Yearly Archives: 2015

LEGO Movie snubbed by the Oscars, then wins Critics Choice award ...all in the same day [News]

Yesterday the 2015 Oscar nominations were announced, and The LEGO Movie was notably absent from the list of nominees for best animated feature. In response to this news, the movie’s writer and director Philip Lord tweeted “It’s okay. Made my own!” accompanied by a photo of a brick-built Oscar trophy. In reality, the uncredited creation was the work of brick artist Nathan Sawaya, although Lord did later admit that he just grabbed the image from a Google Image search.

LEGO fans everywhere were no doubt dismayed at the lack of an Oscar nod for this critically acclaimed and commercially successful movie. But later that very day, the critics themselves came to the rescue when the movie won Best Animated Film at the Critics Choice Awards!

As the saying goes… Every dark bluish gray cloud has a light bluish gray lining.

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A Drone a day keeps the meatbags away

I’ve been horribly remiss in not yet blogging my favorite month of the year, Droneuary. To amend for this oversight, feast your eyes on some of the best from the first half of the month.

Andrew Lee has been a one-man drone factory, churning out a fantastic variety of civilian drones in all shapes and sizes. This rogue medibot is a particular favorite.

Pascal has brought his clean aesthetic to the month, with a number of group shots of multiple drones. I particularly like the alien look of this batch, and the nicely layered background kicks the whole photo up another notch.

Last but certainly not least, Forest King kicked off the month with this atmospheric scene of a drone striketeam conquering a rampart.

Giant LEGO Landspeeder is 3000 bricks worth of droid smuggling awesomeness

“These are not the bricks you’re looking for!” Given that this is only Aaron Fiskum‘s second build, we are very impressed. Using almost 3000 bricks and measuring about 2 feet (half a meter) in length, this Star Wars “X34” landspeeder was designed to match the scale and style of LEGO’s Ultimate Collectors Series (UCS) sets, that have become much coveted by LEGO’s more grown-up fan base.

Every detail has been faithfully recreated, right down to the very comfortable looking cockpit shown below. Make sure to check out Aaron’s Flickr album for loads more close-up shots.

Stickering it to the man: a mean machine for a new age

This sweet low-slung ride by Jeff Churill looks ready to get into all manner of trouble, and do it with more than a bit of panache. Jeff started a business, Cooper Works, a year or two ago making stickers for LEGO models, and he’s proven that’s he’s got the building chops to put his own products to excellent use.

Concrete jungle

Modern architecture doesn’t have to be all about boxes clad in plate glass. Inaugurated last October in the Italian city of Milan, the Bosco Verticale is a experiment in eco-architecture: Two high-rise apartment blocks which incorporate live trees into every level. And now Glascow-based builder Elspeth De Montes has created the definitive LEGO version! Here it is, next to a picture of the original:

The moon landing was faked!

If NASA had done it as well as this version by duo Sean and Steph Mayo, maybe they’d have gotten away with it. Rarely am I a fan of non-LEGO elements added to a creation, but in this case the moon dust really takes this up a notch. The best detail here for me, though, is the brick-built tires (a combination of words which rarely refers to anything good).

He is out there... Blue Thunder

Our resident Lemur recently got asked how contributors to this blog are selected. Of course, much of the process is top-secret, but I’m pretty sure a contributor should add something new and distinctive to the team, even if that something new and distinctive is a cute bushy tail and a willingness to take care of the paperwork. However, most of us share that we got into this because we like building our own models. Fan-built models are the bread and butter of this blog and knowing a thing or two about building definitely helps.

In the last two years, I have been working on a large collection of movie and TV vehicles. I have close to fifty of them now, but there are still plenty of cool and interesting examples left that I haven’t built yet. I already had a jet, but I did not yet have a helicopter, for instance. With Blue Thunder, that has now been rectified.

