Kingmarshy says that his Mechua was betrayed by his brother in battle, cursing him. His flesh now being consumed, transforming him into a living machine. All I have to say is that I would NOT want to be his brother, because Mechua is apparently wandering the oceans looking for vengeance.
Watch your back Mr. Mechua’s brother!
I’m sure you’ve seen them in stores everywhere, too–the delicate orchids in an array of colors, waiting for you to take them home.
I’ve honestly been tempted, but this one might just fit right in with my decor! Tim Inman has built a lovely purple orchid, which is perfect for anyone. No need for water, and keep it away from the sun!
Carl Merriam brings us this beauty from back when trucks were still only for farms and businesses. We’ve featured countless antique vehicles here on blog, but clever people like Carl are always innovating new and interesting ways to build them, and for all its simplicity, this is one of the nicer ones I’ve seen.
Standing at 186cm (6’1″) and weighing 15kg (33 lbs.) Martin Latta’s (thire5) life sized LEGO model of the T-800 from the Terminator films is a sight to see. In particular with Martin standing beside it for a sense of scale.
Those lucky enough to be in the area, this model has been created for an exhibit in Lipno Point, Czech Republic.
Edit:
Martin says that he will have further photos up shortly, but in the meantime you can check out some of the development and work-in-progress photos here
Anyone who’s enjoyed the movie Scarface would instantly recognize this climactic scene made by Alex Eylar. For those who prefer the overall view, you’re not being left out.
Kristof’s (legoalbert) T-Jay 22-637 is perhaps one of the most adorable little robots I have ever had the pleasure of looking at. He says that he was inspired by the Science Guys from Adventure Time, and I must admit that I have never watched the show but this makes me want to check it out all the more.
The use of the sticker sheet scraps to add subtle detail to the body as well as to make the face is expertly done. And the design of the head with the recessed ‘screen’ and rubber band detailing is nothing to sneeze at either.
A build such as this is the perfect thing to put a smile on your face!
This post isn’t about politics. Well, mostly. On Monday, I expressed some anger about the way Memorial Day has become increasingly trivialized here in the United States, but I didn’t apply the nuance I usually expect from myself, even when writing about the intersection of our LEGO hobby and the real world — of which complex political issues (including my pacifist viewpoint) are most certainly a part. I’ll try to do better as I explore an issue that I think lies a bit closer to home for LEGO fans reading this blog.
Why is it that ethnic minorities are so under-represented in our LEGO depictions of military history — World War II in particular? Why are the LEGO minifigs storming beaches and liberating France presumably all white? Where are the Tuskegee Airmen, the Nisei soldiers, the Filipino sailors, the Navajo Code Talkers, and many more?
I realized recently that I was guilty of this oversight myself, as illustrated amply in the links to my own models above. I’m correcting this today with a rather simple photograph depicting 2nd Lt. Daniel K. Inouye as he marches with his platoon toward the ridge in Tuscany where he would single-handedly take out three German machine gun nests, losing his arm — and earning a Medal of Honor — in the process.
Daniel Inouye went on to become a US Representative and Senator from Hawaii, serving his state from the first day of statehood in 1959 through his death at the end of 2012.
(Frustratingly, I also realized that I don’t have the LEGO landscaping talent to attempt the ridge scene itself. And as an infantry regiment, the 442nd wasn’t equipped with the “interesting” tanks and other armor I’ve been building.)
There are historical reasons that answer my questions, of course. The United States military was officially segregated until after World War II ended, and most non-white units did not serve in front-line combat roles. Thus, the ever-popular and exciting scenes depicting the first moments of D-Day, for example, sadly but accurately exclude minorities like African-Americans and Japanese-Americans.
It’s also challenging to use LEGO as a medium to reflect real-world diversity. With LEGO Friends as a welcome exception — Heartlake City is certainly a multi-ethnic LEGO society — theoretically, only LEGO sets from licensed themes like Star Wars and the Lone Ranger include explicitly non-white characters. Why is it that a person of color has to be in a movie in order to be included accurately in a LEGO set? (Try asking LEGO that the next time you call Customer Service.) LEGO has claimed in the past that yellow minifigs are somehow race-neutral. Rubbish — tell that to a 9-year-old African-American girl wondering why people like her are so grossly under-represented in LEGO minifigs. And yes, LEGO is a Danish company, but that’s no excuse either.
Thanks to LEGO, we builders don’t actually have too many “non-white” minifigs to work with. For my Nisei soldiers of the 442nd, I had to dig up LEGO Ninjas minifigs from the 1990s, along with a few Ninjago minifigs. I shouldn’t need to go to themes with stereotypical ninjas in their name to find Asian minifigs. And for my African-American tank crew from the 761st Tank Battalion (below), my choices were even more restricted.
But I can’t give us WW2 LEGO builders a pass for focusing so obsessively on Normandy (with a bit of North Africa or Stalingrad thrown in from time to time) at the expense of the much-larger historical context, which did indeed include people from every thread of the vast tapestry of American society. Nor is the “limited LEGO palette” an excuse. What’s a bit sad about our collective obsession with D-Day is that we’re overlooking heroism and drama that is just as interesting and just as “buildable” in LEGO. By starting with the question “What can I build?” I’ve learned about people and events I’d never have learned in my high school American history classes (and certainly not in the Japanese history classes during elementary school earlier in my life).
Unfortunately, I’ve also encountered darker obsessions among some LEGO World War II builders. I can’t count the number of teens (apparently) who’ve included references to the Third Reich in their Flickr screen names — some going as far as to include the SS lightning bolts or even swastikas. I’ve also seen casual use of dated and hateful terms like “Jap” and “Kraut.” It makes me angry, but it also makes me very sad. Such behavior is unacceptable, and flies in the face of the very values that the Allies fought to defend in World War II. These are the kinds of actions I was alluding to with my “trite hand-wringing about ‘kids these days'” in my Memorial Day post. It’s hard to believe such attitudes toward fellow human beings don’t color what these builders choose to create with LEGO (or how they treat their fellow human beings in real life).
Whatever the reasons, we can and must do better.
The LEGO Military Annual Build Competition is happening now through July 10. With that in mind, I’d like to issue a challenge to those of us who are building something in the numerous contest categories: Build your models and minifigs in ways that reflect the true diversity of the men and women in the armed forces — whether you’re building something historical from World War II, Vietnam, or more-recent conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, or whether you’re creating something from an alternate or future timeline.
African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and other minorities fought racism and prejudice during World War II even as they battled the Axis Powers in the war itself. When they arrived home, they built on that experience to begin the Civil Rights movement, as well as the drive toward Hawaiian statehood and an independent Philippines. Those of us building LEGO creations based on historical conflicts like World War II owe it to the men and women who served to accurately reflect their experience.
These new little “Skyskipper” space fighters, by ROOK, really are the bee’s knees. They’ve got a fun, sleek, shape, and a nice clean color scheme. The part that really got me interested, though, was the nesting of parts for the cockpit canopies, to give an integrated feel. In fact, when I saw the first thumbnail, which had closed cockpits, I thought there might be a new canopy piece involved.
I distinctly remember hearing about the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding in 1986. I was having dinner with my parents and sister, eating grapefruit for dessert, when the news came on the radio. It was a highly publicised flight, even before lift-off, because Christa McAuliffe was on board, as part of the teacher in space project. Before her flight, the Shuttle was the exclusive domain of scientists, engineers and test pilots. The explosion came as a shock, not just in the United States, but also for a then ten-year old boy from the Netherlands, sitting next to the radio. I also have distinct memories of the Columbia disaster in 2003. I had recently moved to a new apartment and had organised a house-warming party for that evening, with my friends (mostly fellow physicists). That evening we could talk about little else.
Both events highlighted problems with NASA’s approach to safety and showed that the Shuttle itself was a deeply flawed concept. Yet, last year’s pictures of NASA’s Boeing 747SCA flying the Shuttles around the US to their resting places at museums, fill me with sadness. Rather than making giant leaps, it feels as though we are slowly crawling backwards. American and European Astronauts are now resigned to flying in the cramped confines of Russian Soyuz capsules, that really aren’t all that different from the capsule that carried Yuri Gagarin into orbit more than 50 years ago.
There is a glimmer of progress though, in the form of the Dragon. Stephen Pakbaz (Apojove) has built a very nice model of this spacecraft, doing a good job of representing the round shape with its conic end.
Last week I attended a lecture by André Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut who was on board the International Space Station from December 2011 to July 2012. A Dragon docked with the station during this time, and Kuipers described the new-car smell that greeted the crew when they opened the hatch. It’s not as sexy as the Space Shuttle, but the significance of the Dragon is that it is the first commercially developed space craft intended for manned missions in orbit. Previously this was exclusively done by governments. So far the Dragon has only been used as an unmanned supply vehicle, but it has been developed with manned missions in mind and plans are afoot for a first crewed flight in 2015. It’s a small step, but hopefully, in the non-too-distant future, commercial companies will be cheaply doing the nitty-gritty of lifting stuff and people to orbit, allowing NASA to do the more exciting stuff further out there.
Derrick van R. promises to bring us various adventures starring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s inimitable consulting detective over the coming weeks, but I was immediately captivated today by this simple scene with a single minifig. I say “simple,” but what I’m so impressed by is the incredible landscaping Derrick has built around Mr. Holmes, from a gorgeously curving tree to a brook with water cascading into a frigid-looking pool. The base itself is noteworthy, for hugging the contours of the landscape.
Check out many more photos showcasing Derrick’s landscaping talents in his photostream on Flickr.
This is probably not a sentence you read every day, but I happen to have a weak spot for well-built cranes. It’s the reason why I absolutely love the minifig-scale Liebherr 1050-3 mobile crane built by Polish builder Maksymilian Majchrzak (MAKS).
I built one of these myself more than a year ago, on a larger scale, and consequently am very familiar with the shape and the details. We have also previously blogged a Liebherr 1050 built by Makorol, who also happens to be from Poland (what do they put in the water there?). This model, which was remote controlled with Power Functions, was even larger than mine.
What is particularly impressive about the crane built by MAKS is that, despite being only 8 studs wide, it really isn’t a lot less detailed than either of the larger models. In fact, it looks just like the photographs of die-cast models I used as an inspiration.
The_jetboy is taking the concept of a “seed part”* to a whole new level. He’s used a single piece, the wide track link, 92 times to create this crazy microscale citadel. It’s not often I find visually interesting models made of only one part type.
*A seed part is single part type that must be used in a model, ideally in a highly ingenious manner. “Seed Part” contests are a staple among fan sites. If you’re not as crazy as the_jetboy, you also use other parts in conjunction with the seed part.