builds wonderful little animals, but I never expected a recent batch of fantastic Wallace & Gromit creations. What’s so great about these is that they totally capture the unique, instantly recognizable sensibility of the original clay sculptures by Aardman Animations.

Here are the two title characters:

Here’s Wallace with a chicken/penguin:

And a pair of sheep:

Classic Castler Josh Wedin has posted some additions to his minifig gallery.

Here’s his new Dark Knight (I have to get a couple Batman sets now):

An old woman:

And a war wizard (go, fighting monkeys, go!!!):

I think I like LEGO graphic art as much as I like actual LEGO creations. Japanese blogger kazzen is a master of LEGO-themed graphic art populated by our favorite little plastic friends.

A month or so ago, he uploaded two cellphone wallpapers featuring a minifig decked out in World Baseball Classic gear:

How you get to these images and download them to your phone will probably vary by phone and by plan, but you can access both of them on this page.

Black Jack (「ブラックジャック」) is an animated series aired on TV in Japan between 2004 and 2005. The title character is a mysterious doctor with white and black hair. Naturally, after getting her hands on the new Two-Face minifig from the Batman theme, mumu’s wife saw the similarity and made Jack, along with his sidekick, Pinoko:

You can find more info on Black Jack on Anime News Network.

No, I haven’t been neglecting this blog (well, maybe just a little — I do have a small backlog).

The reason there haven’t been that many posts recently here on PPB is that there haven’t been any major holidays being celebrated by Japanese builders, nor have there been any significant product launches that resulted in extensive discussions like there was with Exo-Force.

Ideally, I’d like to post at least twice a week (compared with a couple times a day over on my other LEGO blog), but there just hasn’t been enough subject matter. I guess it’s time for me to fill the gap myself with historical minifigs or something… ;-)

If you’d like to help me by pointing out Japanese or Asian-themed LEGO creations that I might have missed, just leave a comment (I’ll be notified by e-mail) or send me a message at dunechaser AT gmail DOT com.

From 9-year-old “nonn35817,” we have some tasty, tasty sushi:

That’s tuna (maguro), shrimp (ebi), and cucumber rolls (kappa maki).

That just seemed like it warranted an exclamation point. Anyway, Brickshelf user element42 has posted an adorable little “Baby Robot Space Cow“:

Just got back from Redmond earlier this evening. My job search may be over. w00t!

Apparently, great minifig-building runs in Moko’s family. Here’s a little “Demon Child” Moko’s little sister put together:

Oh, and check out this cool gun Moko himself made recently:

Both of these show great uses for the new pieces in the Batman sets.

Izzo doesn’t just build great vignettes — he’s also quite the mecha builder. Lately he’s been on a power-suit-building kick:

Here’s my favorite, a Batsuit:

(By the way, in addition to his legostyle Web site, Izzo has a new blog, legostyle-LOG. If you want automatic updates of his latest creations, be sure to subscribe to his feed.)

I expect the “great builders” of the world to provide the rest of us with innovative building techniques now and then. But it’s also nice to find interesting techniques in unexpected places. “Darth Zamma” is a new LEGO blogger who sent me a link to his blog a little while ago, along with a link to his friend “Darth Malum’s” blog.

Here’s a minifig Darth Zamma posted recently:

Responding to one of his e-mails, I asked Darth Zamma how he attached that Exo-Force robot arm to the regular minifig torso, and he kindly posted a short pictorial how-to. It’s an interesting technique. Here’s a preview:

I made an electric piano last summer that I thought was pretty original, though it turned out Brickshelf user lcon21 had posted a grand piano design that used the same technique. Great minds think alike?

Anyway, another Brickshelf user, hidaka, has posted an even more realistic piano:

Not a big deal so far, right? Well, look a little closer:

Mark Stafford continues adding new creations to his ongoing mashup of the LEGO Adventurers theme and the Cthulhu mythos from H.P. Lovecraft’s science fiction. A recent update includes “Offspring of Shudde M’ell“:

Immersed recently in O’Reilly books, I’ve been inspired to build some geek luminaries.

Steve Jobs (with a big first-generation iPod):

Larry Wall, creator of Perl:

Steve Wozniak, Charles Babbage, and Tim Berners-Lee (click for full-size versions):

Linus Torvalds (with a Penguin designed by Adam Silcott):

Jeff Bezos (on a Segway):

The full photoset on Flickr.

By the way, why do nearly all geeks — myself included — seem to have brown hair and glasses? I couldn’t make as many geeks as I would have liked because they all started to look like Linus Torvalds, who looks remarkably like my minifig representation up in the header. Oh well…

Brickshelf user dellta has created several minifigs that correspond to the elements “Dark,” “Aqua,” “Wood,” and “Fire.” These creations were recently featured over on VignetteBricks, but they’re worth pointing out here as well, from a minifig perspective. What’s cool is that Dellta has paired up normal minifigs with their elemental counterparts or avatars.

My favorites are Aqua, a seafaring pirate:

And Wood, a Forestman:

Brickshelf user Inhert has been building quite the collection of vampire hunter creations based on the Game Boy Advance game Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django.

I like Inhert’s “Tools of the Trade” (ignoring the chopped up Castle spear for the moment; but hey, it does make a good stake):

Check out the vampire hunter himself, using Moko’s articulated legs:

Star Wars minifigures these days are all about cutting, gluing, Sculpey, and painting. Well, more specifically, they’re all about the infinite variations of clone troopers in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Fun! So it’s refreshing to see something other than another Commander Gree or Captain Typho.

Here’s Moko’s Darth Vader:

And Dillon’s RIC-920 droid:

Occasionally, a particularly brilliant builder will do a mass upload/update of their LEGO pictures, and I find it hard to pick just one favorite. Arthur Gugick’s world buildings (previous post) was one such update, and Masahiro Yanagi’s new Space folder is another, with 37 spacey vehicles for your viewing pleasure. Here are just a few.

Be sure to check out the full gallery on Brickshelf!