It appears we’ve found another Valve fan in Arkov, whose Turret from Portal
If you were looking at an Aperture Science Military Android from this angle, there would be blood on the wall behind you. Just sayin’.
Yearly Archives: 2010
Why we love I LEGO N.Y. by Christoph Niemann [Book Review]
As a former Bostonian from a family of New Englanders, I was bred to loathe and ridicule all things New York, but I can’t help but love I LEGO N.Y.
The book pulls together the simple but immediately recognizable icons Christoph built from his son’s basic bricks last year, and featured on his New York Times blog Abstract City Blog (along with several new pieces).
When the publishers sent The Brothers Brick an early copy to review, I was honestly expecting the kind of throw-away, impulse-purchase novelty books you find while waiting in line at Walgreens and Barnes & Noble, with poor copy editing and grainy pictures.
Instead, the only words in the book are the hand-written labels explaining each tiny creation.
The text and photos appear to have been cleaned up from the versions posted on Christoph’s blog, and the book itself is presented in the form of a durable board book like Eric Carle’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Here at The Brothers Brick, we feature a lot of amazing creations, from motorized cities of the steampunk future to lenticular mosaics, but it’s books like this and vintage LEGO ads that take us back to our earliest days playing with LEGO — long before SNOT, fan conventions, and Internet drama.
When you put one brick on top of another, you mostly just get two stacked bricks. Sometimes, though, you get New York City.
I LEGO N.Y. ($14.95) is due out from Abrams Books next month, and is available from Amazon.com
AFOL: A Blocumentary by Jess Gibson
Documentary filmmaker Jess Gibson has just completed a 30-minute movie about adult fans of LEGO here in the Pacific Northwest. You can watch the complete “AFOL: A Blocumentary” right here:
AFOL A Blocumentary from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.
Jess attended BrickCon 2009, joined us for a SEALUG meeting, and interviewed many fans who’ll be familiar to readers of The Brothers Brick:
The description on Vimeo says that this is the “first in a series of Blocumentaries about the Adult Fans of LEGO,” so we’re looking forward to more from Jess Gibson in the future.
Crawler Town brings the city to you!
Canadian builder Dave DeGobbi has created a massive, steampunk-inspired creation that takes a small city and puts it on a mobile platform! The idea is crazy enough to work both in concept and execution. This creation is supposedly a luxury resort set in a post-apocalyptic world. What wouldn’t I pay for a trip to this exotic paradise?
See more of this amazing marvel of LEGO engineering
Police recover portion of Mark Benz’s stolen LEGO [News]
You might remember the grand theft LEGO story a week ago about Mark Benz who lost $6500 worth of custom creations in a car theft. According to the San Jose Mercury News, about two thirds of the creations were recovered on the night of February 16th, when police found it in an unoccupied stolen vehicle in Castro Valley. Most of the recovered models had been partially or wholly disassembled. The recovered LEGO was returned to Mark, though some was retained for the investigation.
Mark also sent out a press release on behalf of his family:
Late last night Fremont Police contacted a man who’s LEGO creations were stolen recently with good news. A pick-up truck, stolen in January from Fremont’s Niles District and recovered in Castro Valley yesterday, contained a big pile of LEGO. The police asked Mark Benz, President of the Bay Area LEGO Club to help identify the find. Their search for the truck and toy thieves continues based on other evidence found in the truck. If you have any information on either crime, please contact FPD Detective Veteran at 510-790-6800.
Mr. Benz, builder of the missing Lego creations, was delighted that some of his LEGO was found and returned, saying “Thanks very much to the law enforcement agencies involved. It’s great they found much of it!” About the LEGO creations themselves, he said: ”Some are in fair shape while others are completely wrecked,” adding ” The thieves have not been caught….YET.”
Only about two-thirds of the stolen LEGO creations were retrieved, and many reduced to a pile of LEGO “rubble”. Ghirardelli Square and two other models were broken into several large pieces. The Conservatory of Flowers and other model SF landmarks are now only a 50 pound box, about the size of a bar refrigerator, of [seemingly] random LEGO. All of the stolen LEGO trains, along with hundreds of LEGO trees, and other items remain missing. “I hope they find the rest when they catch the crooks,” Benz said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Benz is excited to soon have some of the LEGO back, and plans to rebuild as many of the famous SF Landmarks as he can in time to display them at the Bricks by the Bay LEGO Fan Convention at the Fremont Marriott, in April.
[Mark sent along a little additional information so I added to the post, with Nannan’s permission -Thanel]
Notre Dame de Paris in microscale
Since he’s dead, he can take off his head
Proximity to Valentine’s Day seems appropriate enough for the Halloween/Christmas hybrid that is The Nightmare Before Christmas
This vignette by Stefan (brainbikerider) featuring Jack Skellington singing beneath the full moon won a recent vignette contest among Austrian LEGO fans.
Stomping across the blasted landscape
This quartet of mecha by Aaron Dayman reminds me of the surprisingly moving story “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi (anthologized in Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
Each suit is unique, and sports some great stickers. Check out the full photoset for shots of each suit.
Twisted? Most certainly.
There are some fantastic entries coming in, for Classic-Castle‘s Time Twisters contest. For a brief re-cap, the idea is take an existing set, and turn your wayback machine a few centuries…or in this case, switch your “fantasy worlds” entirely!
Rod Gillies weighs in with his Twisted AT-AT:
Go Team [Insert country here]!
Janey “Red Brick” Gunning shows support for Team Canada with her sculpture depicting the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games:
We’ll fly away
Also on youtube
Peer Kreuger shows off his building skills and some Web 0.0 animation with this animated GIF of Da Vinci’s flying machine. The working flapping motion and steering are well demonstrated and the model itself has an elegance about it. Ben giocato, Peer.
Xhyn Vul Xhahkt
Xhyn uz o’akh’in du e’ahsil mukh aght.
Don’t blame me for the alien language, blame Shannon Young. You don’t have to understand the text to know what’s going on in this story; the pictures speak for themselves.