The Brothers Brick

The latest creation by Tom Snellen is bursting with charm. According to the builder, this is his first foray into serious landscaping, as well as his first attempt at a tower with more than 4 sides. It was obviously a success!

Brickshelf user wobnam‘s prison tower creation features an interesting architectural design of having a heavier top section of the tower resting on a narrower neck. The whole concept of solitary isolation on a high-rising cell above the water is pretty chilling. I’d hate to be the guy spending the rest of his life in this place.

How Many Studs to LEGOLAND has the first photo of the upcoming LEGO agents set 8636 Deep Sea Quest:

The three lines of text in Japanese say:

• 8636 | CB [ClickBrick] exclusive | Ages 8 and up
• Mission 7: Deep Sea Operation
• 7,990 yen (available mid-September)

Incidentally, Brickset has the full list of upcoming LEGO Agents sets, including high-res box art I hadn’t seen before.

How do people who live in a steampunk world picture their future? Jeremy (aka Smod) has the answer:

More in Jeremy’s Brickshelf gallery.

LEGO Certified Professional Sean Kenney recently sculpted the Empire State Building, which was commissioned to be the centerpiece at the new gift shop in the real Empire State Building. Sean points out the fun fact that since the model will be located at the observation deck, it will become the highest LEGO sculpture in the world. Click on the photo below to read more.

The submission deadline for LEGO Ambassadors was 4:00 PM PDT today. Thanks to everybody who suggested nominees, voted, and contributed testimonials, we had everything in place and I hit Send on the e-mail to LEGO with over 15 minutes to spare! :-D

538 people voted, and here are the results:

• Andrew Becraft: 323 votes
• Nannan Zhang: 273 votes
• Adrian Florea: 171 votes
• Tim Gould: 152 votes
• Nathan Proudlove: 101 votes
• Ley Ward: 81 votes

Although Adrian had the votes to be the third nominee, we didn’t get enough testimonials for him. That means the next person with the necessary number of testimonials (three) became the third nominee. The final list of nominees is:

• Andrew Becraft
• Nannan Zhang
• Tim Gould

With the votes and testimonials in place, we put together the submission package earlier today and I sent it off to LEGO.

We’ve learned a lot from this process, and if LEGO uses the same process next year, we’ll probably do things a bit differently — like not waiting until the last day to put together the submission! If you have any feedback on how we went about this, please feel free to post a comment here or use the Contact page to send us a private message.

Speaking personally now that the nomination process is over, I’m humbled by all the votes cast in my favor, and touched by all the kind words readers posted as testimonials. If selected by LEGO as an Ambassador for the 2008-2009 cycle, I’ll do my very best to represent all of you out there.

Wish us luck! :-)

(For those of you who are also on Flickr, I submitted those nominations as well. Read more in the discussion thread there.)

If you’ve been following the series of posts where we’re analyzing LEGO models as communication, chances are you’ve not quite agreed with me – perhaps you don’t recognize your own building style in what I write. That’s to be expected. But today I’m going to show you that regardless if you follow the model I’ve been building up or not (which you most likely don’t), your MOCs can be analyzed with it, which is what the model is meant to do.

The very talented Ralph Savelsberg (who is no stranger to TBB) left the following comment on Tuesday’s case study:

Interesting. I’ve been following these posts for a few weeks now and have thought about a few things. I’m not sure how much of this is applicable to the way I go about building.

I don’t fiddle around with pieces not knowing what to make with them in advance. I may look at a particular new piece and recognise it as something that I can use for one of the many projects that I always have in mind.

I don’t know what message I try to convey with my MOCs. I don’t think I am normally addressing anybody in particular with any of them, except when I build something with a public display in mind or for a competition. I’m mainly enjoying myself. I’ve been building with LEGO since the time I first could put two bricks together and I don’t go about building any differently now that I happen to share pictures of my models with the rest of the world, although I of course do enjoy it when people like my models and incorporate people’s suggestions.

I’m not sure whether it was Peter Gabriel who said that he makes the music that he likes and if other people happen to like it too, that’s a bonus.

Based on this comment, what I know of you and your models and through your interview on Gizmodo, I’d like to try to place your building in the model I’ve been describing. You actually follow it quite clearly – and even pointed it out in your interview quite well. I hope you don’t mind, Ralph. I greatly admire you as a builder.

To refresh our memories: Ralph is most known as a master at building real-world aircraft with great detail. Here’s part of his collection:

Wicked, right?

Here’s what I’ve been saying we all do:

1. We work in a context. That means we send out a message to an audience. This is the most important thing we can know about our work, as it dictates…
2. Our design. I argued that shape and colour was two of our most important factors, and that they must correlate to the contextual information we have. All of this tells us…
3. Which techniques we use.

And that’s the story so far – at least until next week when we’ll look at presentation. More on that on Monday.

