The Brothers Brick

Matt De Lanoy (Pepa Quin) built the Red Team lineup from Valve’s Team Fortress 2. You can see more pictures of the individual characters on Flickr.

BrickArms released new weapons including the M1919 Machine Gun, HAC (Heavy Assault Carbine), ARC (Advanced Recon Carbine), and M3 Grease Gun to equip your military minifigs.

During my wife and my last two trips to Japan, the complex at Kiyomizu-dera has been the first stop after detraining at Kyoto Station so it made me happy to see among Matija Grguric’s excellent series of world landmarks (including Easter Island heads and Great Wall) this colorful pagoda based on the one at Kiyomizu-dera. I’m especially impressed by the contours of red painted woodcarving under the eaves and the tiled angles on the roofs.

If you’re ever at Kyomizu-dera, it’s worth grabbing a snack at the little stand just inside the southwest entrance. Tea, mochi dango and kitsune udon.

Jon Hall combines a fairly massive amount of “official” chrome LEGO bricks with a handful of elements from Chrome Bricks to achieve this wonderfully shiny sky-fighter reminiscent of the P-38 Lightning from World War II.

And since we missed his previous two models, here’s a pair of his sky pirates:

Valgarise built this lovely modular structure as a birthday present for his friend Many. It has a complete interior, but what sets it apart for me is the pair of windows on the upper floor.

As you may or may not realize, I’m a total sucker for a pretty tall ship. I suppose it comes with the territory of being raised around boats. Combine LEGO, a pretty ship, and a fabulous display, and it just makes my heart soar.

Luke Hutchinson (Derfel Cadarn)has posted his creation, the Princess Ceinwyn, which happens to combine the three aforementioned things. This is a lovely three-masted ship, and the presentation and base complete the look.

Check out some of the other photos! The details are stunning!

Another builder (Joshua Morris) has brought us a large space ship, built primarily of dark blue. I’ve had a big ship in progress in this color for well over a year, and every time I see one posted, it makes me both happy and sad.

Any element of feeling beaten to the punch is overcome by appreciation for the creation, though. The Ticonderoga here is a nice, solid build. It looks like it could take a beating and keep running. The use of trans orange for the windows is something that has never occured to me, but it looks quite nice.

I can’t believe Aliens is 25 years old. I’m not sure Giovanni Tuzzi built this life-size M41A1 Pulse Rifle to celebrate the movie’s anniversary, but it’s certainly awesome.

Giovanni’s rifle includes several working functions, including triggers, cocking handle, pumping grip, and removable magazine.

In addition to the bottles and beakers unveiled at BrickFair, BrickForge has just announced “Shock Trooper” helmets and armor that fit right in with their existing “Space Marine” armor.

BrickFair 2011 took place near Washington, DC this weekend. I wanted to hit up one more con before med school starts next week, so I decided to attend my first Lego convention in the Northeast and see some new people and MOCs that couldn’t make it to the other two large Lego conventions in the US: Brickworld and Brickcon.

The first thing that struck me was the enormous exhibit hall, which was about the size (and appearance) of an empty Walmart store. The next thing that struck me was the diversity of creations, including whole areas for less-commonly exhibited themes such as steampunk, post-apocalypse, even NASA. Lastly, I was amazed by the sheer number of people who showed up during the weekend public hours (above video), which turned out to be about 17,000.

Among the MOCs displayed, some of my favorites were Arthur Gugick‘s transforming mosaic, Black Baer‘s tornado vignette, the entire aquapocalypse display, and a cute Bionicle poster (not a MOC, I know). The list goes on, so I took a walkthrough video of the exhibit hall and highlighted more interesting creations along the way. Speaking of which, I’m glad people have found this video helpful. I plan on doing guided tours of the Lego conventions that I attend in the future.

I’m glad I made the decision to come to BrickFair, and I hope to do so next year as well (and perhaps have the rest of Awesometown). You can see my photos at BrickFair on Flickr or more on the BrickFair Flickr group.

Ben Caulkins (Benny Brickster) didn’t end his Halo building streak on the Master Chief suit, he continued to make the iconic Pelican dropship in minifigure scale. The challenging angles are one of the highlights of this model; you can explore more details in the gallery on Flickr.

This medieval keep has a rugged functional beauty to it and I like it. It has just the right amount of detail on the walls, which keeps it from suffering from “Big Grey Wall Syndrome”, but LegoLord didn’t go overboard with the fancy bits either. Everything in moderation, dear readers, and you end up with a very nicely constructed castle like this one.

Tommy Williamson built these incredible trophies for the winners of his PchLUG101 contest and they are awesome builds in their own right. The light and the camera are especially worthy.

Magnus the Great’s lineup of minifig colorsets probably won’t qualify as a “creation” to some people but it is quite mesmerizing. I find myself just staring at them.

Peter Norman (swoofty) has been draining BrickLink of dark turquoise parts to make this Brazillian oddity. It’s a very nice locomotive in a hard to work with colours but what I found most fun was the presentation of it shipping on flatbeds. Very fun.