Blue Thunder was a fictional high-tech police helicopter that starred in the eponymous 1983 movie. Its pilot was played by Roy Scheider, who is probably better known for his role as the police-chief in Jaws. The movie lead to a short-lived TV series, which I used to watch religiously as a child. Although the plots of the episodes and the dialogue were undoubtedly cheesy, the helicopter was one of the coolest things ever. It didn’t talk or have a red light scanner bar, but it had a tail-mounted fan instead of a conventional tail rotor and a Gatling gun that was slaved to the pilot’s helmet. Two flyable helicopters were used in the filming: Aerospatiale Gazelles, painted in a largely dark blue colour scheme and modified with a nose-mounted pod housing sensors and the Gatling gun, an ‘armoured’ cockpit canopy consisting of flat panels and a few other gadgets.

The cockpit canopy was the trickiest bit of the build. Building a rectangular structure is fairly easy. Building something that is rounded is also doable, by stepping plates or by using combinations of slopes. Building a faceted structure, however, is just plain awkward and getting it more-or-less right took a lot of trail-and-error.

Bushidō – Way of the Warrior

German builder Disco86 recently completed his triptych of builds focused on medieval Japan, for the 12th annual Colossal Castle Contest over at Classic-Castle.com. And I think it’s fair to say he saved the best for last, with this beautiful and colorful diorama. (Can you spot the lurking ninja?)

Cruising in style with the Auburn Speedster

By his own admission, in terms of LEGO builds Vibor Cavor didn’t have a very productive 2014, building just one model. As far as I am concerned, however, quality trumps quantity and his new year is off to a good start. His latest model, the 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, has quality in spades.

The Boattail Speedster is a prime example of thirties American luxury cars, with sleek Art Deco styling and high performance to match. I is also rare, with only a few hundred built before Auburn went bust in the Great Depression. Arguably, the original car looks even sleeker and more curvaceous than the model does, but to me it is not at all obvious how one could actually achieve that. With its beautifully sculpted mudguards, angled panels and working steering, this is one stylish build.

A golden age of racing

While not on the grand scale of Lino’s Hot Rod to Hell that we featured last month, this entry in the recent LUGNuts Steampunk Motorworks challenge by CaptainSmog still manages to hit all the right Victorian notes:

Flavor of the month

Monthly building challenges seem to be all the rage these days. And they result in a flood of awesome builds …sometimes too many for us to keep up with. Old faithfuls such as SHIPtember, MAkTober and Novvember are behind us now, as is the newer FOODcember. Meaning that now it’s time to focus our attention on… HARDuary!

All this month, builders from around the world will be recreating everyday objects out of LEGO. After pretty much shutting down the FOODcember challenge, Indonesian builder Kosmas Santosa is already knocking it out the park with some killer inanimate objects:

But things just got real, because freshly-minted LEGO designer Carl Merriam has entered the fray. Carl is well known for amazingly accurate LEGO builds of mechanical devices and scientific instruments, and is already showing great form with this old wooden office chair:

So pull up a seat (wooden or otherwise), and let’s see how this plays out!

Ask a Lemur – LEGO Certified Professionals, Extra Pieces & Glued Models.

Noana aho, friendly readers!

Another week has gone by. I’m hoping it was a good one for you. It was a great one for me! This week the contributors held their annual five day conference to figure out the vision for the year and such things. I wasn’t too interested in the meetings themselves. Andrew said that there were lemur issues on the agenda, which got me rather concerned. I looked it over and didn’t see anything. Maybe some got on his copy. Anyway, the real highlight was the catering. It was so incredibly scrumptious and they just kept bringing in more and more! They even had a table in the corner just for me! It was set up in the middle of a lovely blue tarp, which made it so much easier to take the leftovers back to my room at the end of each day.

I love this place!

Anyway, enough about me. Let’s get to your questions.

What is a LEGO Certified Professional?
LCPs are builders who have made a full-time job out of their LEGO building and are jumped through the proper hoops to be certified by LEGO. They are not employees but have a business relationship with the company. I believe there are currently 12, but the number is subject to change. Each LCP runs their own business but it has to fit within certain guidelines from the company.

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