The Brothers Brick

I suspect this will put to rest any debate that the rendered images we’ve seen of Indy so far weren’t “real”:

Source, via Klocki.

Nick Dean says: “A light, faster APC in the RAMM.” I say that I like the working hatch a lot.

Standard disclaimer: LEGO hasn’t confirmed that this is “real,” and this could be an early prototype (bear in mind how different the Viking sets were between prototype pictures and their final production versions).

From what I can see, this set has a lot of new parts:

• A troll
• New swords
• Mining carts
• Bronze or gold axe blades
• Red or orange beards
• Black or brown beards
• Winged helmets

And since I looked it up:

The plural form dwarfs has been traced to the 17th century. The alternate plural dwarves has been recorded in the early 18th century, but was not generally accepted until used by Philologist J.R.R. Tolkien in his fantasy novel The Hobbit. Neither is the historical plural: dwarf was pluralized dwarrow in Anglo-Saxon.

EDIT: And the Exo-Force set — “7721 Bad Guy Vehicle”:

UPDATE: 7036 Dwarves’ Mine was released in October 2007, and returned to the LEGO Shop in June 2008:

Given the potential for loot, I thought I’d pass on a couple of contests going on right now.

Klocki and zczuba.pl are hosting a sports-themed contest. Head on over to Klocki to read the details and see examples, but here’s some inspiration:

(News via VignetteBricks; “Red Card” by Nelson Yrizarry, currently going through brick-withdrawal. We feel your pain.)

Also via VignetteBricks, LEGO Europe just concluded a raffle for the gold-chrome C-3PO minifig otherwise only available randomly in sets here in the United States. The contest deadline was June 25, but you can see all of the entries on 1000steine.de. In my personal favorite, a rather enhanced R2-D2 steals the scene — as usual:

The final due date for the Classic-Space.com Moon Rover Contest is this Saturday, June 30th. You can see a list of all the great entries so far in this thread. Many of the entries feature wonderfully inventive wheels:

I know there are more contests out there, so leave a comment if I’ve missed something.

Having lived there for 15 years, I can attest to that. But Moko scales his house down to microscale:

(Via Klocki.)

A reader in Brazil has been kind enough to nominate The Brothers Brick for a Blogger’s Choice Award in the “Best Photography Blog” category!

We don’t know if it’s a “real” award, and perhaps “Best Hobby Blog” or “Best Geek Blog” might have been better categories, but hey, we’ll take it!

If you like what we do, please vote for us. If you love what we do, maybe you might even go so far as to nominate us in a couple more categories (hints provided above) and then vote for us in all of them! :-D

I’m off to nominate or vote for all my own favorites…

I’m not sure this asteroid processor by Peter Morris qualifies as “microscale” given its size (it does), but it’s pretty darn cool. So are these other spacey vehicles:

Thanks for the tip, Ethan!

Shaun Sullivan’s “Dragonfly-Class Torpedo Gunboat” Egregious bristles with firepower. I think this ship would send my Fearless cowering!

Here she is with her crew:

And here’s one of the Egregious’s rather awesome steam torpedoes:

(Via LegOficina dos Baixinhos.)

Ototoko, a new Brickshelf user, has figured out the absolutely perfect scale — the right balance between detail and hand-held swooshability — for a mini/microscale Millenium Falcon. Thanks for the tip, reader Frank!

Moko proves he’s capable of building something that sucks with this great little vacuum cleaner:

Arpy of (among other places on the ‘net) BioniBlog gathers his pantsbots for a group photo.

Manne Granberg sends a colorful UFO to scan a microscale farm:

Don’t miss the little farmer aiming his puny gun at the invaders.

BrickWorld 2007 is being held in Chicago this weekend (well, June 21-24). Photos are starting to show up on the ‘net, including the dedicated Flickr group and a large photoset from attendee Captain Redstorm.

As always at events, there are more pictures than we could possibly show here. Here’s a semi-random shot of a mecha:

The world-famous Mos Eisley diorama is at BrickWorld:

I’ll update this post with links to more coverage as I run across it.

First update: Mark Larson has a Brickshelf gallery full of photos from BrickWorld, including the latest products from BrickForge:

Second update: David Pagano has day-by-day coverage. Day 1 Day 2

Third update: Joe Meno is also attending BrickWorld. Thursday (part 1) Thursday (part 2) Friday (part 1) Friday (part 2) Saturday

Our friends over at Kotaku have an exclusive first look at a LEGO Universe trailer. Head on over and check it out!

(I’ll embed a copy here when I find one.)

Brickshelf user Tilius has posted an CGI image of the new Indiana Jones minifigure.

New whip, new hat, possibly even some sort of new bag/pouch? Plus, of course, new head, torso and leg designs? I like. A lot.

EDIT (AB): ThrowMetheIdol.com seems to have been the first to post this picture, and the MTV Movies Blog posted a higher-resolution version the next day. Oh, and don’t miss the rather hilarious discussion of this photo on Flickr.

EDIT 2 (AB): Tilius seems to have moved or deleted the image, so I’m replacing it with the high-res version from the MTV Movies Blog.

Danny Rice sends a Protoss Zealot into battle against a trio of Zerglings. Note the squashed Zergling on the ground.

I think I’ve called Steve Bishop the “King of the Vignette Series” before. Well, if I haven’t, he is. Here’s another Joe Vig:

(While you’re there, don’t miss Steve’s now-complete Castle Occupations A to Z.)

Xueren has found a great YouTube video by Paul Romein and Greg Radzimowski.

Awesome.