The Brothers Brick

John Langrish has finally posted pics of his award-winning castle, “Stoneguard Hold”! Personally, I’ve been waiting for this since NWBrickCon. This castle is truly amazing!

This castle is packed full of incredible details! From the rounded walls and towers to the plethora of SNOT (Studs Not On Top) construction, from the impressive landscaping to the aggressive sea creatures, this creation has it all! Every picture shows yet another aspect of the castle that will blow your mind! But stop listening to me. Go look at the gallery…

Here’s the whole Kit and Kaboodle

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Wow, I’m still here. I’m sorry I haven’t contributed for the last month or so. I blame my new part-time job, college classes, and brickfilms.com, roughly in that order. Anyway, to jumpstart my comeback, I’m going to invade Linus’ domain (please forgive me!) and feature this extremely cool airship by Felix Greco:

I especially like the use of the Jabba’s Sailbarge sails and the bubble canopies as magical air balloons. I only wish there were more pictures.

I always love it when Izzo starts a new series! Whether it’s vignettes based on Japanese proverbs or industrial mecha, I know we all have something great to look forward to.

Izzo’s latest is a series of creature-inspired mecha he cleverly calls “mechanimals.”

The first is a rat-car with a detachable rat-bot (blog post):

That certainly looks fun to drive around the neighborhood, but Izzo’s second mechanimal is much more useful. The “Pelicargo” (wonderful name, Izzo!) is capable of transporting your cargo wherever it needs to go (blog post):

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Finally, I’ve gotten around to posting my lighthouse! So, I give you…The Dragon’s Tooth!

This is my tallest creation yet!

Here’s the whole illuminated Gallery

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These won’t be news for those of you who saw the work-in-progress pictures on Flickr or who saw them at NWBrickCon, but I finally took decent pictures of my three recent steampunk creations. Enjoy!

H.M.A.S. Fearless
The brave women of Her Majesty’s Royal Flying Corp pilot the steam-powered gunship Fearless into most certain danger!

Leftenant Cavendish’s Marvelous Amphibious Contraption
On a voyage of discovery in deepest uncharted Asia, Leftenent Henry Cavendish of Her Majesty’s 13th Expeditionary Forces improvises a means of vehicular transport, using a native canoe, wagon wheels, and a boiler of his own invention. His musket also spews Greek Fire.

Mr. Renoir’s Ornithopter
Unbeknownst to most modern historians, Pierre-Auguste Renoir followed in the footsteps of great artist-inventors of the past (including his hero Leonardo Da Vinci), fabricating fantastic winged contraptions and flying them throughout the French countryside.

And of course the full photoset on Flickr.

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Soren Roberts has updated his Galbady Gamma with a ballute system:

While we’re at it, here’s a bonus mecha, a Soren-original called Gravity:

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Editor Joe Meno has announced the release of BrickJournal issue 5. Click the image to download the “BIG” issue (10.9 MB):

Of particular note for long-time TBB readers are articles and photo essays by Mark Stafford, MisaQa, and Malle Hawking, among many others.

On a related note, LEGO Shop@Home will be donating 1% of all purchases to BrickJournal (up to $10,000) between now and December 31st — which of course includes Christmas shopping — if you start your shopping from the following page:

http://shop.lego.com/landingpages/brickjournal/

So, how does one pick up sponsorship from LEGO? Hmmm…

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Eurobricks reports that Amazon Germany has posted more pictures of the January-June 2007 LEGO sets. Check out the Ferrari, Technic, and Exo-Force sets in this post, and the Aqua Raiders, Star Wars, City, and Creator sets in this thread.

Here’s my favorite new Aqua Raiders set, the as-yet-unnamed 7776:

A shipwreck?! Unbelievably cool.

And check out the set Jamie Berard designed, 4953 Fast Flyers:

Finally, LEGO is releasing two official mosaic-building sets with some cute designs, 6162 and 6163:

For those of you who want to see all the 2007 set pictures from Amazon.de in one place, Brickshelfer HJR has them all in a set of conveniently organized galleries.

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Jehkay’s latest is an awesome ninja mecha:

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You’d be insane to not love multi-genre-builder Nelson Yrizarry’s latest floating rock. Featuring arctic landscape, polar bears AND a mashed orange ship, it is sure to be something special!

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Pantsbots are adorable, convivial characters who want nothing more than to help their Spacemen friends:

(Spider-Pantsbot, Schizo-Pantsbot, and Bodyguard-Pantsbot by Arpy 2.0)

Sometimes, though, Spacemen take advantage of the loyal little fellows:

JordanTN put it best:

One day when pantsbots become Minorities they will use this image to show young PantsBots how cruel the spacemen were to them all those years ago…

Arpy, you’re a bad, bad man.

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Brickshelfer Arvo’s latest LEGO recreation of a real-world object is a Commodore VIC-20:

Hurray for the 1 MHz processor! Three cheers for 5 KB of memory! Spend countless hours in your mom’s basement playing Blitz!

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The castle layout at NWBrickCon included an adorable female minifig with a long skirt I’d never seen before. I’ve recreated the design as a princess below:

I asked for permission to take her apart, learning that the “skirt” piece was actually the torso from an old fig. I promptly ran off to the Brick Bazaar, where by a stroke of luck Bob Kojima was selling these old figs for 50 cents each. I picked up a pair of them:

Taking a break from sorting this weekend, I tried to recreate this minifig design, but couldn’t figure it out, so I came up with something similar of my own:

To create a long-skirted castle minifig of your own:

1. Take the head off an old fig with a 2×2 base and no arms.
2. Insert a Technic axle pin into an axle joiner.
3. Put the axle pin and joiner inside the old fig’s body and thread the pin through the head-hole.
4. Insert the Technic pin into the minifig torso.

Note: The Technic pin will only fit into an old-style minifig torso. The new-style torsos have flanges (or something) that prevent it from fitting.

Unfortunately, my camera’s battery was dead by the point when I saw this in the display, so I didn’t get a closeup picture of the black farmer’s hut the lady was standing next to. If you know whose design this is, please speak up!

EDIT: According to commenters on Flickr and Classic-Castle Forums, the farmer’s hut was by Gary McIntire, and the weird little figs are from BASIC sets released between 1981 and 1990.

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Back in July I blogged Tim Gould’s LDraw version of a “Maschinen Krieger UDK38 Schenkel.” Now, Tim has posted pictures of his design in real bricks, complete with a nice diorama to showcase it:

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I like Flickr user Arpy 2.0′s sense of humor. Here’s his “House-Elf Liberation Front soldier” carrying the regimental emblem into battle:

Go, Dobby, go!

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