Jason Allemann (True Dimensions) has been imbuing LEGO EV3 Mindstorms with a snarky personality in the form of this black box. You’ll just have to watch the video to see what it does.
For those of you who’d like to build your own black box, Jason has provided instructions on his website.
I guess September is the month of Moko. He continues his streak of amazing builds with the Silver Moon, a gorgeous mecha covered in silver and gold elements. It’s hard to pull off a complete look when certain colors are limited to a few element types. Well, hard for the rest of us mere mortals, clearly not hard for a master like Moko.
Sometimes a model doesn’t need to be hugely complicated or full of wonderfully clever new connections of parts to be great, although there is definitely some clever stuff going on here if you look closely.
If, like me, you grew up watching cartoons in the eighties, the Autobot logo built by Jason Alleman (True Dimensions) really needs no further explanation. If you want to build your own (and you know you want to), you can even download instructions from Jason’s own website.
I think Guss De Blöd accidentally spilled a little Novvember in his SHIPtember. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, well, don’t worry about it. For several years, the LEGO flickr community has enjoyed doing themed monthly build challenges, and this year they’ve become particularly pervasive, with Marchikoma, SHIPtember, Maktober, and Novvember just off the top of my head. We’re currently in the middle of SHIPtember, and flickr is awash in SHIPs (that’s Super Huge Investment in Parts, aka capital ships). Even if it does seem to get a little bandwagon-y at times, the themes challenge a lot of people to build outside their normal comfort zones, and get some people to just build at all. And so, back to Guss’s orange machine, which appears to be a mash-up of two themed challenges. Regardless of any of that, though, it’s a lovely spacecraft, and the orange highlights are very striking.
Indonesian builder Toto Hermanto‘s latest mech is this super cool blue and grey machine. With those split legs, this mech brings a bit of a different aesthetic from many of the mechs I see, which is refreshing, and Toto’s added some great greebles to it.
Mariann Asanuma (Model Gal) has revealed her most recent mosaic portrait of Matt Smith, the 11th Doctor from the Doctor Who series. I’ve been privy to seeing her amazing technique up close and I still can’t get my head around how she does this. Rather than doing the traditional “studs up” approach to mosaics, she is able to capture the most subtle rendering of edges and forms, all from the side. She’s also able to employ an impressive array of ways to change the direction of the orientation of the elements in the tightest of quarters. I’ve seen these as works in progress, and I’ve studied them from behind, and they are both inventive and ingenious. It’s no wonder she is a former Master Model Builder from Legoland, California.
If you want to see how complicated her process is, check out the “blueprints” she makes to build this mosaic. Mariann is truly a Grand Master at LEGO Mosaics.
Eero Okkonen (Pate-keetongu) has masterfully created Edward Blake, aka the manic Comedian from Allan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen. The Comedian was a rough, fatalistic superhero, and that character shows through in the model. You can read more about it at Eero’s blog.
Look twice, because this fantasy tower by Kris Kelvin (Montgomery Burns) is larger than it looks (Kris says it’s over 1.4m tall). The ramshackle, staggered look of the tower is terrific, and all the texturing on the walls gives a lot of personality to the structure.
I spotted the first of these new mecha by Carter Baldwin ([Carter]) last week, but didn’t manage to blog it then. Fortunately, good things come to those who wait, and Carter has now posted an interesting variant on the first model. They’re both worth checking out, from the ball shaped cockpit and frame that stays the same, to the decorations that make them so different. My favorite is the pink bunny decoration, presumably inspired by Sucker Punch.
Brilliant official LEGO Designer, Adam Grabowski (Misterzumbi), created this minifig scale version of the “Orca” from Steven Spielberg’s JAWS six years ago, and has only now gotten around to sharing it with the world. I’d say the reason he works for LEGO making many of our favorite sets is pretty obvious. Well played Misterzumbi.
I have to start with a confession: I don’t remember ever reading Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I did see the animated TV series as a child, I saw the Muppets version several years ago and I’ve actually been in Bristol. Unfortunately, none of those experiences are of much use when describing what is going on in the latest scene built by Matthew Hurt, which depicts the Hispaniola in the port of Bristol at the start of its journey.
So, instead I’m going to focus on some of the details that make it such a great model. Check out the different types of textures used for the roof-tiles of the warehouses, for instance, or the brick-built sails. Then there’s the weathered look of the quay. And finally, the sails cleverly incorporate log bricks that make them look far more like cloth than if they would be built just out of regular plates and bricks.
