The Brothers Brick

Classic-Castle member and customizer babyjawa posted a fantastic creation for the Custom Castle Figure portion of CCCVII: Thor!

BJ has a great eye for his custom figures, and Thor is no exception.

If you’re still working on your last-minute entries into Classic-Castle’s CCCVII, you should know you’ve got 3 hours until the deadline (11:59pm EST).

With that said, there have been some excellent entries this year–I don’t envy the judges, since they’ve got the hard job.

Flickr user 2 Much Caffeine has submitted another fantastic creation: Feast of Fools!

The action really caught my eye. It just has this great sense of sheer pandemonium, which I’d very much associate with a feast of this kind.

Good luck to all of the entrants this year!

Kevin Walter’s Wrath of God battleship is the latest SHIP to drool over. Having read the builder’s profile and learned that he’s 19, I’m reminded of a quote by Soren Roberts on SHIPs: “because you’re not a man until you’ve built one.” I guess this means that most of us still have a long way to go, but meanwhile Kevin shows us how it’s done.

Chris Doyle’s stained glass creation features a complex octopus design. It incorporates both transparent bricks and plates for a more detailed depiction. I’m still left to wonder why an octopus?

Measuring 4′6″ (172 studs), Steef de Prouw’s Nebulon-B escort frigate is one massive and detailed build. It’s big enough to accommodate mini X-wings and Millennium Falcon on its docking tube. From what I’ve seen there’s no other Nebulon-B like it in terms of size and style.

This picture shows the grandeur of the frigate in space — an amazing sight to behold.

Jarek’s Starcraft Battlecruiser ranks among one of the best I’ve seen. This is his biggest creation to date, taking a month to complete. The model features Jarek’s smooth yet textured building style, rendering the ship true to the original.

As several readers noted regarding the clearance on 2009 LEGO sets, the 2010 sets are also now available.

The much-anticipated LEGO Atlantis sets are now available.

And LEGO Toy Story sets are also now available.

Their 1-step plan is apparently to have their members build mindbogglingly awesome stuff, again and again and again. Really, I want to know how the creations posted online with the little lugpol logo are so consistently great.

crises-crs‘ Zero to Hero – part 1: Winter

Great by itself, but in parts 2 and 3, he subtly changes the lighting, some building details, and the action to capture the different feel of the seasons and the progress of the hero’s training.

For a very different feel, but equally neat creation, here’s PigletCiamek’s Arabian Street 2: The Caravanserai.

Any lugpol members out there, please tell us why you are so totally cool. I know it’s nothing sinister, but I would like to know what certain groups do to regularly present such an impressive level of building, LowLUG is another prime example.

Sebastian Arts (Aliencat!) posted pictures of this church based on a real one in Sherpenheuvel, Belgium. Like any great creation there are a lot of different things to like, but for me it’s the basic color scheme and uneven wall texture.

He has more on his MOCpages, including fantastic rear and interior details.

Mark Stafford (Nabii) built two new creations from distinct time periods. The first hails from the future in a scene depicting a firefight in a busting metropolitan skyscape of the future, built for Keith’s You Control the Action Contest. The highlights of the scene are the action effects showing the laser blasts, smoke trails, and even small explosions.

On the flip side, Mark’s East African castle for Colossal Castle Contest 7 brings a new style to the castle genre with its mesmerizing textured and curved walls created using countless 1X2 plates and 1X1 round plates. The market scene is full of details and interacting minifigs.

The LEGO Shop online has updated its Sales & Deals page with nearly a hundred deeply discounted items, including most of the first wave of Power Miners sets, Racers, and Bionicle.

We’ll update this post with more specifics soon, but wanted to let you all know as quickly as possible. (This probably means the official launch of the 2010 sets can’t be too far away.)

