I spent a good chunk of Saturday and Sunday at BrickCon building 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, assisted toward the end by an able young spacer (I build slowly — really slowly — savoring the build, or something). Marshall Matlock has managed to squeeze the build into a minute and a half.
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Video game designer Hideo Kojima uses LEGO to build levels
Metal Gear Solid
Relating a story about taking his son to work one day during a time when his wife felt he was spending too much time at work, his son says that Dad “plays with Legos all day.”
I can imagine little scenes like this one by David McNeely scattered around Kojima’s design studio…
Eternal Dusk
The Ma.K starfighter contest may be over, but there still some fantastic builds to be found in the LEGO Starfighters group on Flickr. This shapely fighter by ROOK is an entry for the FBTB MOC Madness 2011 tournament, and features some excellent weathered stripes and interesting textures on the wings.
Spy ship gone rogue
Zane Houston designed a spy ship and outfitted it with guns to suit a bounty hunter. Not a bad combination of stealth and firepower.
A Neo-Classic Space resurgence?
There’s been a spate of really great Neo-Classic Space models over this last week or so, and I hadn’t realized I missed it quite as much as I apparently do. The latest update to a classic set is Chris Edwards‘s update to 6928 Uranium Search Vehicle.
As much as I love the vehicle — from the faithful recreation of the uranium detectors on the front to the lab on the back — what stands out most to me is the great updates to the black and white Space minifigs.
Countryside Keep for the Mini-Castle Contest
Each year, Classic-Castle runs a number of contests. Right now we’re in the middle of the Mini-Castle Contest, a sort of precursor to the massive Colossal Castle Contest. You’ve still got until October 31 to enter!
In the meantime, I invite you to check out some of the competition. Ru Corder has posted this lovely micro-scale landscape/castle mix-up. I’m in love with the timber fence-line.
A Three-pronged Attack
And for Jon Walker (Jon1138), those three prongs are excellence, imagination, and the capacity to carry out his plans. It seems that every year, large spaceship designs get more innovative and more unorthodox in their shapes, and the Dalu planetary defense craft is certainly at the forefront of these original designs.
According to Jon, it checks in at 150 studs long, and 60 studs wide, making it deceptively large, and all the more impressive in its structural integrity.
Great Western Lego Show 2011 – guest report by JasBrick
A certain LEGO convention here in Seattle wasn’t the only major event happening this past weekend. To share what was going on in England, we’re pleased to bring you this guest report by JasBrick.
Whilst pictures from Brickcon this weekend tantalised those of us that could not get there (I almost fell off my chair when I saw the Tower of Orthanc by OneLug) I am pleased to say that my own weekend was filled with a Lego event closer to home… Steam: The Great Western Lego Show.
Since 2002 the annual Great Western Lego Show has been held in Swindon UK and this year was another amazing event that proved that this is the biggest Lego event in the UK calendar. The event is organised by Martin Long and a team of dedicated volunteers from the Brickish Association and is set in the impressive surroundings of the Steam Museum that is dedicated to the history of the British Railways (which means a serious number of Lego train MOC).
Steam consists of two public exhibition days and some fantastic opportunities for AFOLs to socialise (some people are still hungover ;-)). One thing that really stood out for me this year was the fact that the Lego company really made an extra effort to support this event with the presence of two designers (Jamie Berard and Morten Graff-Wang) over the whole weekend and the simultaneous unveiling of the new Castle Joust set in conjunction with Brickcon.
In addition to a huge number of pretty amazing standalone MOCs like Eyrie Town by Rod Gilles (2 much caffeine, an online friend that I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time at this event).
What makes Steam really special is the number and scale of collaborative displays at the event. One of my favourites was The World of Harry Potter that included a series of amazing scenes from the films recreated in Lego. Here is one picture of the Great Hall from Hogwarts by Thorskegga:
And the defence against the dark arts classroom by Andrew Danieli:
One event that dominated the early part of 2011 was the Royal Wedding in April and Warren Elsmore and a team of helpers have created one of the biggest builds I have ever seen with a very accurate recreation of Westminster Abbey… just look at the size of that monster:
For those more interested in Sci-Fi there was plenty on display such as the amazing layout by the Peter Reid (legoloverman, who also impressed me with a few wonderfully detailed custom minifigs that he had created before finally seeing the light and putting such heinous behaviour behind him) and Tim Goddard (RogueBantha):
Humour and amazing building combined in The Seige of Haradford Castle where James Pegrum (peggyjdb) was ably assisted by Barney Main (slyowl) in a rather vicious battle fought between the fleshie and yellow armies over the battlements of a truly impressive castle built by James. The battle progressed throughout the weekend culminating with a win for James after sneakily taking advantage of the fact that Barney had to leave early.
The above are just a few of the highlights of this tremendous weekend and please check out the Gimme Lego blog by Dr. Dave Watford for more insight into the event and the following galleries to see what amazed the over 7,000 visitors to this year’s display.
Looking forward to next year already!
Jas
A Prickly Sort of Fighter
This latest spaceship by T.Oechsner, a veteran of Classic-Space themed models, is certainly a beauty. All the antennas and other technical accoutrements are perfectly placed to give this spaceship a menacing, sturdy feel.
Trains of the LBB
The purpose of this post is two-fold: 1) to show off Dave Stannard’s (Brickhead) excellent models and 2) to serve as inspiration and a reminder for the 7777 Redux contest.
Dave has been working on his LBB layout for quite a long time and, to me, it exemplifies what LEGO Ideas Books are all about, and that KISS can apply to LEGO models too. Dave’s models aren’t full of weird and tricky connections but they still look really great. Not they’re free of SNOT or studless but on the whole he keeps his techniques close to that of official sets. If you’re thinking of entering the 7777 Redux contest you could do worse than to check out his photostream.
Best Ma.K. Starfighters announced
The winners of the Maschinen Krieger (Ma.K.) Starfighter contest have just been announced. In the words of its creator TR Brownbridge (.Tromas),
One last thing…I think I can speak for Tim & Peter when I say this…this was without a doubt the best line up of contest entries that we have ever seen. You have no idea how hard it was for me (us) to narrow it down to a final 10 let alone final 3. Everyone of you should be super proud of your entries!!
First place went to Robiwan Kenobi’s Neuntöter which has already been blogged here
In second place was the Space Falke by Gregory Haga (The Lantern Rouge)
Third place went to Mountain King with his Dragonfly
The quality of the entries was absolutely superb. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting many people at all to capture the Ma.K. vibe (as I see it) and was utterly blown away but how many people did, and how well they did it. We really had a a hard time even narrowing down the final entries and picking a winner was a real challenge. Make sure you go to the entry thread to understand why we had such a hard time.
One thing we all agreed on is that John Judy’s (neim343) entry was both amazing and ineligible. While the paint took it up a notch it did breach the rules that no model should be painted, merely parts. But we all felt it needed honourable mention as it wouldn’t look out of place on the winners podium of a ‘real’ Ma.K. contest without being restricted to LEGO.
Finally the “Heart Tile” award for best use of an existing printed LEGO brick had to go to Tyler Clites’ (legohaulic) Höllenhound. The zebra tile was odd yet looked great and was thus a natural winner.
The LEGO Halloween countdown continues.
Part of the joy of the advent calendars is the surprise of not know what comes next. Jamie‘s calendar continues to do just that. I particularly like today’s play off Dorian Gray. I expect the Bonemeal Hag to appear in her own Grimm fairytale.
Click for October 1-4!