When I saw this at first, I thought it was another Sanrio LEGO creation from Legokinsfolk. However, it turns out to be Miffy, a picture book character created by Dutch author Dick Bruna.
Legokinsfolk’s version is spot-on, with an interesting technique to create the head.
Izzo admits that of the hundreds of LEGO creations he’s posted over the last few years, only a handful haven’t been mecha. As much as we love Izzo’s amazing robots, it’s nice to see him change things up.
His latest batch of creations includes a trio of modular buildings. My favorite is this gray building with a green roof:
Here’s Izzo’s full lineup of buildings so far:
Mike Psiaki joins the RAMM fun with a brachiosaurus in RAMM livery:
And a bonus Jurassic Park helicopter:
Reminiscent of the planes from Crimson Skies, Scotty‘s Glenflight A-450 “Buzzard” looks almost microscale, but it actually fits a minifig:
What happens when Crown Knights wielding a Shiny Sword encounter a troll who demands a toll to cross a certain bridge? Fedde illustrates the fate of the poor troll:
Let’s be honest. Nick Dean has taken a certain amount of flak about how he’s managed the RAMM theme he created.
The key criticism is that Nick has only allowed certain people to build RAMM creations, with strict rules for those who do.
Nick is now opening RAMM to anybody who wants to build LEGO creations inspired by the future Royal Austrian Mechanized Military.
To celebrate the revolution, Nick is holding a RAMMtacular contest, with a custom built Kojote scout car as first prize.
The contest is open to anybody, and runs between now and September 30.
Jamie “Morgan19” Spencer enters the Scoot-a-bration contest with four great scooter shops.
Catch Up and the South Hovel:
Roamin’ Holiday and the Silver Lining:
Check out more pictures of all four scooter shops in Jamie’s Brickshelf gallery.
We recently highlighted HKLUG’s LEGO Sport City display, with huge models of the venues we’ll be seeing in the Beijing Olympics next month.
Thanks to LEGO Ambassador and HKLUG member Tsang Yiu Keung (better known as Chiukeung), we have lots more information on the models, including behind-the-scenes photos.
Chiukeung gives a sense of just how large the display is:
Venues recreated in LEGO include the National Stadium (nicknamed “The Bird’s Nest”), National Aquatics Center (“Swimming Cube”), and Olympic Village.
The finished display is certainly impressive, but the behind-the-scenes photos reveal the true scale and impressive techniques that went into the LEGO Sport City.
The iconic National Stadium was designed by Ming, an architect by trade. It took him over 100 hours to complete, and is 128×154 studs in size (that’s about 40″ x 48″). The outer shell includes thousands of hinge plates.
The National Aquatics Center was built by Vincent Cheung over the course of 120 hours, and has a three-tier design with a cell-like structure in the transparent blue walls.
The Swimming Cube is illuminated with a fluorescent lamp inside, and measures 148 by 148 studs, or 46″ on each side.
Chiukeung built the Olympic Village, which is 160 x 224 studs (50″ x 70″). Chiukeung spent 100 hours on the project.
There’s lots more to see (56 pictures in all) in the HKLUG LEGO Sport City photoset on Flickr, including the Equestrian stadium by Hudson, Greek temple by Wai Kee, and various Chinese and European buildings by Andy. The mosaic was built by Hot, who also coordinated the entire project.
If you’re in Hong Kong, you can see this LEGO display for yourself at Grand Century Place between now and August 31, 2008.
Thanks again to HKLUG and Chiukeung for the behind-the-scenes info and photos!
Today marks the third anniversary of The Brothers Brick!
I believe that 2007-2008 was the year that The Brothers Brick truly became more than just another LEGO blog. All of you out there make this a community, with LEGO Ambassadors representing the tens of thousands of you who visit the site.
The LEGO fan community has seen its shares of ups and downs over this past year. We rallied together during the Great Brickshelf Crisis of 2007, and we’ve avoided much of the fragmentation I feared at the time. In addition to blogs and other online venues like The Brothers Brick, fans can now get their LEGO fix in print from BrickJournal and listen to the LAMLradio podcast on their MP3 players.
We’ve also been fortunate to add two contributors over this past year. Nannan Zhang has brought much-appreciated energy, while we look forward to columns from Keith Goldman. Thanks to Nannan, our event coverage expanded beyond my posts about BrickCon last October to include his news and highlights from BrickWorld in June.
And then there were the fads and bandwagons, proving that with great power comes great responsibility.
Looking to the future, and giving back
Advertising sucks. We added ads to pay the bills, but now we have enough traffic and so many of you are making your LEGO purchases through us (thank you!) that this is the right time to increase our transparency by sharing what we’ll be doing with the extra income.
We’ll be rolling everything beyond what pays the bills back into the LEGO fan community. It really is as simple as that. Specifically, you’ll see more frequent contests (with good prizes), giveaways (online and at conventions), and maybe even “scholarships” for LEGO fans who might not otherwise be able to attend important LEGO conventions.
All about you, by the numbers
Despite my inability to perform basic arithmetic (“100% more of zero is still zero,” as someone gently pointed out recently in response to one of our taglines), I always like sharing numbers about all of you readers out there.
Although we’ve had visitors from 181 countries (literally Afghanistan to Zimbabwe), most of our readers are from countries where English is the predominant language.
I’ve always listed the top 10 countries, but you might find the top 30 more interesting:
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So, what are all of your out there most interested in? And what sites are you coming from?
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
The top ten referring sites are only the tip of the iceberg:
Of seventy million blogs that Technorati tracks, we’re in the top ten thousand, or 0.0143%. Wow!
Our most popular posts run the gamut from the very best (and sometimes weirdest) LEGO creations of the past year, along with the up-to-the-minute news you’ve come to expect from us:
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
Remember BB Gadgets editor Joel Johnston’s trip to Syd Mead’s house, where he saw the Technic Spinner that LEGO built for him?
Now there’s a video, in which Joel and Syd talk about the unique LEGO creation:
What do I have to do to get LEGO to build something for me? Oh right, design something awesome that influences an entire generation of people.
Curzon79 suggests that when a troll has nightmares, he sees horrible, beautiful flowers and nasty, pretty butterflies:
Fitting a bed around the troll must certainly have been an interesting challenge, and those large brick-built flowers are great.
Strange things are afoot in this lovely medieval inn by Crises. Click the pic for details:
Via Brick Town Talk.