The Brothers Brick

With our announcement of Numereji 2421, it’s clear the convention season is upon us, but the collaborative display that we’re organizing is hardly the only group build at BrickCon this fall. Iain Heath has just announced PythonScape, a Miniland-scale homage to the wonder and beauty of Monty Python.

I’ve already called dibs on the Black Knight, but there are still plenty of funny characters and scenes open for contributions. Following the success of Bricks of Character, I’m sure this is going to be awesome.

The Pirates of the Caribbean LEGO sets released today reminded me that we’re starting to get footage of the upcoming LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean video game. This video highlights some gameplay and cut scenes, as well a brief interview with Associate Producer Matt Ellison.

I don’t quite recall who recommended China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and The Scar (though I suspect the answer is lost in the mists of time). I can’t thank that person enough.

Where my other favorite authors of speculative fiction — unoriginally Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov — may have One Big Idea that drives the plot of any one novel, Mieville’s writing overflows with such originality that a Big Idea on the scale of those that drive the work of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction might just be a background detail for this up-and-coming master of the “New Weird.”

Wait, wrong blog! Here’s a lovely steampunk gentleman by Pascal reminiscent of the Remade in Perdido Street Station. Awesome!

My lovely wife pre-ordered Valve’s Portal 2 for me, and I’m looking forward to playing it tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the Portal-themed LEGO models emerging from talented builders like Tyler Clites and Ryan (LDM).

EDIT: Of course, these are so timely and cool that we blogged them twice. Well, at least you can watch the video in my post:

Portal 2 is here! And along with that comes the first brick-built versions by Tyler (Legohaulic) of the adorable protagonists from this video game. Here’s ATLAS and P-Body:

As a bonus, check out the multi-colored turrets by Ryan (L D M) inspired by this trailer.

In time for the movie’s release next month, the new LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets are now available from the LEGO Shop online.

4195 Queen Anne’s Revenge has 1,094 pieces and comes with 7 minifigs, including Blackbeard, Jack Sparrow, and Angelica.

It looks like a great pirate ship, but I’m most excited by a lot of the smaller sets, such as 4191 Zombie Pirates and4192 Fountain of Youth.

It’s nice that the Pirates of the Caribbean sets aren’t all vehicles, but 4193 The London Escape does have a couple of cute carriages.

Click the image below to check out the full line:

I know nought about Iron Man but Alex Schranz (“Orion Pax”) was obviously a fan of the comic and has dedicated 55cm worth of ABS to recreating this armoured superhero. His dedication to recreating the ‘muscles’ on the figure really lend it a drawn air. And as an added bonus the light in the chest actually works. Superb building.

The keen-eyed will notice a slight difference between the most recent four shots and the rest.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of human space flight, as we celebrate Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin‘s historic orbit on April 12, 1961. This year also marks the start of a new but attenuated space age — one without NASA’s Space Shuttle program. In a sense, humanity stands at a fork in the road of our collective existence. Do we fold back in on ourselves and continue eking out a day-to-day existence on a planet with fewer and fewer resources, or do we adapt to our changing world and find new ways of living — both here at home and possibly beyond?

These are serious questions with philosophical, scientific, and political import. But they’re also pretty cool inspiration for building with LEGO! The collaborative display for readers of The Brothers Brick at BrickCon 2011 later this year is titled Numereji 2421.

For hundreds of years humans traveled through space like locusts, jumping from one planet to the next as they exhausted each home in turn. An outbound emigrant ship suffered a navigational and power failure that led to crash landing on Numereji, a terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere. Although the colonists crashed in an arid part of the planet, there may be a broad variety of environments beyond the horizon.

They settled into their home and built the town of New Howland. They held little hope of response to their distress signal, and for thirty years they survived off the remains of their ship, struggling to live alongside the alien flora and fauna. In time, they built a thriving, sustainable community.

Things changed five years ago when rescuers unexpectedly arrived and tenuous links were established with Outworld communities. Waves of immigrants have begun to arrive, and New Howland has become the main spaceport. Will Numerians follow the old pattern or take the new path blazed by the pioneering crash survivors?

The theme of BrickCon 2011 is “Building a Community.”

Applying this theme to the collaborative display we’ll all build together, in what direction will your contribution take our fragile colony? Will you build a wind farm or a smuggler’s base? A cyber-library or Terran Expeditionary Marines recruiting office? Our future rests in your hands. The choice is yours.

We don’t currently have any particular standards in mind for the display, though we are returning to minifig-scale. The inevitable mix of technologies, terrains, and building styles provides lots of opportunities for a diversity of contributions.

Sources of inspiration for this display include:

• Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
• Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia
• NASA and Russian/Soviet Space Agency concept art, particularly from the 60′s through 80′s
• Concept Ships and affiliated blogs

“The Lady of the Lake” by Brandon Bannerman (Catsy) combines innovative lighting, forced perspective, and a little software wizardry to create a gorgeous Arthurian scene.

Don’t miss Brandon’s setup shot for more info on how he achieved this photo.

Of course, everyone knows that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

We’re used to small to mid-sized mecha from Cole Blaq, but his latest is a rather massive stomper inspired by the old NES game Metal Storm.

The minifig in the cockpit gives some sense of the mecha’s scale:

Via Young Spacers.

Ah, the life of an artist. Glamorous, with paintings selling for millions upon millions, right? Eh, probably not. Unless you’re Picasso, this poor minifig probably won’t see his works reach seven digits in his lifetime. But that’s glamorous, right?

All he wants to do is pay for his fantastic flat, that he just cleaned. But he missed the red pigment. That’s going to stain.

I love the detail in this. The coat rack, especially, and the half-finished sculpture. Bravo, Walter Boy.

Tim Goddard (roguebantha_1138) recently won a Brickish Association contest to build a scene that included only one type of Collectible Minifigure. We love Tim’s microscale creations, but it’s also nice to see him flexing his (apparently quite strong) minifig-scale muscles, too.

FBTB’s 2011 Podracer Challenge drew about 50 entries for podracers that feature a non-Star Wars theme. You can see all the podracers in detail in the first voting phase of the contest.

The talented group of LEGO fans in Hong Kong have put together a large exhibit organized by and hosted in Cityplaza from April 15 – May 2. There are 3 sections of the display. The first features a panel of storyboards detailing development of the LEGO Company. The second is a display of 2,000 figures and large figure sculptures spanning over 30 years of minifig history.

The third and most exciting section is a display of 17 famous world landmarks and icons such as the Grand Palace in Thailand by Vincent Cheung, a pyramid from Egypt by ArzLan, the Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Russia by Schneider Cheung, and Tiananmen in China by Andy Hung. Some early pictures taken by Joey Kwok have been uploaded on Flickr. I’ll update this post as more pictures of the event show up.

LEGO M4 Sherman tanks are the single most popular tank to build, so it’s nice to see a builder break out of that mold and reproduce in LEGO a less popular but more interesting tank design. PhiMa does this with the tank that preceded the Sherman, the M3 Grant.

Three reasons I think the Sherman is so popular are because 1) They were the most common tanks by the end of World War II, 2) The convention is to build them in gray (standing in for olive drab) and gray is a fairly common color in LEGO, and 3) The structure above the chassis is fairly straightforward (though the curves are hard to get right in LEGO). In contrast, M3 Grants were used widely by British forces in North Africa, requiring tan instead of gray/olive, and they’re a lot more complex — especially with those two turrets — above the treads.

But PhiMa’s version isn’t just about the pretty exterior; he’s built significant playability features into the model, including a full interior and detailed engine.