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

Happy Hallowe’en From The Brothers Brick

On this All Hallow’s Eve we at the Brothers Brick hope all the little ghosts and ghouls out there have a fun, spooky and safe time trick-or-treating. Here are some appropriate creations to feast your eyes on…

This Is Halloween by Powerpig
This is Halloween

Ma.K-O-Lantern by Ryan K
Ma.K-O-Lantern

Halloween by LEGO DOU Moko
Halloween

Movie Maniacs – Halloween Figbarf! by Hammerstein NWC
Movie Maniacs - Halloween Figbarf!

UPDATE: Mechabrick Kickstarter reached funding

In just over one week, the Mechabrick Kickstarter that Ralph had previously featured has successfully reached its funding goal. That means that Dubreq Ltd. has enough funding to get the game to market, and it also means that there are still 20 days left for funding in order to reach some of the stretch goals.

funded-dance-final

So head on over to the Kickstarter page and check out the project if you haven’t already. Because it isn’t a question of whether the game will be able to reach the required funding any longer, it is now just a question of which bonus features will be achieved in the stretch goals.

Congrats to Ben Jarvis and the Mechabrick Team from The Brothers Brick.

LEGO New Era NY Yankees Cap by Orion Pax

When it comes to combining urban pop culture and LEGO, Alex Jones (Orion Pax) is your man. This red Yankees cap was commissioned by New Era Germany. I am sure they will be more than happy with the final results…I mean just look at that brick built MLB logo!!

NEW ERA - NY Yankees red Orion Pax LEGO

More images and info on Alex’s blog.

’32 Ford Roadster

At a smaller scale than we have come to expect from him, Lino M was able to achieve a great amount of detail and style in this ’32 Ford Roadster. And I agree with what L@GO said in the comments, it is simple and uncluttered, yet it is anything but boring.

32 Ford Roadster

Mondays aren’t so bad after all...

The perfect cure for a case of ‘The Mondays‘ is surely some fantastically designed sci-fi LEGO. Today’s pharmacist, dealing out the proper dose is none other than LEGOLIZE IT MAN.

maktober UTTERN views

maktober ÖRNEN blå

And remember boys and girls, follow the instructions on the label, and never exceed the maximum daily dose. Recommended to be taken on a full stomach.

93,600mm of LEGO SPACE!

With over one hundred entries and over 11,700 studs worth of LEGO spaceships built, I think it is a safe bet that SHIPtember was a huge success. Checkout all the winners in this thread. And vote for your People’s Choice winners in this thread

SHIPtember 2013 Poster

Also be sure to to check out the massive full size poster at 10px=1 stud. Big props to Josh Derksen for making the rockin’ poster. And of course humungous internet high fives to brainchild Simon Liu for hosting probably the most epic monthly build challenge in flickr history.

Gustav Hardsuit – Submariner Division

So Evan (Lego Junkie) is on a bit of a roll with cool builds it appears. He has just posted this absolutely beautiful supersized Maschinen Krieger hardsuit. Ma.Ktoberfest aside, this build is wonderfully designed. By taking this to a much larger size than we are accustomed to seeing for these sorts of builds, Evan was able to achieve a great amount of details and shapes that simply would not have been possible at minifig scale.

Ma.K Gustav Suit; Submariner Division.

Monday morning silliness.

Yes, I realize that today is Tuesday, but yesterday was Thanksgiving here in Canada, so today is my ‘Monday’. I also know that really doesn’t make sense, nor does it really have anything to do with the following creations…well actually I suppose it kind of is relevant because these don’t really make much sense either. But they did make me chuckle on this rainy Monday morning.

Wild 'Shroom Bandit...

All Terrain Trike

Not that it needs to be said, but these wonderful things are courtesy of Karf Oohlu

V-29 Firestorm – Sky-Fi Goodness by Jon Hall

Once again Jon Hall proves that he is truly the master of building beautiful airplanes. He has only posted one photo so far, but I am looking forward to more shots of that gorgeous light-aqua coloured underside.

