Monthly Archives: August 2012

GP-1 Blackjack “Ground Pounder” walker

Jeff Churill (Cooper Works 70) mixes great shaping in LEGO with custom stickers and BrickArms to create this imposing walker that looks like it emerged from the military-industrial complex of World War II.

LEGO military mecha

Buttoned up for combat, this is one walking tank I wouldn’t want to face on a dark battlefield. The feet and legs are definitely the highlight for me on this mech.

LEGO military mecha

Lenticular Lego mosaic of Batman and the Joker

If you liked Arthur Gugick‘s Anakin-Vader lenticular mosaic, then you’ll love his recent one that depicts Batman and the Joker.

Do minifigs need haircuts?

Well, if they do, there’s a lovely barber shop on the ground floor of this terraced apartment building by Christer Nyberg.

Terrace Apartment 1

The building has a complete interior, so don’t miss all Christer’s photos on Flickr.

Via Brick Town Talk.

London 2012 – a retrospective Olympic roundup in LEGO

I’ve generally avoided news about the 2012 Olympics in London in order to preserve some measure of surprise as I watch the much-delayed — and rightly much-maligned — TV coverage on NBC here in the States. That’s meant that we haven’t really featured much in the way of LEGO Olympics models here over the last couple of weeks. Let’s correct that, as I watch the closing ceremonies, in one fell swoop.

Her Majesty the Bloody Queen stole the show at the opening ceremonies, but didn’t look especially entertained during what was actually quite an amazing show. Iain Heath captures the Queen’s look when she visited the Athletes’ Village the next day.

Presenting: Her Majesty The Bloody Queen!

Warren Elsmore spent 250 hours and 300,000 bricks building a 1:500 scale model of many recognizable Olympic buildings.

IMG_6454

The Guardian commissioned a series of brick-by-brick stop-motion videos by Fabian Moritz, showcasing important moments during the Olympics. My favorite was Michael Phelps’ 16th gold medal.



Finally, don’t miss McKayla Maroney’s disapproval in the post right below this one.

To celebrate the Closing Ceremonies... a disapproving McKayla Maroney in LEGO

I would like to award a Silver medal to Iain Heath for artfully capturing an iconic image from the 30th Olympiad, summarizing the fair sportsmanship and teamwork we associate with those dedicated athletes who give their all.

Also, it’s hysterical.

In all seriousness, congratulations to all of the athletes for their hard work, and safe travels.

A Snazzy Space Fighter

This little fighter by Jeffrey Matthews sports an awesomely fishy color scheme, and some pretty cool details, like power cores and removable armaments. The lime green highlights are an unusual choice, but they end up working excellently.

F-37B Tiger Shark

LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover powered by MINDSTORMS NXT (not plutonium)

We’re generally not as quick to blog Technic and MINDSTORMS models here, so with apologies to our readers who’ve already seen this (but in the interest of completeness): Will Gorman and Doug Moran recently built a fairly functional version of the Mars Curiosity Rover, with four of six working wheels, robotic arm, and mast.

According to the builders, “The Curiosity Rover was created with 7 NXT Bricks, 13 NXT Motors, 2 Power Function Motors, and over 1000+ LEGO Bricks. The software was developed using leJOS NXJ.”

The LEGO Group provided all the LEGO, and the rover was featured at LEGO and NASA’s Build the Future in Space event at Kennedy Space Center.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I’m sometimes pleased most by the overall impression that a LEGO photo leaves, but examining the details in this scene from Hugo by Gabe Umland is equally rewarding. I love the black & white, and the clockwork behind Hugo is fantastic.

Hugo Cabret and his drawing automaton

Gabe’s scene was inspired by the interior of the wonderful French Cafe by Carson Hart we featured here a couple weeks ago.

LEGO Argonath guards the borders of Gondor

Noah McClung (Glory_Forever) tackles one of the most awe-inspiring scenes from The Lord of the Rings, when the Fellowship passes beneath the gaze of the Argonath, or the Pillars of the Kings, into the much-diminished lands of Gondor.

Anarion

The smooth statue stands in contrast to the rough-and-tumble rocks of the cliff. Here’s hoping Noah adds Isildur’s statue on the other side of the river Anduin, joining Anárion to face down Gondor’s northern enemies.

Via FBTB.

Numereji Science Laboratory “Horizon” sends first images from Earth-like planet

I’ve found the Mars Curiosity Rover landing incredibly inspiring, and decided to build a rover of my own to explore the distant planet we made up for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon 2012.

Numereji Science Laboratory "Horizon" (1)

Here’s the first photo returned by Horizon from the surface of Numereji in 2382 — a low-resolution “haz-cam” photo of a nearby feature with interesting, layered characteristics potentially indicative of sedimentary processes (and thus the presence of liquid water). This photo represents the first indication that Numereji might be able to sustain human life.

Haz-Cam Image from NSL "Horizon"

After traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light for several decades, the rover lands safely, but the 14-minute delay for Mars-Earth communication (depending on their relative location) recently experienced by JPL scientists translate to 14 years of terror, as scientists wait to receive data from Numereji 14 light years away.

Chinese landscape painting and jade seal

Ericmok from Hong Kong built a scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the style of a Chinese painting, using monochrome shades to mimic the effect of a painting in black ink. The scroll background is a perfect way to frame the scene, making it very presentable.

Chinese Landscape Painting

His jade seal is also worthy of a mention, in which green and sand green are used to convey the texture of the jade. The characters on the seal say “Three Kingdoms.”

SignetSignet

Mission to Mars: An Interview with MSL Curiosity Rover builder Stephen Pakbaz

UPDATE (June 14, 2013): Stephen’s LEGO Curiosity Rover will be the next LEGO CUUSOO set!

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The Brothers Brick has featured the Mars Rover Curiosity CUUSOO project before as one of the more original and stand out projects on LEGO CUUSOO right now. But here is a surprising factoid, the creator of this model, Stephen Pakbaz, aka Perijove, was an actual engineer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and worked on designing the very same Mars Rover in real life! The Brothers Brick decided to interview Stephen.

MSL Rover 06

TBB: Tell us about your background?

Perijove: I received my Bachelors Degree at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana, majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerospace and a minor in Electrical Engineering, and then a Masters Degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego in California.

TBB: What was your position at Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

Perijove: My position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was a Mechanical Engineer in the Structures and Configurations Group. I also sometimes took on the responsibilities of a Cognizant Engineer.

TBB: Can you tell us about your work on the Curiosity Rover?

PA070020Perijove: The Curiosity rover was the first spacecraft I ever worked on after I finished with school in 2007. Even back then, the rover development was well underway, but there was still a lot of design, assembly, and testing left to do. I took part in all of these activities. I designed parts like brackets and covers and was responsible for their development all the way through delivering them to the technicians that would put them on the rover. Other tasks included writing procedures, assembling, and testing things like telecommunications systems and antennas. Types of testing included vibration, shock, and thermal-vacuum to simulate the different environments that would be experienced by the rover. One particularly fun test was bolting an engineering model of Curiosity to a 50 foot diameter centrifuge and spinning it up to over 20 g’s in order to simulate the forces the rover would experience during entry into the Martian atmosphere.

TBB: How long have you been a Lego enthusiast?

Perijove: I have been a LEGO enthusiast since at least elementary school. My own collection, at the time, was mostly pieces like simple bricks and wheels, but I would often play with friends and their collections too.

TBB: What experience did you have with Lego as a kid?

Perijove: My collection began to include more complex pieces just before middle school. I mostly built minifigure-sized robots and spaceships. Play scenarios often including using all my pieces to build a massive spaceship to move my entire minifigure population to another habitable planet before their current one was destroyed by a huge asteroid or a rogue robot. (Wow, that just brought on some powerful nostalgia!)

TBB: Did LEGO play a role in your chosen career path?

odysseygraphPerijove: LEGO absolutely had an impact on my career path. In high school, I spent much of my free time designing things like manned missions to the moons of Jupiter in graph paper notebooks. I often drew the designs with LEGO pieces so I could eventually create real models. This was also a great way to learn everything I could about space travel from interesting destinations and past missions to new forms of propulsion and radiation protection. LEGO has also been a great tool for quickly making quick prototypes of various mechanisms and other ideas to see how they worked.

TBB: What were your favorite sets/ themes as a child?

newnomadPerijove: Most of the space themes, of course, were my favorite, like M-Tron, Ice-Planet 2002, Exploriens, Roboforce, etc. Technic and Trains were great too, but those kinds of sets were often too expensive for me. I would have to say one of my favorite sets was 6338 Shuttle Launch Pad.

TBB: Did you ever experience a dark age?

Perijove: I never experienced a total dark age, but more like a dim age, while I was at school in Indiana. I couldn’t bring my entire collection with me form California, but I did manage to keep a few choice models and pieces with me. During this time, I also satisfied my LEGO habit as a volunteer and mentor for kids in the First LEGO League, a popular nationwide LEGO robotics competition. I had a lot of fun teaching kids about the mechanical possibilities of LEGO and seeing their robots compete and cooperate with eachother.

TBB: Did having first hand experience on the real Curiosity help with the design of the Lego version?

Perijove: I learn best by seeing and touching, which perhaps explains my affinity for mechanical engineering and LEGO. The rocker-bogie suspension system on the rover was just so cool, that I needed to make a LEGO version that I could play with. Being so close to the real rover all the time, designing a few small parts for it, and working with larger assemblies certainly helped me to understand its features, what they did, and how they worked. I’m hoping the LEGO Curiosity rover does the same for others.

TBB: Did you follow the progress of the rover’s trip to Mars?

Perijove: I kept up on every piece of information about the rover that was available to me. This was the first project where I was finally able to put my years of engineering education to use, so I really wanted it to be successful. I saw the landing live and ate plenty of peanuts beforehand for good luck, a tradition at JPL before critical mission events.

MSL Descent Stage 02

TBB: How did you feel about the landing?

Perijove: The landing itself was a conflicting conflagration of emotion. In my mind, I was confident of the success of the landing. My heart and other organs were filled with excitement, fear, nervousness, anticipation and, of course, curiosity. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep afterwards and spent that time calming down, talking to family and friends, and watching all the events that happened shortly afterwards.

TBB: Any thoughts about the historical significance of this achievement?

Perijove: The landing itself was quite historic. The ability to land such a large payload so precisely will be extremely important to future efforts. Though it’s still too early to be sure of the historical significance of the scientific returns of the mission, I’m sure it will be something wonderful. As for the significance of my own involvement, I think it’s kind of cool to think that long after the Great Pyramids on Earth have perished over time, it is possible that the rover I worked on will still be preserved on Mars (unless, of course, it becomes a victim of space looters).