John Hammond would no doubt approve of this Jurassic Park vignette by Combee! who makes his first appearance on TBB. This build really captures the scene by reducing it to only the most essential elements. Also, the floating Hammond-head is a little creepy and it looks to me as if he’s about to consume the baby raptor. It is probably a good thing the builder chose not to use Dr. Sattler’s face, I’m not sure that her expression can be captured with LEGO.
Yes, some Kickstarter projects are lame or overly ambitious, but here’s one that actually makes sense to me: Project Swapfig.
The man behind the project is British AFOL Drew Maughan (.SilentMode). His intention is to address the following question:
How many times have you wanted a specific minifigure, but didn’t want to buy a whole set – or spend hours feeling through packets and risk getting the wrong one? Wouldn’t it be easier to trade with someone who had the figure you want?
The (modest) funding he is asking for will go towards promoting a web site that Drew is setting up, where collectors of LEGO minifigures can trade their unwanted figures for ones they want, instead of having to use different forums all over the web or having to pay big bucks to unscrupulous sellers. Drew has already put a lot of thought and work into this project and it looks good so far. I also know him to be a stand-up guy. I heartily recommend that minifig-lovers among you (you know who you are) check out the project and support it. The funding deadline is the 16th of April.
David Frank (AKA Fraslund) has created an outstanding LEGO rendition of that classic toy, Castle Grayskull, from the 80s television show, Masters of the Universe. David’s version is drop-dead gorgeous. He was able to perfectly capture the iconic gate and drawbridge, as well as the lesser known details around the sides and rear. David definitely has the power!
Check out the rest of the pictures. They are definitely worth it.
Ryan McNaught (TheBrickMan) takes a break from building giant helecopters to bring you his microscale take on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The model was built for a LEGO retail store display and I’m guessing the employees are going to get tired of explaining to customers that it isn’t an official set.
eldeem brings you a diorama inspired by the 1942 painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. The scene is the culminating installment of the builder’s “Hawks in the Night” series, which features some very effective camera work.
If you’re a fan of the painting, you might have missed Alex Eylar’s Nighthawks of the Living Dead, featured on this august blog back in 2010.
LUGPol’s Air Marshall mrutek returns to TBB with a smoothed out warbird from WW2. This time mrutek sets his sights on the workhorse of the Russian air force, the Yak-1. Although the design was Russian, the Yakovlev 1 was also used by the Lotnictwo Wojska Polskiego (Air Force of the Polish Army). Enjoy today’s offering of military history.
Spencer Rezkalla (Spencer R) is a master of micro-scale skyscrapers, and his models have been featured on TBB many times. That does not stop me from calling your attention to his latest project, however. The US may be known for cities full of skyscrapers, such as Chicago and New York, but nowadays most such buildings are being constructed in Asia and Spencer has now turned his attention to China, building the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Jin Mao Tower.
The subtle curve and the way the façades intersect on the Shanghai Financial Tower is particularly noteworthy. A third skyscraper, called the Shanghai Tower, is currently under construction next to these two and is due for completion in 2014. As you can see from the picture above, Spencer has already saved a spot for it.
Last month, we announced that each month we’ll be featuring a new photo by one of our readers on Facebook and Twitter. After TR kindly arranged everything, I had the privilege of picking the first month’s cover photo winners.
For Facebook, it only seemed fitting that I should pick a photo of the Cybercity collaborative build that RoninLUG & friends (led by Andrew Lee) put on for Bricks by the Bay 2011:
For Twitter, I picked this fantastic helium transport by Robert H. (Robiwan_Kenobi):
I’m really pleased by just how much participation we got, with over 170 photos from 130 builders. It seemed like everybody submitted their best work this first month, and that made my job incredibly hard.
(Pssst! With so many awesome photos, here’s a tip. Remove your photos from the pool and add them again. We’ll consider them again another month.)
Since this was our first month, here are a few random observations about what worked and what didn’t:
We hope readers and builders alike enjoy this monthly challenge, and I’m looking forward to what other contributors pick next month and beyond!
Finally, if you aren’t already following us elsewhere, be sure to Like TBB on Facebook and follow TBB on Twitter.
I’m not completely sure what’s going on with fvin&yan’s latest effort, but the unfortunate fellow with the dapper hat is about to get a knife to the face! This model is simply stunning from top to bottom and features a pleasingly wide range of color. Perhaps one of our readers can help with the translation of the title and very brief accompanying text, the best I was able to come up with was “Poor included bei, also from Emperor Jing Ke Thorn”.
Mike Doyle spent over 600 hours to create this majestic fantasy cityscape called Odan. The creation depicts the peaceful contact of extraterrestrials with a race of highly spiritual humans. The diorama measures 5′ high by 6′ wide, but more impressive is its consistent quality in every corner as is characteristic of Mike’s focus on detail. We interviewed Mike about his work, which you’ll find below.
The Brothers Brick: How did you determine the visual style of this creation, since it lies half-way between fantasy and science fiction?
Mike Doyle: The visual style evolved over time along with the theme. At first, the intent was to do a piece that was of a medieval society on a spiritually awake planet. It was to be sort of LotR with meditation and the spiritual arts. I was looking at castles for inspiration at that time. You can see the first part of development in the earlier Flickr shots of this.
After creating the Sanctuary Gate (Issis Elb’ien) at the top of the falls, I realized the style of this structure was more appropriate and interesting. It has a bit of an eastern feel or Angkor Wat look. This felt more spiritual to me. So, I went back in and pushed the detail further on the things that I had created and worked to bring in some Asian influences. I also began looking at Mesoamerican structures for inspiration which I later integrated in the piece. Additionally, the theme went from a medieval culture to a space faring one which changed the look a bit.
TBB: What drew you to this style?
MD: This piece corresponds to a new point in my life where spirituality is of high concern to me. I have begun meditating and am working on astral travel. As well have been researching many phenomena that have been reported in the ancient Vedic, Vedic Sanskrit, near death experiences and more. Funny enough, this led me to research ufos which goes hand in hand to all these concepts of spirituality. Inspiration for this came from Dr. Steven Greer, founder of the Disclosure movement and CE5 (close encounters of the fifth kind) protocols for vectoring ETs to his teams’ location. The ufo research transformed the piece from a medieval culture to a spiritually and technically advanced one but still remaining squarely in the spiritual realm. So, I began integrating landing pods (made from metallic Bionical shields. I loved the look of these as they appear like floating lily pads or something organic.
Because the city is an ancient one, I had wanted the main city structure to look somewhat cobbled together as if it had evolved over time. There is little symmetry to it beyond local additions. The style also progresses a bit from the more direct interpretation of castle look on the bottom, to more unusual as you go up.
TBB: How did you plan this massive build? How does the finished product compare to what you initially imagined?
MD: There was not much planning at all beyond looking at some castle artwork. I knew I wanted a castle on a hill and an older city that would work its way up the hills. The process is an organic and intuitive one. I build for a few hours and then stare at it for a while and begin to see what should come next. It is not a totally smooth process. There are areas in the landscape where I pulled up everything and started over. I really only knew I wanted it microscale and very large. I approach each session with prayer as well which seems to help put me in a positive state of flow. I try not to think too much when I build but rather let things happen. I think planning is more like hiking up a mountain. I know basically where I want to go and simply follow a path one step at a time. I don’t know ahead of time the particulars of the trail and try to keep focused on the moment. Generally, like hiking, the path is revealed to me at each twist and turn. Eventually, I find myself at the top of the mountain. Also, if I’m honest with myself, I really stink at planning. Inevitably the process is more a natural one for me to achieve.
As far as comparison to my original vision. It is bigger than what I had originally thought it would be – that is for sure. Also, I didn’t expect it to take a technological twist. Beyond that, I didn’t have a clear picture in the beginning so it’s about what I had hoped it would be.
TBB: What was the most challenging aspect of this project?
MD: I think patience can be difficult. I had expected this only to take 3 or 4 months, but ended up being double that. Also, simply funding this is really tough. I never seem to have enough pieces or enough of the right ones. This and waiting for the orders to come in can be frustrating.
TBB: You did a Kickstarter for this creation once before, that didn’t succeed. What are you doing differently this time on your new Kickstarter project?
MD: Well, I think a few things. Firstly, I have a finished work this time around. This much better capture people’s imagination and interest, I think. In the first attempt, the piece was perhaps only 20% complete and much less impressive. This time around I’m also offering more interesting rewards. For instance, I have five buildings from the model that I have replicated for DIY kits. These kits range anywhere from 220 pieces to around 3000 pieces and include a small fine art print as well as a history of the building in context. Finally, I lowered the funding goal to a more achievable level.
TBB: What will you do with Odan now that it is finished?
MD: The piece itself is in the process of being disassembled for use in future mocs – again, it’s a money thing. As for the series, I changed the original theme from “Odan” based to “Contact” based. The Contact series is designed to promote the beauty of all intelligent life forms as extensions of our family – children under the same creative force. This broadens the whole experience to far more subject matter. I am thinking that my next work will be a representation of expanded consciousness – which will be more abstract in nature. Other pieces could range from tender ET moments – like mothers caring for their young – to contact events to other fictional pieces as Odan was. The story might include a beautiful old Dutch style image of spiritual fruits which some near death experiencers have seen in other worlds. Or perhaps future mocs will simply cover other exotic ET locals. I hope to be interviewing contactees to see what worlds they have seen in their expanded consciousness.
TBB: We noticed that your upcoming publication called Beautiful LEGO features Odan on its cover, can you tell us more about what’s in the book?
MD: The book is a celebration of all the beautiful work I see on the web. It includes work form about 80 designers and has around 380 different pictures of mocs. The book has been treated like a fine art book – which I think is new to LEGO themed books. Pages will have usually 1 or 2 images with a good deal of white space and a simple credit on the bottom. The idea is to elevate building to more of an art level. While many of these mocsmight be familiar to the readers, I have retouched most the pieces – color balanceing and adding complementary backgrounds to freshen the pieces up. To me, many of the mocs seem new simply because the presentation is so much better.
Issue 16 of HispaBrick Magazine is out now just in time for the 5th anniversary of the magazine. Here are just some of the articles you will find in the free download:
Well best to wrap-up Marchikoma with a bang. Curtis Collins (curtydc), founder of the Think Tank group, creates in my opinion the most unique and memorable Think Tank of the month. Between the utilitarian style and the seemingly working mechanics, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this thing actually start walking around. And me being a huge fan of bright hits of colour, this is just right up my alley.
Curtis said that while building this, he had one of my favourite pieces of robot concept art sitting close by…Fausto De Martini’s brilliant Nautillus Submersible Mech. Oddly enough I didn’t pick up on it intially, but now that it was pointed out, I can’t believe I missed the reference.
For further views, have a click through Curtis’ photostream