We don’t feature a whole lot of DUPLO models here on The Brothers Brick, but these custom DUPLO figs by Bob Uyttendaele are too hilariously inappropriate to pass up.
Bob’s DUPLO figs of Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction look perfect enough to be official, but they most assuredly are not.
There’s often a glut of fairly similar (though often awesome) starfighters each year during Novvember, so it’s nice to see a great fighter outside that box. Nathan DeCastro brings us this excellent “T-6 Iron Venom” with beefy engines and formidable armaments.
The “Iron Venom” is a variation on Nate’s contribution to the Starfighter Telephone Game, in which builders send each other a LEGO starfighter to inspire the next build in the chain.
Nate was lucky enough to receive his inspiration from Mark Stafford (his Duodon, featured here a couple months ago). Here’s Nate’s “Duolos” fighter, on the right, alongside Mark’s “Duodon”:
Next up in the game, master starfighter designer Peter Morris!
J.R.R. Tolkien was as obsessed by the geography
Adam Dodge has built a LEGO map of Middle Earth, complete with the Anduin running between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood Forest, the inland Sea of Rhûn, and the Ered Lithui encircling Mordor.
Adam’s map is partly three-dimensional, with mountains that rise from the map’s surface and a great crevice for the passage of the Loudwater leading downstream from Rivendell.
With this handy map in your travel satchel, I suspect it might be easy enough to just walk right into Mordor…
Behold, the Kraken awakes! Iain Heath (Ochre Jelly) debuted his “KR-KN Destroyer Destroyer” at SEALUG’s LEGO display at Emerald City Comicon last month, and I’ve been waiting impatiently for him to get it online. The official LEGO Star Wars 10221 Super Star Destroyer set is, frankly, a bit dull, so Iain has jazzed it up with a space monster of epic proportions.
Read Iain’s backstory on The Living Brick, and go see it in person at Tableau Software, home of Seattle’s next batch of IPO millionaires.
World War Brick is a LEGO fan event organized by Brickmania that brings together builders who display LEGO models inspired by historical and military themes. The second annual event will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Brickmania Toyworks.
Discount pre-registration for weekend passes (the private convention) ended yesterday, but you can use a special coupon code for TBB readers when you register and get $10 off: TBBWWB
As with most LEGO fan conventions, you can also see the models on display during public exhibition times, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Head on over to WorldWarBrick.com for complete details
Hamster Productions made this short little video that mashes up PSY’s “Gangnam Style” (which is so 2012) with The Hobbit. We think you’ll like it.
Last month, we announced that each month we’ll be featuring a new photo by one of our readers on Facebook and Twitter. After TR kindly arranged everything, I had the privilege of picking the first month’s cover photo winners.
For Facebook, it only seemed fitting that I should pick a photo of the Cybercity collaborative build that RoninLUG & friends (led by Andrew Lee) put on for Bricks by the Bay 2011:
For Twitter, I picked this fantastic helium transport by Robert H. (Robiwan_Kenobi):
I’m really pleased by just how much participation we got, with over 170 photos from 130 builders. It seemed like everybody submitted their best work this first month, and that made my job incredibly hard.
(Pssst! With so many awesome photos, here’s a tip. Remove your photos from the pool and add them again. We’ll consider them again another month.)
Since this was our first month, here are a few random observations about what worked and what didn’t:
We hope readers and builders alike enjoy this monthly challenge, and I’m looking forward to what other contributors pick next month and beyond!
Finally, if you aren’t already following us elsewhere, be sure to Like TBB on Facebook and follow TBB on Twitter.
CK Tsang (chiukeung) continues his fantastic series of miniaturized retro hardware with a LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with Light Gun for playing Duck Hunt.
At Emerald City Comicon earlier this month, Josh and I had the pleasure of meeting Steve Snoey, the writer/director of a Kickstarter-funded forthcoming short film America’s Fighting Dinosaur. Turns out Steve is a TBB reader himself, so we talked about just how awesome a LEGO version of “Sammy” could be.
Bruce Lowell (bruceywan) has taken up the challenge, rendering an absolutely wonderful LEGO version inspired by Sammy, alongside the men (and pterodactyl) of the “373rd Reptilian Infantry Squad”:
One of my favorite details that might not be especially obvious in the main photo above is that Bruce’s base for his little diorama is in the shape of a dino footprint:
We hope you like this as much as I do, Steve! Check out lots more pictures on Flickr.
Last year, I wrote about how collaborating with others can really help a LEGO model shine. As TR wrote yesterday, there’s a wonderful community of LEGO builders who help and support each other (even when we argue), and we’re all better for each other’s company.
This beautifully shaped and colorful microscale destroyer dubbed HMS Arizona by A. Yates Industrial is an excellent case in point. I’ll start with the first picture he posted, which had rather poor lighting and a background full of seams from the paper he used to cobble it together:
Next, he posted a new photo, with clean lighting on a single large sheet, from a slightly higher camera angle that shows off more of the ship’s detail along its length. The ship’s stand is also virtually invisible underneath:
In response, Pascal offered to put A. Yates’s latest version on a space background. Within a few minutes, Pascal had sent A. Yates the results:
Pascal writes, “This photo was really easy to work with because it’s well lit and on a contrasting background. I have a ton of public domain NASA images on my laptop, so I just needed to select a nice nebula and an earth photo to create the new background.”
It never ceases to amaze me just how wonderful the collaborative spirit is within the LEGO building community!
We generally don’t take political positions or set out to court controversy, and I suspect some of our contributors don’t even agree with me, but this is important. The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about marriage equality, and people everywhere are changing their online avatars to show their support for freedom and justice.
Ryan H. (eldeeem) posted this simple, straightforward build that captures the design wonderfully.
David Picket (fallentomato) posted an even simpler LEGO version, and thus one you might be able to build and display yourself:
I first posted about marriage equality here on The Brothers Brick back in 2006, with this vignette featuring the Human Rights Campaign logo that’s the basis for the new red and pink version:
Though not directly LEGO-related, this beautiful video by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis explains the post title:
I challenge all the brickfilmers out there to create a LEGO version of “Same Love.”
Every aspiring geek back in the early to mid-80’s wanted an Apple II or Apple Macintosh, but they were pretty darn expensive. For those of us who grew up back then without an early Apple, a solid consolation prize was the Commodore 64. I learned Morse code for my amateur radio exam by playing a game on our C64.
Chris McVeigh (powerpig) continues his series of lovely vintage computers with a LEGO version of this classic machine. Chris has captured the shape of the C64’s case and all its details wonderfully, from the logo and power light to the studs-up keyboard.
Chris has titled his photo “64 Kilobricks,” which is wonderfully clever, but I couldn’t work out a way to steal it for my own post title…