The Brothers Brick

I featured Antony Lau’s wonderful “maxifig” creations back in December, and he continues to post new creations, from people to vehicles.

His latest vehicle seems to be a noodle truck, and I love noodles. Antony’s truck makes me hungry for phad thai, udon, chow mein, soba, pho, ramen — you get the idea:

I’ve made a number of updates to the LEGO blog lists over in the navigation area on the right. The LEGO Blogs in English section now includes several new LEGO blogs, as well as more established blogs I’ve found via Technorati or on other blogs.

I hate to play favorites, but the LEGO Blogs in Japanese section now includes an updated list of my favorite Japanese LEGO blogs (I also just updated the main list over on PPB).

Thinking beyond these two languages, I’ve added a LEGO Blogs in Other Languages section, where I’ll be adding links to non-English, non-Japanese blogs.

If you have a LEGO blog not listed in any of these three sections, just leave a comment on this post (I’ll get an e-mail).

I don’t want to bump the post from last year because it’s pages and pages long, but I’ve updated my list of Japanese LEGO blogs.

Changes include fixing broken links, updating the titles of renamed blogs, removing links to deleted blogs, and adding new blogs.

Among the many additions, highlights include the addition of The Sekiyama Railroad Newsletter (a LEGO Trains blog), Be-bonest, How Many Studs to LEGOLAND? (sort of the English-to-Japanese equivalent of PPB), and legostyle-BLOG (Izzo’s new blog).

I’ll be updating my (very partial) list of Japanese LEGO builders at some point as well. In the meantime, I hope you find the blog list useful and interesting as well.

“Meh” pretty much sums up my current feelings toward Superman. Smallville has been less than entertaining for a couple seasons now, I’m not especially stoked about the upcoming movie, and then there’s this. So, Superman = “Meh.”

In that spirit, here’s my Superman minifig, about which I feel pretty “Meh” (he’s missing something fairly important, after all):

Classic-Castler Jens (Schlimps on Brickshelf) presents another cool creation that uses rare-colored parts — a Nazgul, or Ringwraith, from The Lord of the Rings:

According to several members of my local LEGO club (SEALUG), rare-colored parts are likely the result of a quality control step in the manufacturing process known as a “color test.”

When The LEGO Company performs a color test, they create a limited run of a LEGO piece in a specific color to help determine what kinds of stresses the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) can endure in that particular color. For example, a clear minifig was created some time ago, and the speculation at our recent meeting was that this better revealed the kinds of discoloration (due to friction or stress) that might occur where parts are joined together.

If you’re more familiar with the LEGO manufacturing process and I’ve gotten something wrong, feel free to correct me in a comment!

Classic-Castler The Hordesman has just posted an interesting soldier that demonstrates another approach to Michael Jasper’s use of visors as neckwear:

But here’s another, even cooler minifig that I missed when The Hordesman first posted it — a “Hussar”:

Well, if Mike Yoder’s orbital docking station was “drop-dead gorgeous” (from my post last week), I’m not sure what superlatives apply to Mark Stafford’s micro-scale Octan Refinery:

Check out the unique micro vehicles with which Mark has populated his refinery:

Following up on his Moonshiners, Brickshelfer taltosVT has posted a pair of “coppers” with their phone box and classic police car:

Andrew Horvatits recently posted a series of wheeled bots. Here’s my favorite, the “SCREW Bot”:

Super cool indeed.

The city of Nikko in Japan is a major Buddhist and Shinto center, most famous for housing the tombs of the Tokugawa shoguns. German builder Thomas Bendt (Triathletus on Brickshelf) has just posted a recreation of the famous pagoda at Toshogu shrine:

The thumbnails in the gallery (and even the image above) don’t do justice to this stunning creation. Be sure to check out the full-size pictures in Thomas’ gallery. While you’re at it, be sure to check out other amazing creations by Thomas, including Pulguksa temple (in Korea) and a Thai temple.

Okay, another batch of minifigs I made a while ago that I never posted here and just uploaded to Flickr. :-)

From Wes Anderson’s film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, here’s Steve:

(Click the image for the full photoset on Flickr.)

With the Tommy gun in the new Batman sets, a spate of Prohibition-era LEGO creations seems inevitable.

I think Nathan Cunningham was the first to put the Tommy gun to use with his 30′s thug, but taltosVT has built a moonshine still, two moonshiners, and the wheels they’ll need to haul their illicit “hillbilly pop” to buyers:

Following up on his Avatar pictures, Lenny Hoffman has posted detailed images of the Bikini Botton and “Build a Bob” set from the upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants line.

Here are the minifigs, Gary, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward:

For today’s batch of minifigs, I present the X-Men:

And here’s Magneto:

Flickr user and Classic-Spacer Kotua has posted a cool Terran Vulture unit from the classic real-time strategy game StarCraft, based on an original LEGO design by Mike Psiaki. That, naturally, gives me an excellent excuse to post Mike’s original StarCraft creations.

Here’s the Vulture Kotua recreated:

Here’s Mike’s awesome Wraith:

Finally, several infantry units — Marines, a Firebat, and a Medic:

(If you liked these, be sure to check out Kotua’s version of the vulture, as well as my own Blizzard-inspired minifigs.)