About Tromas

LEGOmaniac for life, TR has never forgotten the joy that playing with LEGO brings. With three young sons it is just further reason to never stop playing. Typically a SPACE! builder, but has been known to dabble in TOWN! as well. Has to yet to try CASTLE! in any meaningful amount. So please feel free to check out his flickr account if you are up for some SPACE!, the occassional TOWN! and very little, if any CASTLE!

Posts by Tromas

Is that Ma.K I smell?!?

Those that know me, know that I love Maschinen Krieger (Ma.K). However, it had been a while since I built anything in the style (about 8 or 9 months actually). Well my tweaking began shortly after I posted Logan’s updated Fireball. Then when he posted his minifig scale SAFS Raccoon…well I completely fell off the wagon at that point.

His brilliant design really got me itchin’ to build a suit that was more of a proper scale compared to minifigs than what my previous designs achieved. And as a small ode to Tim Gould’s original, I thought I would try and replicate his look (because his really is responsible for introducing me to the genre years ago). After some quick LEGO playing before bedtime with my son tonight we came up with a pretty fun little design that should be relatively easy to replicate in different variations…I have to say that I am quite pleased with the result actually :)

For those interested, I also did a fun little stop motion instructional video :P
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tromas/7806357120/in/photostream/

EDIT: Pascal (pasukaru76) has now created instructions in LDraw.

So needless to say, I think it is a safe bet that I will be producing more Ma.K deliciousness in the near future…stay tuned!

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Landscape Contest

Running from August 10th to September 10th, Flickr member Bruno is hosting a contest focused on building landscapes as opposed to vehicles and/or buildings.

DETAILS
Presented to you by Bruno and coupons provided by Brick Takeover
Imagine a peacefull landscape, green trees, flower fields, bunnies hopping around… AND OH MY GOD IS THAT A MANIAC WITH A FLAMETHROWER BURNING EVERYTHING TO SHREDS?!
So far this introduction, I’ll now tell you what the actual meaning of this contest is. You’ve all seen countless builds of apocalyptic wastefields, magnificent castle landscapes and so on. This contest focuses not on the minifigures dwelling in the landscapes, but on the landscapes itself. The goal is to create whatever landscape you like, be it a swamp, a volcanic island, a nuclear fallout landscape and so on.

RULES AND REQUIREMENTS.
-The build can be microscale, a vignette, a diorama or a scene, choose whatever floats your boat.
-You cannot enter previous builds THAT WERE POSTED ONLINE.
-The minimum size for it should be 20×20
-Maximum 2 entries per person
-No height restrictions
-YOU MUST HAVE A BRICKLINK ACCOUNT IN ORDER TO RECEIVE YOUR PRICE
-Minifigures are allowed, but should be kept under 3.
-Third Party accesoires such as Brickforge, Brickarms are allowed.
-Painting isn’t allowed, cutting stickers, flextube or whatever is.
-Don’t have any ideas? here are some themes: Apocalyptic, Castle, Prehistoric, Medieval (not necessarily Castle), Roman/Greek, futuristic/Sci-fi, Steam Punk, Sea-life, Natural.
-Judging is done by me, Eturior and Andreas.

PRIZES.
The prizes are split up into coupons for a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The coupons are funded by me and provided by Brick Takeover’s excellent shop. 1st place will receive a coupon of 30 euros, the 2nd place for 20 euros and the 3rd place for 10 euros. Again, the prizes are funded by myself with my hard-earned money so keep in mind that I can’t really afford any fancy price.

LINKS
Discussion Thread
Entry Thread

Well would you look at that...

Mike Yoder (M.R. Yoder) has always been one to typically keep us up to date with progress shots of his builds. Case in point, his City Ruins project that Andrew had featured a week or so back. Well Mike pulled a fast one on all of us when he posted his VogStar this past Monday. That ship was quite frankly brilliant in more ways than one and came out of nowhere. But now he totally upped the ante with this Chinese Imperial Flagship which is built on the same general hull frame. The mixing of reds & oranges works so wonderfully well.

