Yearly Archives: 2015

May you always make your saving throw

Dungeons and Dragons, the grand-pappy of role playing games, has endured decades of poor imitations, ill-conceived spin-off products, and even the arrival of the digital age. Yet today it remains a permanent fixture of popular culture, and the new 5th edition rules look to be the best version yet. Love him or hate him, most D&D fans will recognize Dungeon Master (aka “Red Yoda”) from the short-lived Dungeons and Dragons TV show, recreated here in all his super-patronizing glory by Chris van Vliet.

After dragging a bunch of kids into the D&D universe to do his dirty work, and providing cryptic clues in order to avoid being legally implicated, it turned out in the end that Dungeon Master could have returned them to Earth at any time. More like “puppet master”. What a git!

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NASA’s latest discovery

I rather think the conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this one. Way to go, Paddy Bricksplitter. Can you imagine this conversation with CAPCOM? Especially if the print was fresh. I mean, seeing a foot print (beautifully rendered, by the way) would be mind-blowing enough. Toss in some moon or martian soil, and it’s something else entirely.

Though to be fair, I don’t imagine it’d be that hard to get funding for any future space exploration.

Here there be dragons

I grew up with the sea, and am an absolute sucker for pretty pretty ships. Aardwolf_83 delivers with this lovely galleon in her four-masted glory. I love the little details, like the beginnings of rigging, and the lines of this beauty are just lovely.

TBB cover photo: June 2015

This month’s winner of our informal TBB cover photo contest is this invigorating breakfast scene by Swedish builder LegoJalex. Yes, every single part of this scene (even the kitchen) is built from LEGO. And if you’re confused, that’s a popular brand of caviar paste on the toast. Just think of it as the Swedish equivalent of Vegemite!

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British Petrolheads

Joe Perez (mortalswordsman) works for Bright Bricks in the UK, where he builds LEGO models for a living. He is also a bit of a petrolhead; a British term for people who are crazy about internal combustion engines.

This made him the perfect choice for a recent Bright Bricks project that involved building miniland scale (1/20) vehicles, including a fair few motorcycles. Despite building with LEGO for a living, he still finds the time and interest to build just for fun. He has obviously caught the bug of building motorcycles, as shown by his groovy chopper.

Talking of petrolheads from the UK who are also professional LEGO builders, Carl Greatrix (bricktrix) launched a Lego Ideas project for a Caterham Seven model several months ago, which has now passed 10,000 votes. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the design review.

Look Children – The Colors!

I’m a sucker for weirdly colored alien landscapes. With his latest creation, A Plastic Infiity has given us that, plus some funky alien technology, and a floating rock. The scales of justice look balanced in the photo, but they feel tipped towards awesome to me. Also, I had no idea those minifig hats came in a purple shade, I’ll be needing some of those for my own funky landscapes.

AZR Anunnaki – Is Killer Drop Ship

Browsing for MOCs this morning, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find a new six foot long SHIP, but David Collins (IntronD) had a surprise in store. It’s quite a lovely shape from the angle below, and the medium blue (or is that azure?) and tan color scheme is just a thing of beauty. Truly amazing is that it’s all built to house a hangar for mecha. Make sure to check out all the photos, as it’s packed full of details and lighting effects.

Brickworld Chicago DVD Kickstarter project

The hosts of Beyond the Brick is starting a Kickstarter project to produce a DVD of Brickworld Chicago 2015 featuring coverage of the convention and interviews with builders. For $20, you can get a copy of the DVD, but those who contribute more can look forward to custom minifigs and creations, and even commissions.

Digging in the dirt

Until now, all of the pictures Davy Linden (Davekuhh) posted of his awesome Volvo excavator were of it sitting either on his building table or on display at LowLUG events in the Netherlands, with lots of clutter and legs in the background. I’ve been following his progress and have been waiting for decent pictures to appear for months, which makes it all the more frustrating that, now that they have and I finally get around to writing about it, other blogs have already beaten me to it.

In any case, this is just the sort of model I like and that I know many of you will appreciate too. I had the pleasure of being able to take in all the model’s details at one of the events a few months ago and I also got to see Davy use a dustbuster to vacuum up the ‘LEGO dirt’ from the base on which he displayed it. This is undoubtedly an effective method, but it makes a sound that fans of LEGO normally do not like to hear!

Piazza Maria makes me long for Italy and ice cream

I don’t know whether it’s the scene, the yellow background or the combination of the two, but Piazza Maria by Andrew Tate has a distinctly Southern-European flair.

In fact, I’ll be a bit more specific. The model wasn’t specifically intended to be Italian, despite the name, but the colours on the buildings are spot-on and the gelateria really do remind me of a square in Udine, where, on a work trip to Italy, I had some wonderful ice cream a fair few years ago. I don’t remember a living statue there, but I don’t mind. It could easily have been there.

In this robbery, your money is safe

Admittedly most of my knowledge about the Toy Story movies is from the LEGO sets, but you don’t have to be a fan to recognise the Train Chase, by Jared Chan, as a neat little model.

The train is simply adorable and it hides a neat feature: it also serves as a piggy bank. I do have some doubts whether it can actually keep your money safe, however, no matter how strong the clutch between LEGO elements may be.

The cars are the stars -the sequel

Somewhat to my shame, in my time as a contributor to this blog, I have not been a particularly prolific writer. This was particularly true at times when I was also busy writing things for work or dealing with a lot of deadlines, as I have been for a while now. I think all of us at TBB have been struggling with similar issues lately, as you may have gathered from the reduced frequency of posts. Even our lemur isn’t safe, although, to his credit, the kitchen tiles in the compound are now shinier than ever. Since for me stress-relief is a big reason for building, perhaps surprisingly, the upshot of being busy at work is that I do build lots of new models. This is far easier and also more relaxing than writing.

I’ve been working on a collection of famous vehicles from movies and TV series for about two years now, but by October last year I felt I was about done. However, enthusiastic reactions and suggestions for new ones that I got when I displayed them at the Great Western LEGO show in Swindon (UK) made me decide to continue and to diversify a bit more, by including helicopters. The vehicles in the picture are most of the ones I built since. I already wrote about Blue Thunder and Airwolf, in the back row, but you may not have seen any of the others. The third helicopter is the UH-1H “Huey” that serves as the personal transport for the surf-obsessed and completely insane Lt.Col. Kilgore, from Apocalypse Now. The other vehicles are Korben Dallas’ flying taxy from The 5th Element, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Capt. Nemo’s car from The League of extraordinary gentlemen, the Munster Koach from The Munsters, the GM Ultralite police car from Demolition Man, the AMC Pacer from Wayne’s world and, last but not least, the motorcycle with sidecar from Indiana Jones: the last crusade, all built to the same scale.

To be continued…