This week at the CES technology convention in Las Vegas, LEGO unveiled Boost, an entry-level building and coding toolkit to help bring your creations to life. More simple than Mindstorms, LEGO Boost (17101) is like its little brother but cooler and easier to get to know. The Brothers Brick is at CES and we’ll bring you hands-on coverage soon, but in the meantime, here are the basics.
Have you ever wondered how Sith Lords stay fit? No? Me neither. But Slovenian builder MajklSpajkl appears to have. His hilarious kinetic sculpture uses a modified 75111 Darth Vader LEGO set, with less rigid joints. The mechanism is simple in principle, but it works perfectly. Having seen this functioning live at some recent LEGO events in Slovenia, I must say my feelings for it are complicated. At first I felt mildly amused, but the longer I watched it, the more I loved it. And this really is the charm of MajklSpajkl’s MOC: it is built with relatively simple techniques and mechanisms, but what it lacks in complexity it more than makes up for in originality and humour.
And here is a video of it in action, for your viewing pleasure:
Of all the jokes and memes that came and went in 2016, none was as long-lasting and popular as “We Are Number One”. If you’re unfamiliar with it, I’ll let the experts explain it properly, but essentially it involves a song from the children’s TV show Lazy Town being endlessly remixed and fiddled with and then retitled “We Are Number One but [some weird change to the video]“. However, teen builder A Plastic Infinity‘s interpretation involves recreating four characters from the song (Robbie Rotten and his clones) as LEGO figures:
Take note of the quaffed hair which is built differently for each figure, as well Mr Rotten’s characteristic huge chin, cleverly captured using just one half of a ‘hinged plate’ assembly.
One great thing to come from the whole joke, aside from this cool LEGO build, is that the actor who played Robbie Rotten (Stefán Karl Stefánsson) was suffering from cancer around the time the meme hit fever pitch. The attention it brought to the character resulted in him and his family being able to raise a lot of the money they needed via GoFundMe. Good job, Internet!
The Dark Tower series of books by Stephen King is quickly entering the public eye as the upcoming movie draws closer to release. While it’s on everyone’s minds, David Collins has created his own version of the mystical structure in LEGO. Designed for a “books to life” exhibit of LEGO creations, this Tower stands two feet (~61 centimetres) tall. Collins had intended to make the tower taller, but was restricted to this height by the rules of the exhibit. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s worth questing for regardless.
And what is a Dark Tower without a gunslinger to find it? Collins has also created a minifigure of protagonist Roland Deschain to go with it.
On a personal note, I can’t wait to see this movie. I love the books and, by a strange coincidence, they began filming the movie right here in my home country of South Africa.
Taking a little inspiration from Overwatch’s Widowmaker, Djokson brings us a classy futuristic sniper. A diverse mix of LEGO parts comes together to create a model with style, sass, and more than a hint of danger. The goggles with the yellow lenses are obviously cool, but I like the realistic sniper stance too — hips pushed forward to compensate for the heft of the rifle…
Whilst personally I’ve always been a fan of regular System bricks rather than Bionicle/Hero Factory “constraction” parts, I can’t deny the way good builders use these joints and connections to create models with excellent posing potential. Check out the attitude in this shot…
LEGO builder ~J6Crash~ designed this model of his parents’ home and presented it to them as a Christmas gift. An impressive miniature representation of their Vermont home, the creation took a summer to design with Lego Digital Designer and support from a brother to help fund.
The building looks marvelous with its dark orange coloring and dark roof (painted only for authenticity to the original), lovely pool, manicured gardens and large deck, and looks like it belongs on the cover of House & Garden magazine. Assembled from around 5,000 parts and measuring 17.5 in x 15.5 in x 8 in (44.7 cm x 39.1 cm x 20.5 cm), it works out to around 1 stud for every 2 feet. The builder notes their parents really enjoy it — now they just need to figure out where to put it.
BrickJournal 43, highlighting many gaming-related articles and builds, is now available from TwoMorrows Publishing. The issue begins with a profile of Imagine Rigney, written by his mother, which tells their story as a family of LEGO fans and includes instructions for Rigney’s BioShock Songbird. (We covered another of Imagine’s incredible Bioshock LEGO creations just a few weeks ago). Ben Caulkins and TBB’s own Nick Jensen talk about their builds of iconic gaming weaponry and armor, followed by articles about models of Overwatch’s Winston and the Normandy from Mass Effect. Readers of TBB will also be happy to see an article by one of our editors, Chris Malloy, writing about how he built the first Minecraft layout.
A nice collection of instructions show how you can build a Minecraft Creeper, Zelda’s Master Sword by Tommy Williamson, a Dagobah Swamp mini diorama by Christopher Deck and how to create a custom Battle Rancor with help from Jared Burks and Michael Marzilli.
The issue also includes a report from RoboCupJunior Australia (a robotics tournament including LEGO MINDSTORMS robots), a review of No Starch Press’ new book, Tiny LEGO Wonders, a spotlight of brickfilmer Marc André Caron, and a look at Ben Pitchford’s impressive samurai layout. As is the case with most BrickJournal issues, this one finishes up with Greg Hyland’s charming comic, AFOLs.
One of the new vehicles in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and released as a LEGO Star Wars set is 75154 TIE Striker, which includes 543 pieces with 4 minifigs for $69.99.
With Rogue One in theaters for more than two weeks now, our review will reference spoilers. If you haven’t seen it yet, do so — the movie is excellent — and then come back and read our full review of the LEGO set.
See the full review. WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
A trio of Martian walkers carve a path of destruction through Tokyo Tag Team‘s city as the sun sets. The tripods look decidedly alien with a thin organic style contrasted by the squared off cityscape, and you don’t need to see the heat rays firing off to tell that they don’t come in peace.
While the tripods are the focus of the creation, I find the smoke trails off the burning buildings particularly clever. The billowing clouds of black curved bricks add a sense of movement that a vehicle on a plate just wouldn’t be able to capture.
One of the best creature builders out there, Japanese builder aurore&aube graces us with his skills once again, this time with an incredibly accurate representation of an Orcinus Orca. It appears the builder has used cut stickers as the white facial features of the killer whale, which captures the characteristic look of this marine mammal perfectly. Aquadynamic shaping is generally not easy to recreate in LEGO, but if I were to trust anyone with this challenge, this builder would probably be at the top of the list.
This is not the first time we have featured this builder’s animals, with some of his best being a blue and tan Tyrannosaurus Rex and an albino sperm whale.
This dark creation explores a fourth instalment of LOTR that we will never see on the big screen. The question posed by Jaden Ho‘s creation is… what if the evil Nazgûl tried to go back for the One Ring? He also playfully adds Frodo’s greed to retrieve the One Ring in his attempt to fish it from the pits of Mount Doom while the Eye of Sauron watches in distress over yonder.
In collaboration with photographer Daniel Yang, Jaden gives the scene atmospheric feeling that puts some sense of gloom into the cleverly constructed boiling lava. We all take comfort in knowing that the One Ring has been destroyed forever …or has it?
The BrickUniverse LEGO Fan Convention is coming to the Kentucky Exposition Center this weekend, January 7 & 8. Check out the press release below.
BrickUniverse is building on the amazing popularity and ingenuity of LEGO with awesome attractions all centered around everybody’s favorite plastic building blocks.