The end of October has once again brought us Classic-Castle‘s annual building event of epic proportions!
Now in its ninth year, I invite you to check out the past years winners, this year’s categories, and get your build on.
The contest runs from November 1 to December 31, with twelve categories designed to fit everyone’s building preference and collection size. Check them out! You’ll find all of the rules, categories, and prizes here.
It’s been nearly a century since World War I, but the echoes of that horrific conflict still echo across the years. Each November 11, people all across the world pause to remember all those who died in the war. Here in the States, Veterans Day honors everyone who’s served in the armed forces.
Jason Allemann has built this gorgeous scene “to honour all those who have fought for freedom in the world.”
Iain Heath of The Living Brick is apparently too modest to blog his own LEGO creations these days, so we’ll do it for him here. If there’s something that was missing from 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, it was a pair of smelly hippies named Credence Sandstorm and Crystal Bliss.
The circle of life is now complete.
Important: This is not the raffle post! Leave your raffle entry comments on Win LEGO Super Hero minifigs early, not here.
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We’ve heard from readers anecdotally that some of you have had trouble registering or leaving comments. Unfortunately, the reported numbers were low enough, and we just never had enough info to get to the root of the problem until recently, so weren’t able to fix it. As it turns out, there were a few related issues that all contributed to the problem.
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Second, many of you haven’t been able to change your auto-assigned passwords after you registered. We fixed this one a while ago.
Finally, those of you using Internet Explorer 9 have been unable to comment at all. I’m contractually obligated to say that this is our old code’s fault, not IE9’s. ;-) We’ve also fixed this.
We’re still going to keep the registration requirement for leaving comments, but we hope we’ve at least eliminated the bugs enough to enable those of you who’ve encountered any of these three issues to start leaving comments again. Thanks for your patience!
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The book covers the diverse aspects of the Lego hobby for AFOLs and includes a variety of featurettes that range from ApocaLego to Billund and Lego comics. The numerous short 1-2 page sections make for quick and easy reading and give a great introduction of the hobby to non-AFOLs. The content caters to non-AFOLs and new AFOLs, so seasoned fans will find many familiar facts and creations.
As diverse as the topics are, the examples represent a casual selection, meaning that they are not always representative of the top-tier works in a genre. This may disappoint those who want to see some of the the best spaceships or castles. Rather, the selected works represents a sampling of AFOL creations. Most featured works date prior to 2009, so it’s unlikely you’ll see much that was made in the past 3 years.
While The Cult of Lego is not a perfect representation of the hobby, it is still a very commendable one. I recommend the book for those who want to explore the multiple and diverse facets of the AFOL world. Even for seasoned veterans of the brick, The Cult of Lego is still a worthwhile item to keep in your collection as a reminder of what we AFOLs have accomplished.
The Cult of LEGO is currently available on Amazon.
LEGO fans in Switzerland are hosting the ExpoLego event November 19 and 20, 2011 in Concise (near Yverdon). With a display space of over 300 square meters, the event will feature Star Wars, System, Trains, and many custom LEGO models built by LEGO fans.
The public exhibition costs 3 swiss francs for kids and 6 for grown-ups.
Sylvain says, “In Switzerland, LEGO events are too rare, so enjoy!
They say you’re not a real LEGO Space builder until you’ve built a SHIP — a “Significantly Huge Investment in Parts” — that’s at least 100 studs long. As tempting as it was to take on that challenge, I was having so much fun with my little microscale fleet that I decided I wanted to stay within a size that was a reasonable addition to the carrier, cruiser, destroyer, and other little ships I’d built before BrickCon.
Spurred by a rival fleet Mike Yoder built, I set out to add a battleship. Thus was born UES Vanguard, the flagship of the United Earth Federation interstellar fleet.
Despite limiting myself to 55-60 studs, I still struggled with the engineering problems of creating something that wasn’t just built from bricks and slopes stacked on top of each other — something I know regular LEGO Space builders solved years ago. By the end, Vanguard was basically built as a “normal” LEGO (SYSTEM) skin enclosing a Technic latticework. That makes it strong enough, though, that I can hold it with one hand near the back and swoosh it around the living room. Sweet!
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
In a surprising turn of events, you’ll be able to get next year’s LEGO sets directly from LEGO, rather than watching them trickle in (frequently at inflated prices) at big box toy stores: LEGO informs us that they’ve just listed a substantial number of the January 2012 LEGO sets on the LEGO Shop website.
Everyone already knows that I’m most excited (oddly enough) about the newest LEGO City sets, what with their hillbilly moonshiners and rampaging bears. 4440 Forest Police Station
includes a bear, along with a hillbilly in a tree. There are eight other 2012 LEGO City
sets out as well.
LEGO dinosaurs return from extinction with the new LEGO Dino sets. 5887 Dino Defense HQ
includes a T-Rex, Raptor and Coelophysis, while 5885 Triceratops Trapper
has the horned dino we all know and love.
LEGO has listed nearly 30 new sets in half a dozen categories, so head on over and check them out.
Looking like it’s straight off the track at Nürburgring, this elegant supercar by flickr user L@go is a wonderful example of the beauty that can be achieved in minifig scale.
Following close on the heels of the announcement about the closure of LEGO Universe at the beginning of 2012, The LEGO Group has just announced that the Design byMe program will also be closing in January.
Here’s the official announcement:
The LEGO Group is closing that part of the Design byMe customization service that allows consumers to order digital models in real bricks. We will be accepting orders until January 16, 2012.
Consumers will still be able to design what they want with LEGO Digital Designer and upload models into a public gallery as before. All existing models will be transferred to a new gallery on the LDD website. Consumers will also be able to download the instructions generated from LEGO Digital Designer.
The HERO Recon Team Hero Creator will be unchanged and consumers will still be able to build and buy their own customized Hero. Bricks can be bought separately, using the Pick a Brick service http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pick-A-Brick-ByTheme.
This is not the end of customization for the LEGO Group, but a revision. We believe in the future of customization, but the service we offer has to be right for our consumers and Design byME has proven to be too complex for children.
The original Design byMe vision was for a unique customization service, where consumers could design whatever they imagined, display it and get the model sent to in their own LEGO box. Design byMe as a concept attracts several million people each year to build a huge range of amazing creations using the LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) software. Despite this success, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service.
Over the years, we have also added other simpler customized building experiences like Hero Recon Team. However, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service. The feedback from Design byMe users has taught us that we would need to rebuild the entire setup of Design byMe to fix this. This would only make the service too expensive.
But, you say, this little scene by Gabriel Thomson (whose more recent LEGO version of the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site we blogged a week ago) is a Star Trek scene! What’s with the Monty Python reference, Andrew?
Wait, what’s that on the viewscreen? And who’s that in the fez?
Egads! It’s the Crimson Permanent Assurance!
I suspect the crew of the Enterprise will be completely fine in the face of marauding financiers. They do, after all, have a certain Time Lord on board…
Via The Living Brick, my favorite minifig-centric blog.
