The Brothers Brick

Matt De Lanoy made a Lego version of the Reddit alien for the newly launched subreddit for Lego fans, r/afol. You don’t have to be an AFOL to join as the group seems to focus more on MOCs and building techniques.

Flickr user crises_crs portrays the new Collectible Minifig Series 6 Minotaur trying to put the mooves on a heifer in this beefed up vignette.

In this fourth installment of classic LEGO commercials by Advance, we have Black Monarch’s Castle, a journey through time and space and, lastly, an adventure in Egypt inspired by Indiana Jones.

LEGO System Black Monarch’s Castle – 1988

This was an extremely simple set-up — it was just the castle set depicted on the box transferred to a studio, just LEGO trees, a cardboard hill and a cardboard background. We made the background the same colour as the box to create the playful effect when the box appears. Notice the name of the play-theme 00:15 “LEGOLAND”, back then it was a LEGO category and now as you know its a world wide theme park.

LEGO SYSTEM Intergrator 1996

Still the most expensive commercial we’ve made at Advance, this was a huge project. The ad was inspired by LEGO Time Cruisers. We travel through the boxes into three different LEGO worlds but time stops in the ‘real’ world. When we return to the store, the cleaner hasn’t moved. Actually the cleaner also played the pirate in the striped top you see at 00:14. The casting for the pirates was hilarious, we had ten different guys show up with amazing costumes. We built the LEGO city in the desert at night and shot the next day, I slept in the truck that you see. The set almost blew away in a desert storm during that night.

LEGO SYSTEM Adventure 1998

Set in Egypt and heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. What looks like a huge set was built entirely in LEGO filmed with extreme close-up lenses. And the boy was shot on bluescreen. What’s interesting here is that in the boy’s room 00:26 we see lots of toys that aren’t LEGO – LEGO is almost taking a back seat and that would not happen today.

As OJ says over on The Living Brick, “The great thing about Japan and China using the same zodiacal chart but celebrating the New Year on different dates is that I get to do this twice!” Indeed.

Schneider Cheung celebrates the Year of the Dragon with the most wonderfully sculpted Chinese dragon I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, rack911 celebrates with a depiction of Cai Shen, the God of Wealth, complete with a golden dragon and a bowl for treasure.

And now for a train builder doing something very different, Cale Leiphart has provided us with a lovely Friends themed treehouse diorama. I’m sure it’s not the first Friends MOC out there, but it’s the first I’ve seen with real attention to detail.

I’ve recently been on a hiatus from TBB due to an excess of real life commitments (work, life and LEGO) and a need to have a bit of a break from blogging. But of course this didn’t stop people (particularly Polish people it seems) posting great models, nor me from filing them away for future use. Which brings me to this four model roundup, presented in the order I added them to my list.

First Maciej Drwięga has a fabulous rendition of the Polish PKP ST43 locomotive.

Second Bartosz Kacprzyk (the oneman) shows off an Alouette.

Third Karwik shows off a Kama3 5410 as driven by his late uncle.

And finally Chris Edwards (cjedwards) brings is an excellent train station.

Well detailed, lovely work by all four builders.

Forbidden Cove is running a multi-week Seed Part contest, where the entrants have one week to build a creation using that week’s Seed Part–and it can’t be whatever the part actually is. Week one was a classic flared helm; this week is a minifig’s chair piece.

Here are some of my favorite entries from week two, in no particular order:

Rapture of the Deep by Guy Himber

Once Cap’n Jack, Always Cap’n Jack by Bluesecrets

Enemy in Sight by Marco den Besten

I generally don’t blog customized stuff, as I generally take issue with cutting brick or going out of system. That said, I couldn’t pass this custom Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1 up. Nice work, Catsy.

Inspired by Titolian’s D.O.A.S satellite, Hase0 has built a magnificently angular fighter craft. From the overall shape to details inside the cockpit, this is one gorgeous little ship.

Pierre E Fieschi alluded to a much larger project recently when he posted a heavy hauler. The result was worth the wait.

Pierre’s bombardment platform uses the new 1×1 round tiles, and incorporates some interesting polygonal shapes. I love the way the yellow spans the underlying dark gray.

The BrickIt team in Denmark has built a robotic system to sort LEGO bricks. The “Dynaway Sorting Plant” uses 28 Mindstorms NXT motors, 7 processors, 4 color sensors, and 14 touch sensors, and took over 250 hours of programming time plus 800 hours to build. The result is an amazing system that separates 2×4 and 1×2 bricks by both shape and color and then moves the pallets full of sorted bricks.

Read more about the sorting machine on BrickIt.dk.

USS Reliant appeared in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” as a vessel commandeered by the titular villain. Christer Nyberg (myko82) built his LEGO version with 10-15 thousand bricks over the course of a year.

See more pictures on Flickr, and read Christer’s write-up on Eurobricks.

James Pegrum’s (peggyjdb) vignette caught my eye with its slanted rocks and angled placement of the temple, making it look more refined and realistic.

Back in 2004, a certain fast food maker partnered with LEGO for the toys in their children’s meals. The result was some pretty awful LEGO pieces. However, Cole Blaq incorporates the Happy Meal skateboard into this orange beauty of a gunship, complete with a squiddy pilot.

Cole also posted this variation — more squat, and still somehow more brutish, despite the lack of a massive chin gun.

The customization of LEGO Friends mini-dolls continues. Victor Fernandez (eclipseGrafx) takes up the baton with his version of Tifa from Final Fantasy VII, complete with a massive Buster Sword that Cloud would be proud to wield (a custom accessory from Brick Command).