The Brothers Brick

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States — a holiday that honors the men and women who have died in military service to this country. As a pacifist myself, I hope that someday our leaders will stop increasing the number of people we remember on this day each year.

But as a pragmatist, I also know that there are truly unique times in history when the world must come together to stand against evil. I believe that the Allied effort during World War II (against Nazism in particular) was one such time. With that in mind, I built a squad of WW2 U.S. Army minifigs:

Here’s a WW2-era U.S. Marine:

(With M1 helmets and Thompson submachine guns from BrickArms.)

No crossover is impossible in the twisted (and brilliant) mind of Mike Crowley: The Love Shack meets the Borg of Star Trek.

The cube folds open to reveal one of the most detailed LEGO playsets I’ve seen.

The rest of the Flikr gallery.

A personal note: I’m very sorry I haven’t been contributing to TBB lately, I was quite busy this semester with classes, and whatever time I had for LEGO (which wasn’t much) I dedicated to brickfilming.  I’ve got summer school in a few weeks, but I plan on contributing at least twice a week.  Its good to be back.

Brickshelf user Shaggie has done an amazingly high quality render of a town scene involving misterzumbi’s Fiat126p design. This is certainly one of the most realistic LEGO renders I’ve seen.

The upcoming BrickWorld event in Chicago (June 21-24) will be hosting a “Ninjas vs. Pirates” contest. Go read David Gregory’s LUGNET post for details.

Ninjas vs. Pirates, you say? You know my opinion on the subject:

(Via VignetteBricks.)

Simon Jackson has been working on an old-style diving crew as a gift for his dad. Following his work on FBTB reveals some interesting customization techniques. Anyway, here’s the completed crew:

TBB reader Nathan pointed us to a new entry in Roguebantha‘s series of Star Wars scenes in bubbles — the Battle of Geonosis:

If you haven’t seen these before, be sure to check out all of them!

The University of Tokyo LEGO club has been working on a large-scale version of a campus landmark, the clock tower, and they’ve just announced that it is now complete:

(Via Edge over at レゴ系.)

Nice hard suit, Tim Zarki!

Chris Wunz gets to be the first person who uses the new lightning pieces in the 2007 Castle sets for what we all wanted to use them for — force lightning! And the new scared face (also from the new sets) is great for Luke’s expression as well.

As I said a couple months ago, there’s not a lot of originality in LEGO creations inspired by Halo. My general feeling of dissatisfaction with Halo LEGO extends to my own Master Chief minifig, who I intend to replace soon (despite being featured on Joystiq yesterday).

Still, the game continues to inspire the occasional beauty, such as this true-color Ghost and brick-built Elite by Brian Kescenovitz:

Note that some of the previous Ghosts and Banshees so popular on the Web weren’t built with actual purple bricks like this one is — they were Photoshopped. Here’s Brian’s Warthog:

Don’t miss the rest of Brian‘s Halo creations:

The awesomeness that is Mike “Count Blockula” Crowley strikes again, this time with Brak and Zorak from Space Ghost (and The Brak Show).

Some builders are especially brilliant at continuing an existing theme when LEGO stops producing it, as Steve Bishop has with Adventurers. The Brickster keeps the Wild West theme alive, in a manner of speaking, with an excellent ghost town called “Grave Stone”:

Then send in Izzo‘s “Stilts Walker”:

By Legokinsfolk. Check out the gallery for interesting pics of how Legokinsfolk built this little beauty — it’s full of interesting techniques.

Have you ever wondered what to do with all those left-over peeps and Technic pieces you have lying around the house? Do what Windell Oskay did — make a peepmobile!