1. Ralph, your message is the easiest thing to decipher. You don’t build vague images from your imagination – you try to create a scale model of an aircraft. This gives you a very clear set of rules to obey. When you say that you don’t build for an audience, I’d disagree. It may feel odd to consider it, but you can be your own audience. That might make the building easier or harder depending on what standards you hold yourself to. A two-year old who builds for himself might be happy to slap two 2×6 plates on the side of a 2×8 brick and call that an airplane, but you obviously wouldn’t settle for that.
2. Based on this information you create your design. In order to get the shapes proportioned correctly – which is an important requirement to convey your message, and I suspect, to satisfy yourself – you put it on paper. Deciding on shapes and colours is pretty easy since you’re trying to re-visualize something that already exists.
3. This decides what techniques you use. I know you’ve gotten comments by some that think your models have too many studs showing. Indeed, the prevalent design tendencies in the LEGO community goes towards making LEGO models not look like made by LEGO, however ironic. But you don’t do that because a) you can capture your intended shape and proportions better with a studs-up construction, and b) you, as your primary audience, don’t mind the studs.

By using the model we can get a basic picture of why you built your crafts the way you did. And by using this analysis on one’s own model we can see flaws with a build-in-progress. We all do this. The thing is that most of us do it without knowing so. Our mind is beautiful in the sense that once you put words on an abstract concept it’s easier to think about that concept.

Check out jehkay‘s latest creation of a flying fishing boat. What makes this special is that you can view the model in crosseye 3D, just stare at the image close to your monitor and slowly pull yourself away. It really works!

It’s rare that I find trains with photographs I really consider blogworthy (which is a shame because there’s so many out there that are excellent and I’d love to blog but can’t). Today I’ve found two.

Anthony Sava provides the second great locomotive of the day with his rendition of the BM&R #425. The blue design is very striking and the detailing is top-notch. Perhaps most worthy of note, is the boiler design featuring the ubiquitous cheese slopes with a single tile between them.

PS. Excuse the repeated bad pun.

As the LEGO Ambassadors nomination process winds down between now and Saturday night, one of the last steps in the process is to collect at least three testimonials from fellow community members about each nominee.

In online LEGO communities all over the ‘net, meeting this requirement is proving harder than anticipated. We all made our voices heard with our suggestions and votes, but with less than 48 hours to go, it’s time to take that next step and say something nice about your potential LEGO Ambassadors. :-)

Flickr | Nominees:

• Aaron “DARKspawn” Andrews
• Andrew “Dunechaser” Becraft
• Nannan “Nannan Z” Zhang

Builders Lounge (requires membership) | Nominees:

• Aaron Andrews
• Don Wilson
• Nannan Zhang

The Brothers Brick | Nominees (links go to bio posts, where you can post your testimonials):

• Adrian Florea
• Andrew Becraft
• Ley Ward (sorry, no bio received yet)
• Nannan Zhang
• Nathan Proudlove
• Tim Gould

Classic-Castle.com | Nominees:

• Aaron Andrews
• Andrew Becraft
• Anthony Sava

Classic-Pirates.com | Nominee discussion taking place concurrently with testimonials.

Classic-Space.com | Nominees:

• Aaron Sneary
• Ley Ward

Eurobricks | Nominees (voting still ongoing):

• Steve “Athos” Bishop
• “Captain Green Hair”
• “Jinzoningen”
• Mark “Hinckley” Larson
• Sam89
• “Sinner”

FBTB Forums | Nominees:

• Adrian Florea
• Mike Crowley
• Nannan Zhang

LUGNET Nominees:

• Doug Eaton
• Teddy Welsh
• Tim Gould

MOCPages

• Keith Goldman
• Nannan Zhang
• Aaron Andrews

I’m off to follow my own advice and write a bunch of testimonials now. ;-)

German builder Bambi has many excellent creations in his Brickshelf gallery. His latest is a delightful seven stud wide steam locomotive from the Deutschen Bundesbahn: a BR64. The model has many painstaking details and I particularly like the comparison shot with a blueprint. He also includes images of the wheelset is useful as it is a hard part to get working in LEGO steam trains.

PS. Please excuse my bad pun in the title.

Vintage minifigs in a pack! Showing up at LEGOLAND stores and confirmed by LEGO as the real deal:

Yes, that’s a reprinted Classic Space torso. Oh, and note the “Vol. 1″ in the corner. Sweeeeeeeettt!!!

(Via Bricklink.)

Jerac‘s latest microscale ship sports enough missile tubes to lay waste to a dozen worlds.

When the missile cruiser Muisek takes up geosynchronous orbit over your city, it’s time to throw your kids in the astrovan and thank the stars you sprung for the long-range hyperdrive upgrade.

I hope alien fauna becomes the latest trend. Jas Nagra contributes with a trio of creatures from other worlds.

Check out the other two amazing entities on Flickr.

Justin Vaughn continues the story he began with “Autumn Solitude” in his latest post-apocalyptic diorama, “Tedious Descent”:

Here’s a bit of the story to whet your appetite:

16 October, 2017 – Day 154
Well, day one of my trek back to town is coming to an end. It snowed a tad this morning, but not enough to really make problems…

Read more on Flickr.