This wizard is a cute little bugger and I like him. Generally I frown on the use of old and new grey together as they tend to give an unfinished look to a build. However, in this case, it Dave & John Xandegar used the technique to create a nice mottled effect on the wizards robe.
I do wonder if he burned his hand a lot when he was learning that fire spell…
Our final Hayao Miyazaki tribute for the evening — and last post title in Japanese, for now — is this scene from My Neighbor Totoro
The sleeping Totoro in the second scene underneath the main one is well worth a closer look:
Leo Chu (Bad Leo) takes a bunch of angular bricks and creates one of the most irregularly shaped entities in Hayao Miyazaki’s universe — the castle in Howl’s Moving Castle.
Unlike builders of previous LEGO versions of this castle, Leo places his in a lovely scene, complete with laundry drying in the wind. Like the other Hayao Miyazaki LEGO models I’ve posted today, Leo’s build is one of the top 12 LEGO creations in the Hong Kong contest.
Ericmok delivers even more Miyazaki goodness with his microscale rendition of Laputa from Castle in the Sky.
My favorite visuals in many Miyazaki films are the clouds, and Eric’s LEGO version of Laputa is one of the few to include this key element of the movie.
One of my favorite moments in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
But the scene at the end of the movie is no less moving, built here in LEGO by Alex Hui, another top-12 entry for the Ani-Com Hong Kong LEGO contest.
I’m less convinced by the chunky Mehve, but the lit Ohmu tendrils and historical scenes on the side of the display more than make up for it.
UPDATE: Alex has posted a video showcasing his LEGO model:
I’m going to let this picture by Todd Wilder speak for itself. I need to go lay down because it’s making my head spin. If this could actually be built this way, I would need several of them. Too cool.
You can see the actual creation here. While it is cool, I think it is pretty wild how the kaleidoscope effect changes it so much.
You should check out his KaLEGOscope set. There are some other rather trippy things in there.
I grew up watching bits and pieces of 「宇宙戦艦ヤマト」(Space Battleship Yamato) at friends’ houses back in Japan, but I have to admit that my fascination with the series today is largely due to the fleet of ships rather than for any sense of personal nostalgia. I’m a sucker for LEGO renditions of the titular ship, and this version by Mark Rodrigues doesn’t disappoint.
Mark’s 1/250 scale Yamato took 4 months to build and represents his return to the LEGO hobby after a 4-year hiatus. I’d say the result was well worth the wait. The vessel is 45″ long and includes rotating turrets and opening wings.
Via Legobloggen.
I have no idea how I missed this. This sort of build is right up my alley, if you will. According to Michal Herbolt, the keeper of the lost chronicle secret (Archibald) was kidnapped and tortured for information.
The build is just beautiful. The different colored plates really add to the cobbled stone look, and the wood/stone combination on the main house really just works. Underneath, too, there is a rather unpleasant (but well built!) surprise.
Check out the rest of the flickr gallery!
Minifigures need a place to get their goods, and Alex‘s Market District is really filling that niche. This creation is just packed with stories and detail!
Check out this overall-shot; the produce, the animals, and the buildings just seem to flow naturally. I particularly like the building in the back corner, and the detail on the door!
There is just too much good stuff to list it all out here. I encourage you to check out some of the fantastic little details that are worked into this creation!
via Legobloggen
I’m not sure exactly what the bits of Shannon Sproule’s (Shannon Ocean) tank do but I sure do love the lines of it.
Our hope for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon 2011 is that the contributors will be free to create their vision of what kind of community would develop from a group of crash survivors isolated for a generation, and how their reconnection with other space travelers would play out.
This is 400 years in the future, so we’d love to see where both imagination and practicality go:
You name it, go to town with it. There’s definitely a place for elements of sci-fi, ecopunk, space, cyberpunk and frontier themes.
That being said, it does help to provide a little bit of a framework so people can know how to contribute to the overall collaboration, so we’re laying out a few guidelines, many of which are the result of discussions among TBB contributors and in the Flickr planning group.
Anchor piece: Brandon Bannerman’s crashed ship, The Howland, will be 96×96 studs and fairly tall. Check out his great accompanying backstory.
Scale and life forms: Minifig scale, with yellow headed minifigs as the main survivor group, though non-human and brick built species (sentient or not, mega or not) are welcome to join in the fun. Animals and plants from Earth, native species, and centuries of genetic modification would be pretty cool.
New Howland: The community of New Howland had a rough few years of scavenging at the beginning, but figured out a way to sustain itself for the long haul because the survivors didn’t have hope of moving on to a new planet. They developed some civil institutions, commerce and law enforcement.
The newer arrivals could include elements of an interplanetary government and even private corporate security, but we’re not going for a space ware here though the layout is likely to reflect the contrast between the tightly knit sustainable survivor community and all the new people and interests pouring into the place.
It’s the very mix of all these styles that will make the display interesting!
Vehicle/building color palette: The main survivor group would have scavenged from the crashed ship, which will be have mainly white hull sections and gray/bley machinery. They would have eventually started to build other sorts of structures as time passed.
The Green Wall from Stephanie Brothers on Vimeo.
The later arrivals will bring either a bit more rag tag aesthetic or might even have a corporate look.
Landscape color palette: The main planet surface will be tan with a Mediterranean or moderately arid climate. Modules that include water features, stone outcroppings, hills, mountains or forests will be fine just as long as the builder figures out some way to transition back to the rest of the display at the edges of their sections.
Modules: For the main part of the display we’ll be using a base plate plus one brick standard (BP+1B) in 32×32 stud sections. The little bit of height will hopefully allow for people to work in little depressions, gullies, plowed fields or hillocks. Simple tan base plates for countryside and farmland or gray base plates for the newly established spaceport part of town will be workable. Smaller or larger modules in multiples of 16 studs (e.g.: street, aqueduct, landing pad) will be okay and even helpful in breaking up the 32×32 grid pattern.
Display size: Width we won’t know until much later, but depth will be about six or seven 32×32 modules, just in case someone is thinking about building a stream or mountain range across the display. We’d even be open to cliff dwellings, underwater stuff or hill and building cutaways that go to (or even over) the edge of the tables.
Build a Community, play well, and ask yourself how you would sustain a community in a new land.
If you have any questions or ideas please participate in our Flickr planning group or leave comments right here.
