Katie Walker (eilonwy77) is known for using unconventional building techniques to achieve beautiful artistic patterns and designs. Her Pool Party scene uses curves at almost all the major outlines of the model to set it apart from a traditional build. The techniques for the brick wall, trees, and pool deck are also worth noting.
I was pleased to notice that Pierre Fieschi has given us all an insight into the design of his GAHNN Sniping Dreadnought. It’s great to see how he’s evolved the shape and colours using what looks like a mix of computer aided sketching and LEGO bricks.
When I first saw this bookend by Deborah Higdon I was suitably delighted by the cute design and well-crafted microscale train. And then I noticed the book.
Dave says, “One of the biggest hassles involved with building with Lego is sorting. Oh sure, I could keep all my bricks in a big tub, but it’s easer to work with them if they’re sorted. Fortunately, there are all kinds of gadgets and gizmos you can use to more easily sort bricks by size. Unfortunately, I mostly sort by color, and there isn’t an easy way to do that.”
Thankfully, Dave invented the Brick Sorter, a device that uses symbols written on glossy cardboard and a simple shake of an Amazon.com box to pull the target color out of the unsorted mess.
Hard to believe? I thought so too, until I saw the video:
Read all about it on Dave Ex Machina.
The latest edition of RAILBRICKS has just been released and, as usual, it’s chock full of good articles for LEGO train fans and AFOLs in general. You can get a low resolution copy here or follow the picture below for more options.
It’s always nice to be introducedreintroduced to a new (see comments) LEGO builder with an unusual technical style. Malte Dorowski builds, for the most part, miniland(ish)-scaled cars with beautiful rounded forms. And he does them well. It’s hard to be annoyed at link spamming on our Facebook page when it looks this good.
With lots of friends on Flickr pursuing a broad variety of geeky pursuits other than LEGO, actual LEGO models that look like their real-world inspirations sometimes slip past. Peter Reid‘s series of turtle robots are certainly adorable, but putting one of them in a disassembled state on what appears to be a plastic sprue is positively mind-blowing. Even the tools are brick-built.
Thanks to Ed Diment for making sure we corrected this miss.
There’s brilliant stained-glass work…and there’s stained glass that just goes beyond. And that’s what Colin (Cuahchic) has done. There are so many beautiful little details in this, but I just can’t stop looking at the stained glass motif. I could, I suppose, talk about the carved statue on the altar, or the stone fences, or that amazing floor.
But that would require not looking at the stained glass.
Matt De Lanoy made a Lego version of the Reddit alien for the newly launched subreddit for Lego fans, r/afol. You don’t have to be an AFOL to join as the group seems to focus more on MOCs and building techniques.
The BrickIt team in Denmark has built a robotic system to sort LEGO bricks. The “Dynaway Sorting Plant” uses 28 Mindstorms NXT motors, 7 processors, 4 color sensors, and 14 touch sensors, and took over 250 hours of programming time plus 800 hours to build. The result is an amazing system that separates 2×4 and 1×2 bricks by both shape and color and then moves the pallets full of sorted bricks.
Read more about the sorting machine on BrickIt.dk.
James Pegrum’s (peggyjdb) vignette caught my eye with its slanted rocks and angled placement of the temple, making it look more refined and realistic.
