Yearly Archives: 2014

Evolutionary Craft: The Eclipse Starfighter

I don’t find as much time to build now as I’d like, but it sure is fun when I finally get around to finishing a model. My latest inspiration was the Starfighter Telephone Game, a flickr social game. It’s a building game where each participant is mailed the previous player’s ship and then builds an evolution of it to mail to the next player. I’m taking part in the latest round, and when my turn came up, I was excited to receive Aaron William’s sweet yb-E ship.

The result of my efforts is the Eclipse Starfighter. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use the trans-red corner panel as the windscreen, and fitting it into the ship proved to be challenging. Incorporating the rotating wings for landing, which are locked together and pivot when the engine is rotated, introduced me to using worm gears to lock the wings in place. By using a worm gear, the movement is unidirectional, so that turning the engine moves the wings, but you can’t turn the wings to move the engine.

And here’s the ship next to Aaron William’s yb-E.

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“Airship, Airship, AIRSHIP!”

Continuing my Steampunk vibe from earlier in the week, here’s the mother of all LEGO airships by French builder Castor Troy…

Now a mothership is nothing without proper air and ground support. Fortunately, Castor has already thought of that. Say hello to Vampire Hunter …which incidentally sounds like the perfect premise for LEGO to use if they ever wanted to get into the Steampunk game!

Apparently these are part of a much larger Vampire Hunter project that will include a French chateau, haunted house, and plenty of hunters. Look out for that some time next year. In the meantime, keep your holy water and silver bullets handy. And wooden stakes. And garlic. Ok, did I forget anything? And hand mirrors. And crucifixes…

LEGO Unveils New 10242 MINI Cooper Due Out August 2014 [NEWS]

A follow up to their fantastic 10220 Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, LEGO has unveiled the newest “little” brother (sister?) in their car family. Meet 10242 MINI Cooper. This little green beauty enjoys long drives on winding country roads and romantic picnics by sunset.

I absolutely loved the Camper Van, so I’m super stoked for this beauty. Gorgeous color aside, the model looks simply amazing!

Check out more photos on Flickr!

Here’s the official press release:

10242 MINI Cooper
Ages 16+. 1,077pieces.
Take this MINI Cooper for a nostalgic drive down memory lane!

US $99.99 – CA $119.99 – AU $149.99 – DE 89.99€ – UK £74.99 – DK 799.00 DKK
*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.

Experience the iconic MINI Cooper first hand, with its classic lines, detailed interior and fun picnic theme.

Take the iconic MINI Cooper for a drive! This beautifully crafted LEGO® brick replica of the classic MINI Cooper Mk VII is full of authentic details, from the classic green and white color scheme with white wing mirrors and racing stripes, to the opening doors, hood and trunk, sporty fog lights, detailed engine and separate spare tire compartment. You can even remove the roof to access a tan colored interior with patterned seats, veneer-style dashboard, turning steering wheel, and moving gearshift and handbrake. And of course, no MINI Cooper would be complete without a picnic basket and blanket, the perfect accessories for a cozy day in the countryside!

• Features opening doors, hood and trunk, spare wheel in separate compartment, detailed engine and 2 fog lights.
• Accessories include a picnic basket, bottle and blanket for nostalgic picnic theme.
• Authentic replica of the MINI Cooper Mk VII.
• Classic green and white color theme with white wing mirrors and racing stripes.
• Lift the hood to reveal the detailed engine.
• Remove the roof and access the detailed interior.
• Go on a countryside picnic with this iconic classic!
• MINI Cooper measures over 4” (11cm) high, 9” (25cm) long and 5” (14cm) wide.

Watch one of the LEGO designers show off some of this set’s unique features and construction:

A geared up beast

Amida Na built a visually stunning sculpture of a dragon altered with cogwheels and pipes. See more photos of this interesting piece on the builder’s Flickr photostream.

LEGO Ideas announces female minifigure set

The winter 2014 LEGO Ideas results have been announced, and the next set will be the female minifigure set, which will be named “Research Institute.” Check out the video announcement below or read the full announcement on the LEGO Ideas blog.

Horsemen of the post-apocalypse

Through the leaning pose of this futuristic rider, and the outstretched limbs of his steed, Hungarian builder and artist Kristof (legoalbert) manages to impart a beautiful sense of motion to this creation using relatively few bricks. It’s not hard to visualize the leaping gait of this long-legged robot as it efficiently navigates the obstacles of some other-worldly landscape.

