PCHLUG’s 101 Challenge is quickly approaching their July 31st cut-off date! Make sure you submit your block-buster themed entry to their Flickr group by July 31st.
Prizes include fantastic custom trophies built by PCHLUG’s members!
For complete rules, click here!
Comic-Con was crowded. The biggest pop culture celebration in the world happened in San Diego from July 20 to 24. Over 125,000 crashed my Downtown where I work and eat. Infernal interlopers. Seriously, it was great hectic fun as always. It’s nice to live in the city where there’s an annual shopping, people watching and pop culture extravaganza of epic proportions.
I wasn’t lucky enough to get 4 day passes with preview night or scoop everyone on the biggest LEGO related news from Comic-Con, but others in the LEGO and Comics fan worlds were on it, and we were able to pass it on to you last week: LEGO negotiated DC and Marvel Comics licenses. DC sets are scheduled for set releases in January 2012 and Marvel in summer of 2012.
I went back on Sunday and got some slightly better pictures of prototype minifigures of Wonder Woman (with very invisible plane), Super Man, Hulk, Batman, Cat Woman, Poison Ivy, Thor, Iron Man and Wolverine.
There was also a display with four Hero Factory tie in figures: Green Lantern, Batman (no, I don’t know what’s attached to his back), Iron Man and The Hulk.
Both the minifigs and Hero Factory characters are official, but keep in mind they’re prototypes so they’re likely to be a bit rough and have changes before final release.
Unfortunately, the only LEGO panel this year was a Star Wars panel on Friday morning, which I missed. D’oh!
The other great highlight is running into all kinds of people. People in costumes, friends and even friends in costume. The only LEGO related costume I saw this year was a sexy red number sported by Michael “Bruno” Todd, an excellent human being, cat rescuer and force of nature. He dressed up just like an extremely rare vintage LEGO promotional figure that he somehow managed to snag late last year. Really, he looks just like the doll.
I was also amused by a woman dressed as Poison Ivy standing right next minfig Poison Ivy. My wife also dragged me over the LEGO free build area to see a strong contender for my personal Cutest Hobbit Child Dressed as Yoda Prize. Very prestigious.
Another great highlight of at Comic-Con is all the inspiration for LEGO building. Several weeks ago I searched all over the internet to find good concept art for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon and found some good stuff, but nobody quite had what I was looking for. It was a pleasant surprise to run across Robh Ruppel’s book, Aspect Ratio, and the great concept art sketches on his website. Not too militarized, not too idealized. Hit my personal sweet spot.
That’s it. Great weekend of geeky frolicking.
TR Brownridge (.Tromas) is organising a starfighter contest based on Maschinen Krieger (MaK). Since my love of MaK is far from secret I encourage everyone to give it a go.
To get to the important details first: it runs from August 1, 2011 – October 1, 2011 in the Starfighters Group so head over there to play.
I’ve copied the rules and prizes appears below to get you inspired.
The RULES are pretty simple:
- Make it look like it belongs in the MaK universe
- Must be a starfighter (same rules as the group: no frigates, corvettes etc.)
- Must be mini-fig scale. It doesn’t have to have a pilot (a lot the Strahl units are autonomous), but it does have to be to that scale
- Custom stickers/parts, clones brands etc are all permitted (MaK is after all, all about kit-bashing)
- Must be a new design
- 2 entries per person (in case anyone wants to do both a Merc & Strahl unit :)
- Submit a single photo of the model to the contest thread in the Starfighters Group
- Contest Timeline is August 1, 2011 to October 1, 2011 (I want to give you all lots of time to get creative)
PRIZES:
Brick-A-Thon has generously helped me out with the prize money, so I am happy to say that the amounts are higher than what I was initially planning:
- 1st Place – $75.00 Bricklink Coupon
- 2nd Place – $50.00 Bricklink Coupon
- 3rd Place – $25.00 Bricklink Coupon
All entries will be judged by myself, Peter (peterlmorris) and Tim (gambort). Once the winners have been decided, I will notify Brick-A-Thon and they will apply the coupons to your Bricklink account.
tbone_tbl just finished this rendition of the iconic ship “Serenity” from Firefly and it’s gorgeous! I love that show. Joss Whedon is my master.
Dylan Denton made this. It’s awesome and red. I will only distract you from looking at the picture so I’ll be quiet now.
George Panteleon’s piranhas may not actually be eating the guests but they look like they are capable of it. There is a lot to love in this viciously fishy build. This is one of those creations that makes me want to build it myself. I think I need some hanging about my desk to keep pesky co-workers away.
Karwik’s chopper is a little beauty. It embodies the main element of a good build: Simplicity. It has clever parts use but doesn’t overdo it. All too often builders keep tacking bits onto a build and don’t know when to stop. Karwik does and it shows.
The summer 2011 LEGO Star Wars sets continue to arrive at the LEGO Store online. As much as I appreciate the cool vehicles in the Star Wars universe, it’s nice to see LEGO release playsets occasionally, like the new 7879 Hoth Echo Base.
It’ll set you back 90 bucks, but the base contains a Tauntaun and eight minifigs, including R-3PO the red protocol droid, 2-1B medical droid, and a Bacta tank Luke. (Release news via FBTB.)
Also at $90, I’m personally more impressed with the revamped 7962 Anakin Skywalker and Sebulba’s Podracers, which FBTB reviewed in detail recently.
Okay, so this cassette player by Angus MacLane may not actually play your favorite 80’s tunes, but it’s equally portable and no less nostalgic.
The pressed switch is a nice touch.
Raysor Beam enters the NPU fray with this sculpture of an alien mechanic. Call him awesome, but just don’t call him “four eyes”.
The Brothers Brick turns six years old today! In my write-up last year, we focused on changes over the previous 5 years across the LEGO fan community. Today, let’s take a look at these past twelve months here on this blog.
The main theme here on The Brothers Brick this past year for many of our contributors (myself included) has, unfortunately, been that commitments to work and family have sometimes taken priority over blogging. This is fairly self-evident in the frequency with which we’ve updated the blog. Feedback we’ve gotten from readers reveals several assumptions I’d like to clear up, in fairness both to you our readers and to TBB contributors.
I’m often shocked when I talk to TBB readers in person to learn that they assume running TBB is a full-time “day” job for me and the rest of our contributors. I get a warm glow knowing that we do a professional enough job to make people think that, but it’s not, really. I created The Brothers Brick six years ago today because I love sharing my passion for LEGO bricks, and all our contributors do so because they share this vision. We have a diverse group of contributors who all have day jobs — a call center trainer, a research physicist, a lawyer, an oil refinery operator, a probation officer, a medical student, and a technical publications manager. It’s wonderful to know that many of you have come to rely on us for your daily LEGO fix, but we need all our loyal readers to understand that there will be an inevitable ebb and flow to the rhythm of our lives and to the corresponding rhythm reflected here on the blog. Real life always takes priority, so we’ll continue to blog what we like, whenever we can.
It’s also surprising when people assume we rake in so much money from advertising that all seven of us are employed by the blog (or, somehow, by The LEGO Group). The advertising is there to pay the bills, and whatever’s left over we “reinvest” back into the LEGO fan community we love so much. For example, last year, TBB covered travel and hotel expenses for several LEGO fans who might not have been able to attend BrickCon otherwise. This all amounts to a few thousand dollars, not hundreds of thousands — enough to keep The Brothers Brick operating independently while giving back to the community, but neither I nor the other TBB contributors pocket a single penny ourselves.
All of this isn’t to say that The Brothers Brick is going in a direction we all don’t want it to go — certainly not! We want to make sure TBB can continue giving back in a variety of other ways, even if we can’t fly people to conventions every year. We’ve also figured out several ways to maintain a consistent level of new posts for all of you out there without adversely affecting our non-LEGO lives, and we hope you’ve noticed an improvement in the front page’s freshness over the last few weeks.
As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome!
As always, here are some stats for this past year.
Central Africa, Central Asia, North Korea, and Svalbard continue to hold out.
The top 30 countries from which people visit The Brothers Brick didn’t change at all, though several did change places. Visits from Japan fell over 7%, moving from 11th to 14th place. Visits from Russia rose a whopping 91%, moving from 28th to 21st place. Similarly, Brazil moved from 21st to 17th, up 47%.
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Like last year, search engine keywords seem to be mostly about news items, while more and more of our traffic comes from fellow LEGO sites rather than sites outside the LEGO fan community.
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
The LEGO creations we feature here every day took center stage in most of our highest-traffic posts, with the usual news items interspersed — dominated this past year by the release of the Collectible MInifigures.
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
Dillon (-Pendragon-) presents a LEGO model with a fresh theme that I can’t put my finger on. The swamp setting and the dark color accents on the building are unusually pleasing, even though the subject portrays decay and a bit of chaos. Despite the absence of action, there seems to be an imminent danger lurking in the water.