My recent surrealist sculpture falls in line with its two counterparts to complete my Metamorphosis of the Mind project, which depicts the transition of the mind from ignorance to suffering and arriving at insanity. The creation below portrays ignorance, with accompanying writing on MOCpages. For those interested in my thought process, the series is based off personal experiences but should not be interpreted literally. After all, I consider myself quite sane, just ask my imaginary friends! JK :)

Forbidden Cove is hosting a major pirate contest, know simply as the Jolly Roger Contest. Very similar to the Colossal Castle Contest on their sister site, Classic Castle, there is a plethora of categories and prizes. Go check it out and win yourself some loot!

That’s right, the orcs are bringing the battle to you in their moving castle built by Tyler Clites (Legohaulic). Chalk one up for the bad guys!

This video demonstrates the moving castle in a funny short, it’s a must see!

Flickr user and Classic-Castle member 2 Much Caffeine has posted another entry for the CCCVII–Castle of Illusion.

The set includes a photo detailing how he achieved the optical illusion without using a photo editing program. I am impressed with the amount of thought that went in not only to building this, but photographing and presenting it!

Love the composition, photography and sentiment. It’s always nice when photographers and artists like Marco Pece (udronotto) use LEGO in their work.

It’s worth checking out the rest of his photostream. Not exactly purist, but a lot of fun stuff.

Lino Martins wishes everyone a very happy holidays, as Santa and Natasha make a second appearance next to this sweet 1966 Ford Galaxie, part of this month’s LUGNuts challenge, A Galaxie of Possibilities.

Click the pic to read Lino’s full write-up.

Andrew Colunga wishes you happy holidays with this colorful X-maspunk ray gun :)

This miniature version of the Colosseum by rack911 has all the grandeur of the real landmark. The model has a detailed interior depicting the modern day ruins. Even more spectacular are the lights that create an eerie glow. You can see all the pictures on Brickshelf.

I’m still trying to recover from shock knowing that a 15-year-old built this. I thought Sven Junga’s earlier Juggernaut had set the bar for what TFOLs are capable of, but this diorama from Stargate Atlantis clearly blows me away.

The Daedalus ship itself is already an impressive stand-alone piece. The texture of the hull nicely resembles the thick metal armor on many sci-fi spaceships.

Here’s another innovative piece from Alex Schranz (Orion Pax), depicting the Jaws poster in 3D. Many Patricks were decapitated in the making of this creation.

I’m not a LEGO train fan, but this creation by Maciej Drwiega makes me want to be one. The features are so realistic, down to the texture on the wall created entirely out of plates instead of bricks! The curved roof made with tiles is nontraditional but looks perfect. I can only guess how it was made.

Even more stunning are the night effect shots, where the realism stands out the most.

I’m more into etymology than entomology, but I can still appreciate these lovely bugs by Peter Fendrik (pupipupi).

Check out the full photoset on Flickr for shots of the individual bugs in their beautiful black boxes. (This last sentence was brought to you by the letter B.)

Via The Living Brick.

Though it’s unlikely to supplant the F4U Corsair as my favorite plane in real life, I love Ralph Savelsberg’s rendition of the venerable General Motors FM-1 Wildcat (also built by Grumman as the F4F).

As much as I appreciate the plane, I also really like Ralph’s presentation, complete with wheel chocks and the textured surface of an aircraft carrier (hmmm, sounds like another potential collaboration with Ed Diment).

Even more impressive at minifig scale, Ralph’s fighter has fully functional folding wings and retractable landing gear:

I think reader ShiYue is right that we’ve never blogged anything built by a LEGO fan from mainland China.

With an impressive palace measuring 92 x 42 studs and 59 cm tall, Beijing builder “TenderShadow ” (zgreenz on Brickshelf) helps us introduce the world to a community of LEGO builders with whom we might not usually interact.

Looking over the pictures, I’m impressed with how much Technic TenderShadow has incorporated into the build. We all use Technic for structural integrity and studs-not-on-top (SNOT) construction, but it’s unusual to see quite this much Technic in the detailing for a LEGO Town creation.

For those of you reading The Brothers Brick in China who might not already know this, Lelezhen.com is a LEGO fan site with hundreds of active members.

Thanks for the tip, ShiYue!