But the poetic backstory to this figure really completes the piece and leaves me wanting to see more of the savage world in Kristof’s imagination:

“Dark cloaked shadow-men patrol the wilderness of the Afterworld, roaming around on their tall artificial mounts. Swiftly rushing trough the densest of the forests, zig-zagging on the streets of the dead cities, they’re only vulnerable to the Vultures of the Plain, out in the endless grassfields, where the Insectmen rule.”

Unitron Pushback

Everyone loves to build star fighters, and other space combat craft, or space racers, buy when was the last time you saw a truly utilitarian space creation? R. J. Waldman (*jwaldo*) seems to have recognized this gap, and brings us a pretty fantastic star port support vehicle. I’ve long been fascinated by the geometry of airport support vehicles, they really bring minimalist and ultilitarian aesthetics home. This creation does a great job of capturing that look, and it also includes a lot of cool details and play features. There are built in stairs and cabinets, and I really dig the grill riding platforms sticking off the back.

Fracture – a tale of two towers

I don’t build castles often, but I love looking at them, and what’s better than one castle? Two Castles… together! Castle uber builders Asimon481 and ZCerberus teamed up to create this wonderful 80 x 288 stud diorama:

It’s another great example of builders coming together to achieve awesomeness. The layout is actually comprised of three separate pieces that flow seamlessly together:

Check out some of the great details here.

Dragons in space

I’ve seen so many starfighter designs that it’s rare to see one that’s as unusual as this dragon-starfighter hybrid by BobDeQuatre. If you want to see more, check out other designs from the series that the builder calls Space Ninjas.

To steam-finity and beyond!

I’ve seen a lotta great steampunk flying machines and airships built from LEGO. But this is the first time I recall seeing anyone build a steampunk starship! Here we see the USS Steambucket by Tim Schwalf reaching for the stars, in a wonderful brick-built cloud of steam.

LEGO steampunk fans should really check out Tim’s Flickr stream. While there may not be a huge number of builds up there (yet), every one of them is a keeper.

Chicago or bust

So many great builders are gonna be exhibiting at Brickworld this year, I almost don’t know who’s work I’m most excited to see! But a series of busts by Tyler Halliwell (The Deathly Halliwell) will probably be somewhere near the top of the list. Check out this latest addition to his collection, the Sandman, from the Neil Gaiman comics (er, I mean “graphic novels”) of the same name:

And this suitably bling-y bust of Anubis, jackal-headed Egyptian god of the afterlife:

Red Brick Game – BW2013

Have you ever been to a convention and you forgot or needed a piece? It happens to all of us, and in June it happened to Mark Larson. He realized that you could probably get any piece you needed at a convention, if you had something worth trading for it. That’s when he remembered the story about the Red Paper Clip Game and thought it would be cruel to make me play it.

Giving me a modest 2×4 red brick, he set me out on an adventure…

With my little brick in hand, I basically went up to every single person still in the convention hall pleading to trade for something – anything – to keep the game moving. For those that were there late Saturday night you would have been treated to a sales pitch that would rival most telemarketers.

Originally the plan was to see what I could get by end of night and trade it for some food or refreshments, or if it was really neat I’d just keep it. But after finding my sales pitch lacking that emotional connection I decided I needed to a new end game:

Whatever I had at the end of the convention would be donated to the Esther Walner Memorial Charity Auction at BW2014.

Auction Item #1 Dave Sterling’s Steam Punk Rifle

This changed everything. It went from amusement of my futility by the attendees to a communal effort to see what we could trade up to. People suddenly was far more generous – often trading items orders of magnitude more valuable, people started making suggestions on who I needed to ask and talk to, people offered money and pure donations to the pot (though that would be against the rules) and it became a bit of an event where people would routinely check in to see what I had traded up to.

I’m often surprised by the generosity in the community, and you would think I would have grown to expect such things, but I was not prepared for when people were trading their MOCs, or would trade a brand new UCS set that they had just bought at auction. Sure it was always a hope that I could get something valuable to auction, but this was was crazy!

In the final trading stages I had to choose pieces that would (I hope) sell well, not to mention be something that people could feasibly take home.
And after 14 trades I got not one, but two, fantastic MOCs for this year’s auction.

Auction Item #2 Isaac Mazer’s Dark Side of the Moon

So bring your pennies to Brickworld Chicago, you’ll need them if you want to outbid me.

And a special thanks to all the generous people who traded: Mark Larson, Chris Rozek, Lee Jones, Heath Flor, Roy T Cook, Adam Myers, Isaac Mazer, Adam Tucker, Bill Bartley, Sean Jensen, Alex Taylor, Chris Rozek again, Dave Sterling, and Isaac Mazer again! You guys rock.