Tom Sneller‘s entry for the “Castle Spaces” category in this year’s Colossal Castle Contest flying furniture, beautiful stained glass, and some seriously scared guards.
Read more and discuss Tom’s creation in his thread on Classic-Castle.com.
(Via Klocki.)
Mark Stafford‘s latest steampunk creation proves that steampunk doesn’t have to be all browns and grays.
As “Armothe,” Kyle Peterson may be best known as one half of the team behind BrickForge, but he’s also a great minifig customizer in his own right. His latest set of figs is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. From Arthur and Sir Bedevere (above) to Launcelot and Robin (below), the gang’s all here.
Check out Kyle’s Flickr photostream for more, including Galahad, Gawain, and my favorite, a French Knight:
“Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!”
Apparently, the late writer Norman Mailer was a LEGO fan of sorts. You can see him here in his New York apartment with his large LEGO sculpture in the background:
Apparently, Mailer built “a vast Lego city, incorporating some 15,000 pieces, known as the city of the future, seeming to take as much pride in it as in any of his other creations.”
According to architecture writer Lynn Becker, Mailer’s LEGO creation appears as the frontispiece in his 1966 book Cannibals and Christians:
So not only is this LEGO creation by one of the leading writers of the past 50 years, it’s built from vintage LEGO! Just the thing to expand my selection of basic bricks. I bet they’d need a good dusting, though…
Check out our previous post about writer Douglas Coupland’s LEGO obsession.
(Via KyleSmithOnline.com, with a tip from reader James Lucas Jones.)
The minifig-scale Droideka (or Destroyer Droid) in official LEGO sets kind of balls up, but not really. hyf326 has built a fully functional Droideka from Bionicle. Okay, it doesn’t actually roll around and go “pew pew!” Still cool though.
Via Brick Blogue.
Matija Puzar announced back in September that he had completed his LDraw design for a LEGO version of the Croatian National Theater.
As impressive as the design may have been, the actual creation is just plain gorgeous. The capitals on the columns are particularly beautiful.
Thanks to Brick Town Talk for pointing me to the real thing.
My favorite entry so far in Mike Yoder’s Fanboy Cover Contest on Classic-Space.com is Andrew Lee‘s microscale interpretation of Dan Jassim‘s Regent.
Here’s the original, with builder for scale:
In one form or another, The Brothers Brick may be nearly two and a half years old, but today marks the first anniversary of escaping a cold, soulless existence on Blogger into the warm, embracing arms of our own domain, Brothers-Brick.com.
Okay, so Blogger wasn’t that bad, but one year on Brothers-Brick.com has made a huge difference.
By the numbers:
There are Brothers-Brick.com readers in 152 countries and regions around the world:
Here are a few of my favorite lists, based on statistics from this past year:
| Top Countries | Top Keywords | Referring Sites |
|---|---|---|
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Since moving to Brothers-Brick.com, we’ve made quite a few additions:
What all of this tells me is that Brothers-Brick.com is more than just the sum of six contributors and a new domain. The Brothers Brick wouldn’t be the same without all of you who build the great creations we blog, send us links, leave comments, and visit the blog every day.
So, a big “Thank you!” to everyone for helping to make The Brothers Brick (wait for it…) the best LEGO blog on the Blog-o-Tubes! :-D
Lino Martins says he wanted to build a classic Volkswagen Beetle before LEGO releases their “official” version next year.
The exposed engine is fantastic (which makes this a “rat rod” — an entry for the latest LUGNuts building contest), but Lino doesn’t disappoint with the front either:
I love my All Stars. So does Matt Armstrong and so does Tim. I also love Matt’s LEGO version of his red high-tops.
The color change from traditional grey to “bley” (bluish grey) may have caused some consternation among LEGO fans at the time, but things seem to have settled down to the point that builders like Tim Zarki (and our very own Nannan) have fully embraced The Bley.
Given the clear militancy of Bley Adherents, a Bley Ascendancy is surely not far off. I for one welcome our new Bley overlords, and as a respected member of the LEGO community, volunteer my services to round up insurgent “AFOLs” to labor in the orbital ABS mines of the Bley Collective.
Takeshi Itou may not be the most prolific builder, but his creations are always worth the wait. His latest creation is Hikone Castle. Today, the castle is a National Treasure because it’s one of the rare castles from the feudal era that wasn’t torn down or destroyed and then rebuilt in modern times as a tourist attraction.
But enough about the real thing. What makes Takeshi’s version special is the technique he used for the base of the castle; the three-dimensional rock wall is amazing, built from bricks, slopes, and tiles. The scale of the castle seems pretty close to MINILAND (as compared to the smaller minifig scale Takeshi normally builds in), which has enabled Takeshi to use plates for the roof rather beautifully.
Read more about the real Hikone Castle on Wikipedia (in English) or the 400th anniversary site (in Japanese).
(Via Klocki.)