V-29 Firestorm

And I would eat them with a Krote...and in a Banana Boat.

This Eggeater by Logan (∞CaptainInfinity∞) is pretty spot on considering how wacky of a shape this starfighter has. He has used a lot of neat techniques throughout the build, in particular I really like how he achieved the detailing along the top of the gun. And then of course there is the brilliant photo composition, the combination of brick built foreground and digitally edited background is incredibly pleasing to the eye.

Eggeater

So I will eat them in a box
And I will eat them with a Falkes
And I will eat them in a house.
And I will eat them with a Fledermaus.
And I will eat them here and there.
Say! I will eat them ANHYWHERE!

I do so like
green Eggeaters and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am!

One of Pluto – An experiment in uncontrolled building.

As LEGO builders we each find our own style in which we create. For myself I have always concentrated on the aspects of playability, so as a result tend to sacrifice aesthetics for function in many cases. LEGO has and always will be a toy for me. I wish I could categorize myself as a LEGO artist like many builders out there, but who am I kidding, I build this stuff to play with. Another side effect of this mindset is the tendency to disregard certain pieces of inspiration if I think the resulting model would be too fragile to play with. I can now use my sons as an excuse to perpetuate this habit, but honestly they do not impact my thought process because I want to swoosh and zoom my models just as much as they do.

Which leads me to One of Pluto, a piece of Maschinen Krieger concept art that I first saw years ago while perusing the internet for all things Ma.K (shortly after first being introduced to the genre by Tim’s early Ma.K stuff). The design completely intrigued me. It was so vastly different than anything else in the universe but somehow still fit in perfectly. Like all cool pieces of concept art I immediately contemplated the possibility of building it with LEGO. However, quickly dismissed the idea due to the clearly un-LEGO friendly shape.

One of Pluto

Well that was 6 or 7 years ago, and over that time I got up the nerve to take a crack at it. It was in fact during last Ma.Ktoberfest that I intended on building this, but real life got in the way and I never ended up starting anything. I still had my bag of dark grey boulders, which I ordered specifically for the project, set aside. So about a week ago I start fiddling with the parts. But I soon discovered that I had my mind too set within a controlled and symmetrical style of building. If I was going to be successful I had to completely change the way I normally build. Those that know me, know that my collection is in dire need of sorting, but for this project I think that fact actually helped. Because instead of going through a bin of parts looking for a specific piece, I simply rummaged through the bin and collected an assortment of pieces that I thought could work. So my starting point was a large pile of random dark grey bits and bobs (& my boulders). I knew that if I could get the general configuration of the bulbous abdomen figured out the rest would fall in place relatively easily. I experimented with several internal structures to get the right general shape with boulders, but again found myself concentrating too much on playability…I needed to admit to myself that this was going to be a display model only. Once I decided that, I quickly found a set up for the abdomen that gave me the right shape. But what totally surprised me was that once I used the assorted strings, hoses and rubber bands to add the detailing, they in fact held the boulders in place so well that it became super robust and easily swooshable. The upper ‘torso’ and head took a few tries as well, but were certainly simpler than the abdomen. I am super happy with the end result both in terms of aesthetics and playability. This will definitely be sitting on the ol’ LEGO shelf for quite some time.

In the end this build has made me realize that stepping back and looking at a project from a different perspective can be hugely beneficial. I took a fresh approach and actually ended up with familiar results.

Happy Ma.Ktoberfest everyone.

Salt on a wound

Those of you lucky enough to be at BrickCon will be seeing a sci-fi collaboration known as HUB 14. I have only seen a few teaser images on flickr but judging by who is involved I know it will be of epic proportions. For those of us unlucky enough to not be at BrickCon, Evan (Lego Junkie) was nice enough to rub it in and show us this brilliant little TurtleDove Spacecraft ahead of time. So thanks Evan for reminding us of all the cool stuff we are missing.

TurtleDove Spacecraft.

I want two of these on the second day of Christmas…and a partridge in a pear tree.