We know you all just *loved* the Zeus vs Thor brick film we recently featured, by the potty-mouthed YouTubers Epic Rap Battles of History. Well, like a bad penny, they’re back! This time providing a rap segment for this irreverent (PG rated) take on the The LEGO Movie by Honest Trailers.
[WARNING: Contains satire]
Conveying action in a microscale LEGO scene is impossible unless it’s action on an epic scale. Pascal Schmidt demonstrates this perfectly with his model of a volcano raining fiery death on what I assume is some poorly-situated Roman era town. Note the NPU (“nice part usage”) of white ray guns in the pyroclastic cloud.
For some reason this reminded me of a build from last year that we kinda overlooked, a microscale tornado by Jimmy Fortel, created during a round of Iron Builder, and featuring some more NPU (the seed part for the contest was Mixel ball and socket joints).
Hello again, Dearest Readers!
I had a strange experience this last weekend. I had the honor of attending a rather unusual tradition that is practiced in the United States. It was called “Super Bowl”. Josh had a party at his house and invited me to come over. I was very excited to see how big this super-bowl was and what sorts of yummy things it held. Come to find out there is no actual “bowl”. There is a lot of food involved but no bowl. What’s up with that?
So, I was the first guest to show up. Apparently the first one to arrive gets to wash the host’s cars. I’ll remember that for the future as no one else had to wash anything. Anyway, the rest of the evening seemed to involve watching some guys on TV fight over an inflated pigskin. I’m not sure why they were fighting over it, as no one got to eat it when it was all over. But the food was good (Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno poppers, FTW!) and I learned enough to yell at the TV when everyone else was. I’d go again next year, but I’ll try to be fashionably late.
On to your questions!
Why do so many people think that 3rd party items are cool but consider clone bricks to be taboo?
This is a great question and the answers are highly subjective. For those how don’t know, 3rd Party items are made by LEGO fans and intended to complement LEGO. Clone bricks are elements made by companies that compete with LEGO.
In general, 3rd Party Items are intended to fill a niche that LEGO is not supplying. For example, LEGO has stated that they will not make modern weaponry. Several small companies, owned by LEGO fans, have attempted to fill that void. 3rd party manufacturers make a large variety of items that are intended to work with or replace certain LEGO elements but are not meant to compete with or replace LEGO as a whole. The quality tends to be high, though it does vary. Fans of the various 3rd party companies tend to be very vocal and enthusiastic.
Clone Bricks are made by companies that are trying to compete with and replace LEGO itself. They make versions of the exact pieces that LEGO already makes and are trying to convince people to buy their products rather than LEGO. The quality tends to be lower than LEGO, but there are exceptions. The names of clone brick companies are often used as substitute expletives.
There are LEGO fans who won’t touch either 3rd party items or clone brick. There are other builders who will use anything and there is a wide range of people in between. The general consensus seems to be that 3rd party items are okay because they are made by fans of LEGO and are meant to add to LEGO. Along similar lines, clone bricks are bad because they are intended to compete with and/or replace LEGO.
In all honesty, there are problems with the logic of any of positions. It all comes down to personal preference. For the most part, they all taste the same. Arguing over it is silly.
The Homeworld series of games featured some truly fantastic space ship designs, providing inspiration for tons of Lego space ships, but I’ve never seen anyone attempt to render a copy of this particular ship before now. De_chef has built a micro scale version of the epic Bentusi harbor ship from the games. As you can see above, he’s incorporated lights, and delivered photos that really show off the shape and illumination. Beyond that, he also built a series of smaller ships to accompany it in display, really bringing the scale to the forefront.
While Mario may be one of Nintendo’s most enduring videogame characters, Kirby has been around almost as long. And this lovable ball of fun has some pretty cool powers too, like inhaling his enemies to steal their abilities, and not being a ridiculous cultural stereotype. Heck, he even had his own cartoon show once …suck on that Mario!
Fun fact #1: During development of the first Dream Land game in 1992, Kirkby was intended merely as a simple placeholder graphic for the real character, but the designers loved him so much they used him in the final game. Fun fact #2: This LEGO version of Kirby by Swan Dutchman uses the Bram Sphere technique, which is anything but simple.
For its Season 4 bout between the Greek god Zeus and the Norse god Thor, the hugely popular YouTube channel Epic Rap Battles of History turned to Forrest Whaley and his team of stop-motion animators to give it the LEGO treatment. And the result is hilarious! Make sure to check out the entertaining behind the scenes video too.
[WARNING: Some profanity]
To boldly go to space – the final frontier – and prosper, my friend.
My mangled Star Trek quotes aside, this magnificent Enterprise model comes to us from Chris Melby. Chris has done a fantastic job with the circular disk of this iconic ship, managing to make it entirely studless. Don’t be deceived, though, this is actually a huge model at over 5 feet in length.
We tend to focus on LEGO system on this blog, in part because most of us are not really into the aesthetics of Technic models. However, as the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider by Jeroen Ottens shows, sometimes a clever combination of curved Technic panels and soft axles can be a really effective way of capturing the shape of a voluptuous car body.
The Italian tricolore striping also adds to the model’s visual appeal.
The printed micro-figs introduced with LEGO’s new SHIELD Helicarrier set seem to be generally well received by fans. Our Facebook poll suggests 2 out of 3 of you are in favor of them! So I expect before too long we’ll see people customizing them. Customization of classic mini-figs is nothing new, but customization of the newer Friends mini-dolls is way less common….
And that’s a shame, because I for one find them more aesthetically pleasing. If LEGO could just fix their rather limited range of motion, I think it’d be great to see them used in future Movie or TV based LEGO themes. Flickr user JustJon obviously agrees, and has been repainting one Friends fig every week along those very lines:
Pictured above, as if they needed any introduction: Luke Skywalker; Sailor Moon; Ghostbuster; Deadpool; Catniss Everdeen; Red Sonja.
UPDATE: The creator just pointed out that he previously created an entire set of superhero Friends customs, which are equally awesome and can be seen here.
A lot of people start their builds by fiddling around with a few pieces until they find an interesting-looking combination. This then becomes the starting point for a cool new mecha or spaceship. That’s not how I do things. For most of my models, I start by planning, followed by a lot of procrastination and getting side-tracked into building other (easier) things and then some more planning, lather, rinse, repeat. Once I start putting parts together things move quickly, but the planning process can take several weeks or, in the case of Airwolf, as long as two years.
In the eighties, starting with Knight Rider, there were several shows that featured some sort of hi-tech vehicle as a central plot device or even as a character. Both Blue Thunder and Airwolf featured helicopters, but Airwolf was definitely the better show. It had one of the best theme-tunes in the history of television and, though they now appear terribly dated, the plots were a bit darker and more interesting than in most of the other shows, often dealing with espionage and the Cold War. Furthermore, the helicopter itself was based on the super-sleek Bell 222 and was armed to the teeth, with retractable guns and a ventral missile launcher.
The reason why the process took so long is that I don’t start building until I have convinced myself that I can build the model to a suitably high standard, which in this case meant building that sleek shape and those cool retractable weapons. What finally sealed the deal was finishing Blue Thunder, the realisation that I could replicate the shape using various new curved parts and by hinging the cockpit windows, as well as a video I saw of the missile launcher retracting on an RC model.
Fans have long speculated that a LEGO Avengers Helicarrier was in the works, and today LEGO officially confirmed those rumors. The new set, 76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier, is a gigantic microscale ship which rings in just shy of 3 feet in length. This is the first time LEGO has used tiny microscale figures (originally designed to be trophies) as characters in a playset. The set also comes with 5 regularly-sized minifigures, and can be motorized using LEGO Power Functions (not included). It will be available from LEGO Shop@Home in March.
You can see all of the photos of the Helicarrier on the official Brothers-Brick flickr account. Here’s the press release from LEGO, along with the designer video:
76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier
Ages 16+
2,996 pieces.US $349.99
CA $399.99
DE 349.99€
UK £269.99
DK 2999.00 DKK*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.
Build and display the huge SHIELD Helicarrier!
Take on the challenge of building this awesome LEGO® model of The SHIELD Helicarrier. Construct the flying aircraft carrier with 2 runways, microscale Quinjets, fighter jets and ground support vehicles. The set also comes with many of your favorite LEGO Marvel Super Heroes minifigures, plus 12 microfigures to display on deck and within the highly detailed interior. Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill.• Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill, plus an iconic SHIELD eagle stand to display them on
• Features 3 microscale Quinjets, 3 fighter jets, a gasoline truck, 2 forklift trucks, 2 runways, 4 road blockades, armored exterior with translucent elements, detailed interior, plus 12 microfigures (Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Captain America, Iron Man and 8 SHIELD agents)
• Also includes a detailed runway
• Weapons include Hawkeye’s bow, Black Widow’s gun and Captain America’s shield
• SHIELD Agent Maria Hill minifigure is new for spring 2015!
• Includes a plaque with facts about The SHIELD Helicarrier
• Add lights and spinning rotors to the Helicarrier with the 88000, 8883 and 8870 LEGO® Power Functions sets (sold separately)
• Rotors can also be turned manually
• Includes a display stand
• Helicarrier measures over 11” (29cm) high, 31” (80cm) long and 17” (45cm) wide
• Each Quinjet measures over 1” (3cm) high, 2” (7cm) long and 2” (7cm) wide
• Minifigure stand measures over 4” (12cm) high, and 2” (6cm deep) and 6” (16cm wide)
As the current Iron Builder contest nears its conclusion, both teams continue to churn out amazing builds. But after many rounds of being cut to length for one purpose or another, the ribbed flex-tube seed parts seem to be getting progressively shorter and shorter. That doesn’t seem to be hampering their efforts though, judging by these two wonderful scenes by Tyler Clites:
Long-in-the-tooth readers might even notice that the old lady in the scene above is actually a reprise of a character that Tyler built for a previous Iron Builder contest – right down to the use of the blue seed part from that round!
