W. Navarre ended the year with a flurry of activity aimed at the 13th Colossal Castle Contest and might have a shot at the Master Builder prize with the breadth and variety of his entries. My personal favorite is one of his last, this foreboding fortress built into a cliff that appears to be spewing lava!
In addition to the fearsome skull on the front, the fortress has an interior. Behind the door is a working portcullis.
Dane Erland proves below that you don’t have to use color to build a creation that catches the eye. This tip-toeing beast is named Ghoulspine and I imagine he slinks up to his prey silently but for the gentle sound of a cooling fan or two. Is that sleek tail used for balancing, swimming, or something else? I’m not sure, but it’s lovely nonetheless. Also, check out those ingenious shields sported by the Ghoulspine’s two handlers.
…and all players are utterly creative combinations of pieces. Letranger Absurde’s vignette depicting a theatre stage blows my mind with its extremely unsual usage of a regular frog animal piece: once for the actress’ hairdo and several more as seats in the hall. When I saw this little masterpiece for the first time it took me a moment to decide what astounded me more — the fact that I can distinguish the emotions of these tiny little microfigures or the rats in the background…
Kylo Ren is my new favorite villain. He clomps around menacingly, has an eerie, almost mechanical, baritone voice, and just the right amount of that famous Skywalker immaturity. Though we recently also featured torokimasa’s chibi Kylo Ren here on TBB, Kevin Ryhal‘s brick-built Kylo was too good to pass up. Kevin perfectly captured Kylo’s distinctive flowing robes (no easy feat with brick) and the unstable blade of his vented lightsaber. Also, the battle-stance pose is spot on.
We don’t often feature brick films on Brothers Brick; partly because that’s not where our interests lie, and partly because it’s a lot more time consuming to discover new content. Sometimes though, a brick film jumps out as worthwhile. Such is the case with A Fixed System by Aaron Fisher.
We find here the tale of an Everyman awash in a rote life as a brick factory worker, who would have fit right in with Emmett during the beginning of The LEGO Movie. I won’t spoil what happens when he decides to look for more in life, but I will say it provides an interesting subject upon which to muse. And like much good art, it provides a platform upon which the viewer’s own beliefs and worldview are highlighted and questioned.
The animation is strong in this 10-minute movie (a frequent failing of brick films) and the facial expressions and soundtrack tell the story excellently in this silent film.
I wish I’d had one of these guys when I was studying for high school anatomy and physiology! While he may not be one-hundred percent anatomically correct, this marvelous skeleton by umamen comes pretty darn close (actually, I can’t imagine getting much closer with LEGO). He’s got everything that counts including knobby knees, boney phalanges and neck vertebrae, protruding clavicles, a healthy set of lungs, and even a complete digestive tract. And he appears to be extremely poseable. His rib cage even opens for a closer look!
Check out more photos on Flickr.
LEGO has announced the finalists for the third and last 2015 review round from their crowdsourcing platform, LEGO IDEAS. To qualify, each project had to garner 10,000 votes on the IDEAS website. Being a finalist means LEGO will take a serious look at turning the project into an official LEGO set. It does not, however, guarantee that the project will definitely be created into a set. Generally LEGO selects a single project to move forward to set design, though sometimes none of the finalists make the cut. The IDEAS platform has brought us a wide variety of sets, from The Big Bang Theory, to Birds, to the recently released Doctor Who set.
2015’s second review round is still pending, though an announcement is expected early this year.
LEGO’s new Nexo Knights line has launched and is finally available. We’ve already reviewed two of the medium-sized sets from this line, but some of the little sets intrigued me. Each of the named characters has an Ultimate version, available as an individually boxed set for $10 USD. Part counts range between 65 and 101. Six characters are available now, and at least three more are in the pipeline.
I decided to start with 70331 Ultimate Macy and 70332 Ultimate Aaron.
Click here to read the full review!
What the 2010 movie sequel TRON: Legacy lacked in terms of story, character development, and avoiding the Uncanny Valley, it more than made up for visually – thanks to the design sense of architecturally-trained director Joseph Kosinski. And while we have seen plenty of LEGO interpretations of the iconic vehicles and characters from both TRON movies, Joe Perez has created the most curve-licious LEGO light cycle to date, at a scale I would never have imagined possible. Breathtaking…
Amazon.com has just discounted the January 2016 assortment of LEGO Dimensions Fun Packs from $15 to $7.50, or 50% off. Pick them up now if you haven’t preordered them already (and the discount should also apply even if you have, thanks to their pre-order price guarantee). Fun Packs work on all platforms.
The Back to the Future Doc Brown Fun Pack includes Doc Brown and a Time Traveling Train from Back to the Future III.
Click through to see more LEGO Dimensions deals
OK, so Disney’s Zootopia isn’t out yet, but the trailer is hilarious and makes this movie a must-see for me. Jordan Schwartz, a fan of all things Disney, gone ahead and made a fantastic sculpt of Nick Wilde, one of the film’s new protagonists, and it looks spot on. The sly look Nick is giving us is too perfect.
You never know where you’re going to find your inspiration. How about your favorite manufacturer of MIDI controlers? Yep, perig perig devoted his latest spacecraft model to Livid Instruments – a small company which produces computer music equipment. We can only guess how exactly the overall design was influenced by the author’s musical experince, but the result is gorgeous as usual. The color scheme is what impressed me the most; together blue and olive pieces work miracles.
