The Brothers Brick

Building in Mark Sandlin’s fan-created “3vil” sub-theme, Legohaulic has created a menacing battle station, dubbed Agrona:

Here’s the crew:

(Via Snoikle, which is turning into a nice little Space blog. Keep it up, Michael!)

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Dennnis Coh is participating in the FBTB Forums R-Wing contest, but what caught my eye was his minifig pilot:

With a great brick-built weapon and excellent color coordination, Dennis’ version of Pippin Reed is smokin’ hot.

(Only after typing up the Technorati tags below did I notice just how much of a mashup this minifig is: With a name and head from Adventurers, built for a Star Wars contest, using an old Spyrius torso, Pippin makes an excellent Space minifig.)

More Beatles album art from Digger Digger Dogstar. Need I say more? I think not.

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I credit Azumu as one of the bloggers who got me into blogging just over a year ago, with his regular “best of Brickshelf” posts on LEGO-BINGO. But Azumu is also a consummate builder — his brick-built Pokemon are especially fantastic, even if you’re not a fan of little creatures who only say their own name.

So it was wonderful to click over to his blog post and see some great minifigs inspired by comic book artist Buichi Terasawa’s Space Adventure COBRA. Here’s the space pirate himself:

Click the picture for a gallery full of wild characters.

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Okay, so it turns out that the series of minifigs Sugegasa has been posting lately are based on the upcoming PS2 RPG Monster Hunter 2 from Capcom, and the minifigs were actually built by Sugegasa’s younger brother.

Anyway, here’s the full set:

I like the improvements Sugegasa The Younger has made to the fig with the bow, and the two newest figs are great. I guess talent runs in the family.

I really do need to start paying better attention. For better or for worse, I’m not especially interested in Technic creations, which is what I thought Duane Hess’s creation was until I took a closer look:

It’s actually a minifig-scale “Lunar Ice Harvester” that’s just plain huge. The sheer size of the vehicle enables Duane to include lots of great detailing — both interior and exterior — so be sure to check out the full photoset on Flickr!

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Flickrite Digger Digger Dogstar has fantastic Photoshop skills, as he demonstrates by incorporating minifigs into Beatles album art.

His latest is With the Beatles:

Since I haven’t blogged them before, here’s Abbey Road:

…and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:

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Brickshelfer and FBTB member Nannan recently posted a cityscape that I didn’t really pay any attention to as I passed over it on Brickshelf. I’d seen cityscapes before:

Yeah, that’s a cute little UFO, but nothing special, right? WRONG!

Nannan has incorporated an Exo-Force light brick with a corresponding fiber-optic tube thingy. Extremely cool and very ingenious!

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Extending the number of letters in the Star Wars fleet of fighters (X-wing, Y-wing, B-wing, A-wing, etc.) is a popular pursuit among Star Wars LEGO fans. From Bricks to Bothans, the Star Wars LEGO community, is holding a contest to build an R-wing fighter.

Here’s Mark Stafford’s entry in all its delicious orangy goodness (via Snoikle):

Behold the powerful masked luchadores of Mexican wrestling (click for the photoset on Flickr):

From left to right (click for profiles):

Monty Python’s Flying Circus! (Cue Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell.”)

(Click to view my Monty Python photoset on Flickr, with three new minifigs.)

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In today’s batch of tuneful minifigs, I present gods of grunge, costume-wearing indie-rockers, Edward Scissorhands, musical innovators, and Aussie rockers. Confused? Read on.

First up, some minifigs to go with Jonesy’s Leslie Anne Levine, Portland indie-rockers The Decemberists:

Next, the incomparable Soundgarden:

Venerable innovators Sonic Youth:

Robert Smith, pasty lead singer of The Cure:

Finally, up-and-coming Australian power trio Wolfmother:

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With looming deadlines and a mountain of work, it’s been a pretty rough week at the office, so I wasn’t looking forward to a four-hour training course on how to conduct customer visits. My day picked up immediately when I saw a big tub of basic bricks on the conference room table.

After a brief overview of the topic, we were divided into teams of three — one “user” plus a note-taker and observer who “worked for LEGO.” Naturally, I wanted to be a user so I could get paid to build! The user was supposed to perform a task: To recreate their living room with the available bricks. Being the sorty sort that I am, I quickly had the bricks sorted by color, telling the observer that I wasn’t happy that my “product” also included some knock-off parts (Mega Bloks, ugh).

Given ten minutes and parts limitations, all while talking through my process, I was fairly pleased with my sorta-kinda vignette (photos by my quick-thinking office-mate, Crystal, who said, “Oh, you should blog this tonight!”):

Kate, my manager’s manager and one of the other “users,” had this to say about my creation: “Overachiever.” Hee hee.

Here’s another living room, by Ilana:

I like her entertainment center, couch, and coffee table. The multi-colored stacks of bricks also work surprisingly well as bookcases. Both Ilana and I kept playing with the LEGO throughout the rest of the meeting. Ilana ended up with a three-foot-tall rainbow thingy and I had a bunch of geometric objects of various shapes and sizes.

After we finished our living rooms, the observers and note-takers presented their findings, writing up a “sequence” of each user’s actions:

Along the way, the group collected various data points or “factoids” about what the users said and did, which we then organized into related sets using a process called “affinity grouping”:

(If you want to read what a bunch of geeks had to say about playing with LEGO, see the full-size versions of picture 1, picture 2, and picture 3.)

Not nearly as fun as free-building at home, but hey, it beats a meeting any day. ;-)

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Moko wraps up his cast of playable characters from Final Fantasy VII with Vincent and Yuffie:

Vincent:

Yuffie:

Several people asked for a link to the steampunk contest on Flickr, so here it is:

http://flickr.com/groups/classic-space/discuss/72157594172210603

The contest is almost over, but the judging should be beginning soon, and it’s always interesting to see which creations are selected as the best.

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For a creative approach to making Final Fantasy VII characters, I didn’t think Moko could top his banana-coiffed Cloud, but here’s Barret:

And Aeris rounds out Moko’s latest pair of figs:

Sugegasa continues his series of numbered minifigs, this time showcasing some pretty cool minifig weapons.

Here’s Fig 12:

…and Fig 13:

Clean them up with Endigo Vandane space sweeper! (Cue trumpet music.)

Here it is in flight (click for gallery):

And in its even cooler landed configuration: