The Brothers Brick

Zaberca Architecture is a firm committed to design excellence and sustainable building practices. Founded by zaberca in 2007, the firm endorses a contextual and purpose driven design philosophy which focuses on the process of design, rather than heroic architectural gestures, or specific stylistic expressions. Following an in depth analysis of context, climate and vernacular forms, the architectural firm’s projects are reflective of the client’s vision and offer environmentally sensitive solutions for a variety of situations.

With a collaborative approach to the design process, Zaberca Architecture emphasizes a dialogue with clients and consultants from complimentary disciplines to ensure a project’s multidimensional success. The arcchitectural firm is committed to producing quality projects that become one with their natural settings. With keen attention to material selection, Zaberca architecture’s buildings embody a language that weaves together the traditional and the modern, the natural and the built as well as the indoors and the outdoors.

Stephen 趙(Chao) (obscurance) makes his first appearance since 2009 on this venerable blog, with this gorgeous “Savoia S.21“. The S.21 is a fictional seaplane / fighter that appears in the anime Porco Rosso, directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

According to Wikipedia: “While the plane depicted in the film never existed, Savoia was an actual Italian aircraft maker which produced a considerable number of flying boats in the 1920s, during which the film is set. An actual Savoia S.21 even existed, though the fictional one does not closely resemble it—the Cant.Z 501 “Seagull” is probably the closest real-life match. As a matter of fact, Hayao Miyazaki is said to have drawn his Savoia S.21 from his childhood memories of Macchi M.33.”

Constant readers of the blog will no doubt be familiar with this model, as 4 outstanding builders have taken a shot at the Savoia over the years. When I discovered how often the Savoia had been featured I was tempted to send the draft to the trash can, but I enjoyed seeing the unique approach used by each builder over the years and hope that you will too.

Sweden’s Lego.Skrytsson is providing the power for Saturday’s broadcast with his “Transformer” diorama. Gabriel brings the substation to life with accurate detail and just the right amount of minifig action to keep it interesting and provide some color. The varied textures help to overcome the necessarily monochromatic style, and the overall result is both pleasing and a nice respite from the mostly violent dioramas I come across while looking for models to blog.

Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another bruising edition of Friday Night Fights! Tonight’s bout features two up and coming fighters in the always contentious Bantamweight division. Let’s go to the tale of the tape:

Fighting out of the red corner…from somewhere between heaven and hell…Nooreuyed and his “Teatro“.

And fighting out of the blue corner…The pride of Rockford College, Illinois…Julius No and his “Plastic Prison“.

As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this pugilistic endeavor by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the judges scored the fight 4-2 in favor of Andy the D-Town Cracka

Friday Night Fights would also like to thank Chris Maddison (cmaddison), who is in the fight of his life against Bruce Lowell, for contributing to tonight’s broadcast.

If you are planning to attend Brickworld Chicago from June 12-16 but have not yet registered, you have until May 13 to do so before registration closes. Visit their website for registration info and important deadlines for attendees.

As I’ve noted in my recent reviews of Brickmania custom LEGO kits, making tracks look realistic can be challenging — LEGO’s own tracks are generally too wide, and using Technic chains is either too narrow or incredibly parts-intensive. Enter Brickmania’s new Kickstarter project — Brickmania Track Links: Custom Add-On for the LEGO System.

Here’s the announcement video:

Like train wheels from Big Ben Bricks, this project fulfills a need that LEGO is unlikely to meet any time soon — why create more-realistic track molds when the current ones will do? I’ll be supporting this worthy project on behalf of The Brothers Brick.

I am sure many of you will be looking forward to the annual Lego Military Build Competition. I know I am. I was a participant in 2008 and 2009 (with some success) and helped organise and judge it in the last few years. This year it is being run by Magnus Lauglo, D-Town Cracka, -Mainman- and Aleksander Stein, all of whom will be familiar to military builders and to long-term readers of this blog.

If you are interested, you should make your way to the special contest group on flickr for more information. The contest starts today and runs until July 10th. In previous years, the quality of many of the entries in this competition was excellent and I am eagerly looking forward to seeing the results this year.

I think it’s rather trite to say that something “doesn’t look like LEGO” — it’s a lazy statement and plays into the non-building public’s perception that “LEGO these days” is “overly specialized” and “doesn’t foster creativity.” Also, we try not to feature the same model twice.

Nonsense, all of it. Just look at this amazing dragon built by aurore&aube.

This new version includes much-improved horns, and arms posed as if the dragon were about to leap into the air.

I’ve been in Atlanta the last few days, but I would rather have been spending my time in this excellent microscale castle scene built by oLaF-LM and his 8-year-old son.

The pair of sailing ships in the harbor and the castle town are especially lovely. The LEGO clips as the castle walls’ crenellations are also an interesting use of that part.

Mark Stafford (lego_nabii) has just posted a photo of an awesome model, built by one of his fellow designers at LEGO, Luis Castenada. Luis built an awesome custom Marine from StarCraft. Obviously, the head is not an authentic Lego piece, and a few parts have been painted, but that doesn’t stop this from being amazing. Here’s hoping that LEGO will wrest the license away from Mega, and release some sets like this.

Izzo‘s latest mech is a fierce-looking combat machine that took some inspiration from District 9. Check out the negative space stripes in the armor that give this creation a distinct look.

From Polish builder Lukasz Wiktorowicz (LL) comes a scene of daring men following in the footsteps of the great Trojan warriors of yore, slipping in under the enemy’s watchful eyes in disguise. Ok, well, actually, it’s just Pintel and Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean masquerading as women, but it makes a smashing good LEGO scene, brought to life with clever parts usages and some great forced perspective.

Lately I have been updating some of my older models, but seeing Ghostbusters for the umpteenth time last week inspired me to build something new for a change: Ecto-1. It had been on my to-do list for months.

It’s not the first Ecto-1 blogged here: a minifig scale version by misterzumbi and both minifig and large scale versions by Orion Pax have been featured here before, but I wanted my own version.

I decided to build a largish model, so that I could have working features such as steering and opening doors, which is the main thing that sets my model apart from the others. Ecto-1 in the movie was a converted ambulance built on a ’59 Cadillac commercial chassis. My starting point was a pink ’59 Cadillac convertible I built several years ago. That vehicle has a considerably shorter wheelbase and no roof, obviously, but the front end and the iconic tailfins are the same.

A drawback of the larger scale is that it isn’t suited for minifigs, which is why I opted for brick-built figures. Ecto-1 wouldn’t be complete without the Ghostbusters themselves and a “focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor”. You’ve got to love (s)lime green!

70708 Hive Crawler is the largest insect vehicle from the Galaxy Squad line. It will be released in June of this year and contains 560 pieces priced at $59.99.

Here is my summary of the highlights of the set, which are elaborated in the review videos of the parts and the model.

Pros:

• The crawling legs are an awesome play feature.
• The catapult is well-designed and fun to launch.
• New parts include the transparent pink pods, insect spawns, olive 1×2 curved slopes, and new/hard-to-find lime green and dark red parts.
• Sleek speeder design.

Cons:

• Only 3 minifigs included and none are unique to the set.
• Colors look jumbled on the insect, I’m not a fan of the design of the middle section.

Overall, the Hive Crawler is a surprisingly fun set to play with despite not having the best looks. It is also a great parts pack for sci-fi builders with a satisfying array of new elements. Similar to other Galaxy Squad sets, it falls short in the number of minifigs included although it is the cheapest set to get the new 4-eyed alien commander. It is not a bad buy at $60, especially if you want to start building with the new parts right away or can’t wait to have a crawling menace to combat the space marines.

There is something that’s just plain awesome about LEGO creations that go beyond just looking cool and enter the realm of being full-on functional. In this case, hippotam‘s made the perfect gift for the kitchen-inclined AFOL in your life.

And yes, it totally works: