The Brothers Brick

Steve Vargo wasn’t quite satisfied with the skeleton army faction in the new Castle theme, so he tweaked it. Just a bit. Read Steve’s backstory for this diorama on Builder’s Lounge. Very Lovecraftian, Steve. (Via VignetteBricks.)

It’s official. Post-apocalyptic LEGO, or “Post-Apoc”, is the new steampunk. It’s amazing how fast these sort of things catch on. Anyway, today’s post-apoc post is a mega-batch of Mad Max-ish goodness.

First up, “Tractocalypse” by Zach Clapsadle:

Next, “Freestyle at the end of the world” by Andrew Lee:

Finally, a watercraft from Chuck Citrin:

Another beautiful car, Steven Marshall! (Via pootling.)

I breezed right past this vignette by Alex Eylar until Bruce pointed out an interesting feature on VignetteBricks — the two main characters are the only ones in color:

You can read the full text of “The Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allen Poe online. (The title is a reference to a German quote that ends the story, “es lasst sich nicht lesen”.)

BrickJournal editor Joe Meno has announced that the Web site for the magazine has been officially launched. Here’s what Joe has to say:

I’m happy to announce that the BrickJournal website has been launched:

www.brickjournal.com

Issue 8 is online and available for viewing. Issue 7 is also uploaded but is only available to web subscribers. I am uploading other issues and hope to have all archived by the end of August.

Issues will be uploaded quarterly to coincide with releases. What the website will offer is an interactive approach to reading the magazine, with links to related subjects and also web-exclusive materials, such as video. This will become an archive for the magazine and related materials as time goes on, and with the event calendar tied in, this will become something of a timeline for the community.

Subscribers will be able to access all the archived content for use. Public visitors will only be able to view the current issue and what is designated as public, such as instructions and news. With a news page, BrickJournal will be able to report faster on events and also be able to include more content, such as photos that were submitted, but not used in the magazine, for future issues. For a limited time a subscription to the webpage will be $20/year.

Future plans for the website include establishing an image bank for BrickJournal photography (thank you Didier), a page for sellers, and a couple of other surprises! Plans are also underway for a print version of the magazine!

Many thanks to Joel Bush, Brian Flannery, and Brian Sykora of Near-Time, the webservice I am working with on this ongoing project.

Comments and feedback are welcome!

Head on over to the site and check it out! I’ll be sure to pass on any comments you have to Joe if you leave any on this post.

The Brickster has found an early copy of 7029 Skeleton Ship Attack at a local (not sure where) Toys R Us and has created a photo review on Eurobricks:

We featured several Halo creations by Brian Kescenovitz a couple months ago, and I’ve been looking forward to his next project. Brian doesn’t disappoint:

Another reader submission, this time from Taylor. Thanks!

My brother attends Comic-Con just about every year, and has told me all about the great costumes some people wear. “Boba Fetts roving in herds” sticks in my mind. Anyway, Kotaku has a great picture of two people dressed up as minifigs from LEGO Star Wars:

Great find, Kelly McKiernan!

Kopakashau presents a creation called “Tohu”.

I’ll let mastergongfu do the talking on this one: “Not much Bionicle gets blogged, nor does it genrally deserve to get blogged, but this one I found on Brickshelf is superb.”

Hmmm… An interesting point. If you want to see more Bionicle here on The Brothers Brick, help me keep an eye out for great stuff and start sending me stuff to blog. Good photography also helps. Seriously.

Plug time!  Inspired by the work of Noddy (and Micheal Jasper), I built my own motorcycle:

Flickr set.  Classic-Castle thread.

I suspect the cigarette lighter needs fixing, but it’ll do:

Always a pleasure, Mr. Zumbi. (Via pootling.)

“Reverend” Brendan Powell Smith may be best known for The Brick Testament, but he does build other things. Here’s his “WWE Superstars in LEGO”:

(Still catching up — this one’s from before the recent “Brickshelf crisis.”)

I left a comment on one of Tim Zarki’s pictures saying that I can’t blog everything he builds. Well, it’s true — though unfortunate, because all of his recent creations have been fantastic, including this post-apocalyptic tank/tractor.

Great submission, Jamie Neufeld! (Can you tell I’m catching up?)

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new ship in the 3vil faction. The latest is from Dillon:

The skull — a requisite part of any 3vil ship — is particularly well-executed, with a great cannon sticking out of the right eye.

Nathan Proudlove has been playing World of WarCraft, as evidenced by his Tauren warrior.

Speaking of cool videos, Peter Edwards has some really interesting creations on his Web site, including many that are motorized in some way.

Here’s Peter’s very fast LEGO slot cars are built around AFX motors:

My favorite, though, is the video of an ingenious set of “dodgem” cars:

Be sure to check out Peter’s Web site for lots more, including higher-resolution versions of these and other great videos.

Joystiq has broken the news that the rumored LEGO Indiana Jones video game has been confirmed. Watch the trailer right here on The Brothers Brick:

Thanks to reader David for the tip! (And check out the Official Web site.)

Yesterday was the second birthday of this blog, but I was too busy reading the adventures of a certain young wizard to post anything. ;-)

Let the long-winded and self-satisfied post begin! (Read last year’s anniversary post here or with original comments on the old blog.)

The big changes to this blog since last year:

• We moved from Blogger to our own domain here at Brothers-Brick.com.
• In addition to Josh, we’ve added Nathan and Linus, and then Tim to the team.
• We’ve written 800 new posts (1300 total).

Here are some possibly interesting statistics about all of you, our faithful readers:

• Between August 2006 and July 2007, we’ve quadrupled our daily readership, from about 250 visitors a day to over 1,000.
• Since we launched Brothers-Brick.com in December 2006, you’ve posted 998 comments (and we’ve blocked 11,350 spam comments).
• Visitors have viewed Brothers-Brick.com from 129 countries and regions, representing all the continents except Antarctica.
• More than 140 unique blogs have sent 310 links our way.
• The top sites that send us readers are Google, the old blog, StumbleUpon, Kotaku, Classic-Castle.com, LUGNET, and Destructoid.
• Other than the blog’s name, our top keywords are “new 2007 LEGO castle set”, “LEGO blog”, “BrickArms LEGO creation”, and “LEGO 10190“.

Finally, taking my queue from Technorati founder David Sifry’s “State of the Blogosphere” posts, here’s a quick summary of how things have changed in the LEGO blog world since last year:

• 2005-2006 saw an explosion of new LEGO blogs. Most of those blogs are no longer posting regularly.
• Nearly all LEGO blogs I was aware of in 2006 were in either English or Japanese. Today, the LEGO blogosphere hums with many other languages, including German, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.
• The sudden demise and unexpected resurrection of Brickshelf has spawned several new LEGO picture sites, as well as mass migrations to existing sites like MOCpages, Maj, and Flickr. What effect this will have on LEGO blogs and the broader LEGO community remains to be seen.