Marcin and Przemek are brothers from Poland who draw a stylized depiction of a classic Lego set each week. Check out their latest: 6649 Street Sweeper. You can see more on their Flickr gallery or blog.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Videos and interviews from Brickworld Chicago 2012
Josh from A Look at Lego posted several videos on YouTube containing interviews and builders talking about their creations. Below is one that showcases the larger displays at the convention. Check out the entire YouTube playlist to see what else is featured.
Onosendai does Prometheus
In what is shaping up to be a meme (how many ways can the space ship Prometheus be expressed in LEGO) , Andrew Lee graces us with a really well done interpretation of the titular movie ship. Can’t wait to see who else takes on the challenge.
Mass Effect’s UT-47 Kodiak Drop Shuttle
Any fan of Mass Effect will no doubt recognize N-11 Ordo‘s rendition of the UT-47 Kodiak Drop Shuttle from the games. By striving for a studless build and using custom stickers, the builder was able to create a high degree of accuracy, albeit at a sacrifice of the model’s sturdiness.
Dregant’s USCSS Prometheus costs much less than a trillion dollars
It’s great to be corrected when the correction reveals that I’ve missed something awesome. I said in my last post about Si-MOCs’ microsocale Prometheus) that I hadn’t found another LEGO version of this great ship, but Niki Dregant has in fact built a much-larger version:
At this scale, a whole lot more detail is possible, including lots of mechanical detail on the engines. Like the micro version, Niki’s larger version can land on its rotating nacelles. Since this is still somewhere around mini/midi-scale, my challenge to build a full minifig-scale version still stands.
Thanks for the tip, Fredo!
Microscale Prometheus lands on tiny LV-223
I saw Ridley Scott’s Prometheus a couple weeks ago, and I’m still a bit ambivalent about it. I appreciate the cosmic scope that makes the Alien trilogy (yes, I said trilogy) seem decidedly minuscule, but it left me more frustrated than anything else. I don’t necessarily need all my questions answered by a movie, but I hate being jerked around.
Nevertheless, I fell in love with the ship herself the moment I saw USCSS Prometheus in the first trailer. With influences evident from Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, it harkens back to the great sci-fi ship designs of the 70’s and 80’s while taking us firmly into the future.
Catching up on LEGO, I’ve been surprised that nobody’s built a LEGO Prometheus yet, so I was pleased to find this great microscale version that Simon Liu (Si-MOCs) built and posted after he got back from BrickWorld:
Simon’s Prometheus is complete with rotating engines, and I like the LV-223 landscape in which he places the hovering ship.
Perhaps one of you out there is planning on building a minifig-scale Prometheus for BrickCon 2012. I’d definitely love to see that. Better get building!
LEGO Mindstorms NXT Turing Machine celebrates Alan Turing’s 100th birthday
Today is pioneering British computer scientist Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Turing was instrumental in developing early computers, and worked during World War II to successfully crack the German Enigma machine. (Sadly, Turing was prosecuted for being gay in the early 1950s and committed suicide soon after, at age 41.)
One of Alan Turing’s key contributions to computer science is the concept behind his Turing machine, “a hypothetical device representing a computing machine” (according to Wikipedia).
Jeroen van den Bos & Davy Landman of CWI in the Netherlands write:
Abstract models are just that, an abstraction of something. In order to really show how simple the fundamental model of a computer is, we have developed a physical implementation of the Turing machine, using LEGO Mindstorms NXT.
Here’s a videos of the machine in action:
LEGO Turing Machine from ecalpemos on Vimeo.
Read more about the LEGO Turing machine on the team’s website.
Isle Lothloxia
The scale of this scene from L D M is breathtaking… not only does it have one of the finest Castle Keeps I have seen, it also has some wonderful water effects as well. I can almost hear the waves breaking on the beach.
An Unexpected Discovery
As soon as I’ve seen this photo’s thumbnail, it reminded me of Avatar. I turns out that -infomaniac- really based this creation on the Western Air Temple from the show. Amazing rock work, beautiful trees and architecture is what makes me like this.
On the side note, if you still haven’t, it’s time to start watching the sequel to Avatar – Legend of Korra. You too might get inspired to build something as awesome as this.
Brickworld 2012 Chicago Wrap Up
This past Sunday concluded this year’s Chicago Brickworld, and I’ve finally recovered and rested up a bit from the trip (and subsequent cold). This was only my second Lego convention, and I think it’s safe to say I’m hooked. The convention space at the Westin hotel was enormous. I’m sure many of you will have already seen the video walk-through that Nannan and I did of the three display rooms, which runs over 45 minutes and still isn’t comprehensive. Evidently they’re looking at moving to an even larger space next year that can accommodate all of the displays in a single room, which would be quite something. Unlike Brickcon, the other convention I’ve attended, the majority of the displays are arranged by builder, and not theme. I think there’s a lot of merit to both ways–while it’s awesome seeing huge tables full of sci-fi MOCs, it’s also quite fun to see all the different sorts of things a single person builds.
It was great fun getting to meet the people behind the avatars of so many great builders, such as fellow TBB’er Nannan and his counterpart in perpetrating unusually large dioramas Tyler Clites, LDM, and Si-MOCs, among many, many others. One of the highlights for me was a Saturday night unscheduled M-Tron building competition (generously organized and judged by a great guy whose name escapes me currently). After looking at so many terrific MOCs for three days straight, I was itching to build, and with 90 minutes and a large and hilariously haphazard collection of pieces, about a dozen of us sat down and pounded some mean MOCs out.
There were too many fantastic MOCs (including the one featured in the previous post) to possibly highlight them all, so I’ll just conclude by saying that you should definitely check out the Brickworld flickr pool, and even better, attend next year and meet lots of other great LEGO fans and see the stuff in person.
It’s a Twister!
This creation from Dr. Church is a great combination of building to suggest motion (the minifigs, the trees and the structure all deformed away from twister) and actual motion (the twister actually spins!):
and check out this video of it in It’s a Twister!
It blew me away when I saw this ;-)
I like-ah this Leica
H.Y. Leung (Mr.Attacki) appears to be relatively new on flickr, however, a quick Google search reveals that he has been on MOCpages for a while longer. But one thing for sure, these fantastic creations don’t appear to be getting the attention they deserve!!
These are two of my favourites, but be sure to click through the rest as well.
Big thanks to BrickAvenger for the heads up!