The Brothers Brick

Noddy has improved on his earlier motorbikes (similar to Michael Jasper’s), this time with ones that can seat a minifig:

Who says the barren landscape of the world after some sort of cataclysmic event won’t be full of interesting characters? Certainly not Legohaulic:

Unfortunately, Adrian Florea hasn’t included pictures of how his M3 Halftrack transforms into the Decepticon, but the before and after photos are certainly cool.

UPDATE: Adrian has posted a shot of Shellshock transforming. Way cool:

Update via Klocki.

Speaking of Optimus Prime, here’s another one, by rediv:

(Via Moyblik.)

Seach for “Optimus Prime” on just about any LEGO site and you’ll get about 1.6 million hits. Of course, most don’t actually transform, and if they do, it’s much easier to build a transforming Optimus Prime at a fairly large scale. astronut1 has created a transforming Optimus Prime in the 4-wide scale of classic Town sets:

I won’t spoil the surprise, so be sure to check out all of astronut1’s Optimus Prime photos.

(Via Biczzz.)

(Via Tim’s new blog, There’s a Moose in My Salad.)

Head on over to LUGNET to read Kevin Loch’s explanation for what’s been happening with Brickshelf.com over the last six days.

In his Flickr debut, Chris Malloy presents a group of wonderful mythical minifigures:

The fleet-footed Mercury:

Thor and Atlas:

Perhaps this post-apocalyptic trend as a whole is somewhat less hilarious now that Brickshelf is back, but that doesn’t change the fact that these two dioramas by Nick Dean are both cool and very funny.

Keith Goldman has always demonstrated the full capabilities of MOCpages — adding detailed descriptions that tell interesting stories to each set of photos. His latest photos tell this story: “Tri-pantheonic Alliance forces consolidate and withdraw to extraction point ‘Malcolm X’ following a predawn raid on the Central Asian Combine bunker complex near Jakarta.”

(Thanks for the tip, “Not Keith Goldman!” :-D )

A new message has graced the top of Brickshelf.com:

Notice: Brickshelf will not be shutting down!
We will be offering “featured” accounts for $5/month shortly.

We have received hundreds of supportive emails in the past few days including many who said they would like to contribute financially but did not know how. This has had us rethink the practicality of charging for enhanced features.We plan to do this without reducing current functionality for free users. Thank you for your enormous show of support.

IMPORTANT: do NOT try to download the entire site, it causes major problems, slows things down for normal users and you will be permanently blocked. We will make older folders public again after we see the crawlers go away.

UPDATE (AB 7/19 PM): IMPORTANT: Brickshelf.com is apparently not going away after all. Kevin Loch has asked everyone to stop trying to download everything, so please respect his request and suspend the efforts described in this post.

As we indicated in updates to an earlier post, a coordinated effort is currently underway to “rescue” as many of the images on Brickshelf.com as possible before they become unavailable after July 31.

In a beautiful, touching sign of how a community can come together in a time of crisis, members of Classic-Castle Forums, Classic-Space Forums, FBTB Forums, and Forum 0937 are showing a remarkable amount of cooperation and cross-collaboration. In addition to saving their own galleries, members are also attempting to ensure that the best LEGO images are saved — especially those originally posted by members of the community who are no longer active or who have since passed away.

If you’d like to participate, you can check out one of the threads on these four forums:

• Classic-Castle.com
• Classic-Space.com
• FBTB Forums
• Forum 0937

If you know of other efforts underway, please let us know.

UPDATE (AB 7/19 AM): Eurobricks is also participating:

• Eurobricks

Lowlug’s Mini MOC Madness is upon us again! The theme this year is weather, and there are already some great entries. Check out the gallery, and click “Lees meer” to see bigger pictures of each entry. A few of my faves:

(Thanks for the tip, Martin Jaspers! I’d link to your gallery like I usually do, but it won’t exist on August 1, so I’m minimizing future broken links. :( )

EDIT: Sorry about the broken images — I’ll fix them later.

Spot on color scheme, and nice use of the X-pod container, Serrater!

おそらく日本のレゴ ファンの皆様は既にご存知ですが、 Brickshelf.com （通常「棚」）が７月３１日後利用できなくなります。大変遅れてしまいましたが、このブログの日本の読者様にも一応情報を伝えておきたいと思いました。

「棚がなくなる！」ことは明らかに大問題ですが、問題を解決する三つのソフトウェアがあります。

はくしゃくさんのトコでご覧になられたかもしれませんが、ダウンロードツールの日本語版が発行されました。ダウンロードはこちらです。

Bob Kojima さんの英語版に挑戦してみたい方は、こちらからダウンロード。izzoさんの記事をお勧め致します。

マックをご利用の皆様は Jim DeVona さんからのターミナル（Mac OS X のみ）で走らせるコマンドライン・ユーティリテイ が使えます。

（日本語は最近あまり書いていませんので、言語能力が落ちているような気がします。下手な日本語で申し訳ありません。）

Okay, so the video’s a bit slow-paced, and we’ve seen plenty of video game pixel art in LEGO before, but this just makes me smile — that’s a good thing right now:

The accompanying commentary on Joystiq is also well worth a read. (Thanks again for the tip, RichardAM!)

FBTB Forums member “Glorious Kyle” wishes Brickshelf a fond farewell. I like how Kyle has turned the Brickshelf logo into tombstones. (Via VignetteBricks.)

I honestly believe that the LEGO community will bounce back stronger than ever after we lose Brickshelf, but part of me finds it highly amusing that the first creation I find myself blogging in several days is this post-apocalyptic, dystopian diorama from Carter Baldwin: