You are currently browsing the The Brothers Brick weblog archives for November, 2011.
Cole Bl♠q routinely challenges the conceptions of how we use the Lego medium. Continuing his on-going theme of spray cans is his latest sculpture, a viscerally organic interpretation. It is striking and beautiful, in a way not often seen in Lego. It’s not purist–that is, the effect is not achieved with 100% unmodified Lego pieces–but the result is no less spectacular.
It’s two weeks in, and the entries so far for Classic-Castle‘s annual contest are just superb. I do not envy the judges. This particular one by Stefan (busboy489) caught my eye, and I just had to share it. The details in each scene are exquisite. I invite you to check each one out!
LEGO was kind enough to send us a pair of the LEGO Super Hero minifigs distributed exclusively at Comic-Con in San Diego earlier this year, and we’re going to give them away to two TBB readers. One reader gets Superman Batman, and another gets Green Lantern!
To enter this raffle, just leave a comment on this post (tips on registering and commenting). In two weeks, on Monday, November 28, we’ll randomly select two people who left comments before 11:59 PM PST November 27.
Fine print: The raffle is open to TBB readers worldwide 18 years old and older. We’ll add to the fine print as people ask questions, but let’s keep it simple for now.
If you’d like to win all the 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe sets, LEGO is also hosting a contest on LEGOSuperheroes.com:
Enter the LEGO Super Heroes Challenge for a chance to win the Grand Prize, a trip to California to tour Warner Bros. Studios, WB Animation, and LEGOLAND California, and the complete 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe collection. Plus get your work displayed online for other LEGO Super Heroes fans to admire.
Check out the website for more details.
Mr. Xenomurphy has been building daily for the past 2 months on this action-packed diorama for the Superhero contest. A lot of custom decals add details and realism such as in this shot. Visit MOCpages for the full gallery including work in progress and design pictures.
Théo’s (aka Titolian) newest fighter is encased entirely in transparent pieces, and the effect is stunning. In rebellion to conventional Lego Spacer protocol, Théo has thrown all the greeblies in the interior of his spaceship, but only because he’s found an immensely clever way of still showing them off.
I usually avoid making a judgement call about a model being the ‘best yet’ (at least here on TBB). But I’m making an exception for Mike Psiaki’s (psiaki) latest iteration of the X-Wing Starfighter. Mike has packed in every detail possible from an accurate backside to detailed guns to working landing gear.
The complex shaping on the nose is a miraculous piece of LEGO engineering using just about every technique under the sun to accurately portray the long wedge shape. Even the intakes are given detailed treatment.
This model is a testament to the time and dedication Mike has put into his X-Wings. He has improved it every iteration with new techniques parts and efforts.
The end of October has once again brought us Classic-Castle‘s annual building event of epic proportions!
Now in its ninth year, I invite you to check out the past years winners, this year’s categories, and get your build on.
The contest runs from November 1 to December 31, with twelve categories designed to fit everyone’s building preference and collection size. Check them out! You’ll find all of the rules, categories, and prizes here.
It’s been nearly a century since World War I, but the echoes of that horrific conflict still echo across the years. Each November 11, people all across the world pause to remember all those who died in the war. Here in the States, Veterans Day honors everyone who’s served in the armed forces.
Jason Allemann has built this gorgeous scene “to honour all those who have fought for freedom in the world.”
Iain Heath of The Living Brick is apparently too modest to blog his own LEGO creations these days, so we’ll do it for him here. If there’s something that was missing from 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, it was a pair of smelly hippies named Credence Sandstorm and Crystal Bliss.
The circle of life is now complete.
Important: This is not the raffle post! Leave your raffle entry comments on Win LEGO Super Hero minifigs early, not here.
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We’ve heard from readers anecdotally that some of you have had trouble registering or leaving comments. Unfortunately, the reported numbers were low enough, and we just never had enough info to get to the root of the problem until recently, so weren’t able to fix it. As it turns out, there were a few related issues that all contributed to the problem.
First, some Internet service providers only allow inbound email from domains on a “whitelist.” If you’ve registered here on Brothers-Brick.com using the email address provided by your ISP, such as t-online.de or comcast.net, or if you have your own custom domain that you’ve used to register, email — including the registration confirmation message — from us may get blocked. There’s nothing TBB can do about this, but there’s something you can do. Please try registering again with an email address from a free webmail service, such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. If you use your ISP mail as your primary email account (or don’t have a webmail account), you can always set up the webmail to automatically redirect all messages to your regular address.
Second, many of you haven’t been able to change your auto-assigned passwords after you registered. We fixed this one a while ago.
Finally, those of you using Internet Explorer 9 have been unable to comment at all. I’m contractually obligated to say that this is our old code’s fault, not IE9′s. ;-) We’ve also fixed this.
We’re still going to keep the registration requirement for leaving comments, but we hope we’ve at least eliminated the bugs enough to enable those of you who’ve encountered any of these three issues to start leaving comments again. Thanks for your patience!
I have a WordPress.com account. Why can’t I leave a comment here on TBB?
Although Brothers-Brick.com runs on WordPress software, the WordPress.com registration system is completely separate from any “self-hosted” instances of WordPress. You’ll need to specifically register here on Brothers-Brick.com to leave a comment on a TBB post.
I left a comment a while ago but it still hasn’t shown up. What’s going on?
First-time commenters are moderated to make sure they’re not spammers. One of our administrators needs to look at the comments from any first-time commenter and approve them. Any future comments after that will appear immediately. We’re not online 24 hours a day, so there may sometimes be a delay in moderating first-time comments.
The book covers the diverse aspects of the Lego hobby for AFOLs and includes a variety of featurettes that range from ApocaLego to Billund and Lego comics. The numerous short 1-2 page sections make for quick and easy reading and give a great introduction of the hobby to non-AFOLs. The content caters to non-AFOLs and new AFOLs, so seasoned fans will find many familiar facts and creations.
As diverse as the topics are, the examples represent a casual selection, meaning that they are not always representative of the top-tier works in a genre. This may disappoint those who want to see some of the the best spaceships or castles. Rather, the selected works represents a sampling of AFOL creations. Most featured works date prior to 2009, so it’s unlikely you’ll see much that was made in the past 3 years.
While The Cult of Lego is not a perfect representation of the hobby, it is still a very commendable one. I recommend the book for those who want to explore the multiple and diverse facets of the AFOL world. Even for seasoned veterans of the brick, The Cult of Lego is still a worthwhile item to keep in your collection as a reminder of what we AFOLs have accomplished.
LEGO fans in Switzerland are hosting the ExpoLego event November 19 and 20, 2011 in Concise (near Yverdon). With a display space of over 300 square meters, the event will feature Star Wars, System, Trains, and many custom LEGO models built by LEGO fans.
The public exhibition costs 3 swiss francs for kids and 6 for grown-ups.
Sylvain says, “In Switzerland, LEGO events are too rare, so enjoy!
They say you’re not a real LEGO Space builder until you’ve built a SHIP — a “Significantly Huge Investment in Parts” — that’s at least 100 studs long. As tempting as it was to take on that challenge, I was having so much fun with my little microscale fleet that I decided I wanted to stay within a size that was a reasonable addition to the carrier, cruiser, destroyer, and other little ships I’d built before BrickCon.
Spurred by a rival fleet Mike Yoder built, I set out to add a battleship. Thus was born UES Vanguard, the flagship of the United Earth Federation interstellar fleet.
Despite limiting myself to 55-60 studs, I still struggled with the engineering problems of creating something that wasn’t just built from bricks and slopes stacked on top of each other — something I know regular LEGO Space builders solved years ago. By the end, Vanguard was basically built as a “normal” LEGO (SYSTEM) skin enclosing a Technic latticework. That makes it strong enough, though, that I can hold it with one hand near the back and swoosh it around the living room. Sweet!
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
In a surprising turn of events, you’ll be able to get next year’s LEGO sets directly from LEGO, rather than watching them trickle in (frequently at inflated prices) at big box toy stores: LEGO informs us that they’ve just listed a substantial number of the January 2012 LEGO sets on the LEGO Shop website.
Everyone already knows that I’m most excited (oddly enough) about the newest LEGO City sets, what with their hillbilly moonshiners and rampaging bears. 4440 Forest Police Station
includes a bear, along with a hillbilly in a tree. There are eight other 2012 LEGO City
sets out as well.
LEGO dinosaurs return from extinction with the new LEGO Dino sets. 5887 Dino Defense HQ
includes a T-Rex, Raptor and Coelophysis, while 5885 Triceratops Trapper
has the horned dino we all know and love.
LEGO has listed nearly 30 new sets in half a dozen categories, so head on over and check them out.