This is a fantastic addition to his Chinese Imperial Navy, again previously featured by Andrew.

With both this and the VogStar, the aft section in particular is designed exceedingly well!!

Halo Reach SPARTAN armor has never looked cooler in LEGO

Mike Nieves (retinence) built this LEGO Halo sculpture of Noble 6 from Halo: Reach to take with him to Brickfair this weekend. I am not even going to say anything else… I’ll just let you all bask in her glory.

Egos Collide

Zane Houston has done a rather hilarious Super Heroes video for a contest on FBTB.net. I could watch this over and over…I especially like when the Hulk starts whooping Superman’s behind :-D

I also like Zane’s camera rig that he made for the video shoot :D

Oui Oui

I find myself wanting to to grab a café au lait, a good book, and sittng on the patio outside Carson Hart’s French Café. True Carson’s building has no rocket engines, pew-pew lasers or cyborg co-pilots, but the amount of other awesome details more than makes up for it. I have always appreciated the amount of brilliant detail that builders put into such creations, and Carson certainly does have a lot of fantastic finishing touches.

Oh wait, maybe there is a cyborg co-pilot onboard…

Last Minute Entries Welcome

Well our starfighter contest is coming to a close today. I have never been a huge stickler for deadline cutoffs, so as long as it is August 1st somewhere on Earth then you are ok to post an entry. As I type this it is 5:30am in American Samoa, so that leaves you all roughly 18.5 hours to build and photograph :-D

We are fast approaching 70 entries at last count, so you certainly have not made it easy on us judges!! Stay tuned for the results…although I am not going to promise that the winners will be decidely quickly, we have a monumental task ahead of us!!!

The Hob

Alex Jones (Orion Pax) is ready to cruise with Snoop and the boyz in his new lowrider, “The Hob”. He will be bouncin’ down the road, with fully functional hydraulics, working lights, RC, plenty of chrome, and even an MP3 player complete with speaker.

When I was in high school I thought it would be fantastic to have a lowrider…I hadn’t thought about it for years, but this makes me want a real one again! Would a 2004 VW Golf look odd as a lowrider???

Here is a video of it in action:

For all the pics, visit Alex’s website.

Little Big Rig

Matija recently posted the results of when truck geniuses hang out. Well not only does that result in some pretty cool photos, but it also results in some pretty cool inspiration. Evan B ([Lego Junkie]) just so happens to be one of those that felt inspired, because he has posted a rather amazing minifig scale Peterbilt 379, complete with lowbed trailer and Caterpillar D10r Bulldozer.

The attention to detail is definitely some top notch stuff. Be sure to check out the rest of the pictures in Evan’s photostream!!!

Skull Fighter

Well this has to be one of the most unique things that I have seen in a long time! But really can we expect anything less from Bartosz Kacprzyk (oneman)???

That skull is so whimsical, and combined with the checker pattern on the fuselage…just absolutely lovely!!! I can totally picture this buzzing around the screen of a Tim Burton film!

This Mini is BIG on awesome

Alex D (Flak-Magnet) has just posted an absolutely adorable little Mini Cooper rally car. He has based the model design on Richard J Brown’s original. I have had a 5-wide Mini on my “to-build” list for ages now…this makes me want to build one.

The shapes and curves are acheived perfectly at this small scale. And just look how cool that roof rack is. Props to both Richard & Alex!!!

Alex’s Version

Richard’s Original:

FWOOOOOSH!!!

That is the sound I find myself making when I look at Nick Trotta’s (tardisblue) latest spacecraft. There really is so much to love about it. The cockpit design for one thing is a really refreshing and unique take. The colouring is fanastic with the vibrant blue and orange contrasting the greys of the mechanical sections (plus the little splashes of red). And lastly the way the fuselage wraps around the gigantic engine…just makes it look dangerous, as if the ship is simply holding on for dear life.

Be sure to check out the photo set, there is a lot of fantastic details packed into this lil’ swoosher.

Cheers to Carson for the heads up…flickr seemed to have graciously failed to put this one in my contacts feed :P