I’m going to let this picture by Todd Wilder speak for itself. I need to go lay down because it’s making my head spin. If this could actually be built this way, I would need several of them. Too cool.
You can see the actual creation here. While it is cool, I think it is pretty wild how the kaleidoscope effect changes it so much.
You should check out his KaLEGOscope set. There are some other rather trippy things in there.
I grew up watching bits and pieces of 「宇宙戦艦ヤマト」(Space Battleship Yamato) at friends’ houses back in Japan, but I have to admit that my fascination with the series today is largely due to the fleet of ships rather than for any sense of personal nostalgia. I’m a sucker for LEGO renditions of the titular ship, and this version by Mark Rodrigues doesn’t disappoint.
Mark’s 1/250 scale Yamato took 4 months to build and represents his return to the LEGO hobby after a 4-year hiatus. I’d say the result was well worth the wait. The vessel is 45″ long and includes rotating turrets and opening wings.
Via Legobloggen.
I have no idea how I missed this. This sort of build is right up my alley, if you will. According to Michal Herbolt, the keeper of the lost chronicle secret (Archibald) was kidnapped and tortured for information.
The build is just beautiful. The different colored plates really add to the cobbled stone look, and the wood/stone combination on the main house really just works. Underneath, too, there is a rather unpleasant (but well built!) surprise.
Check out the rest of the flickr gallery!
Minifigures need a place to get their goods, and Alex‘s Market District is really filling that niche. This creation is just packed with stories and detail!
Check out this overall-shot; the produce, the animals, and the buildings just seem to flow naturally. I particularly like the building in the back corner, and the detail on the door!
There is just too much good stuff to list it all out here. I encourage you to check out some of the fantastic little details that are worked into this creation!
via Legobloggen
I’m not sure exactly what the bits of Shannon Sproule’s (Shannon Ocean) tank do but I sure do love the lines of it.
Our hope for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon 2011 is that the contributors will be free to create their vision of what kind of community would develop from a group of crash survivors isolated for a generation, and how their reconnection with other space travelers would play out.
This is 400 years in the future, so we’d love to see where both imagination and practicality go:
You name it, go to town with it. There’s definitely a place for elements of sci-fi, ecopunk, space, cyberpunk and frontier themes.
That being said, it does help to provide a little bit of a framework so people can know how to contribute to the overall collaboration, so we’re laying out a few guidelines, many of which are the result of discussions among TBB contributors and in the Flickr planning group.
Anchor piece: Brandon Bannerman’s crashed ship, The Howland, will be 96×96 studs and fairly tall. Check out his great accompanying backstory.
Scale and life forms: Minifig scale, with yellow headed minifigs as the main survivor group, though non-human and brick built species (sentient or not, mega or not) are welcome to join in the fun. Animals and plants from Earth, native species, and centuries of genetic modification would be pretty cool.
New Howland: The community of New Howland had a rough few years of scavenging at the beginning, but figured out a way to sustain itself for the long haul because the survivors didn’t have hope of moving on to a new planet. They developed some civil institutions, commerce and law enforcement.
The newer arrivals could include elements of an interplanetary government and even private corporate security, but we’re not going for a space ware here though the layout is likely to reflect the contrast between the tightly knit sustainable survivor community and all the new people and interests pouring into the place.
It’s the very mix of all these styles that will make the display interesting!
Vehicle/building color palette: The main survivor group would have scavenged from the crashed ship, which will be have mainly white hull sections and gray/bley machinery. They would have eventually started to build other sorts of structures as time passed.
The Green Wall from Stephanie Brothers on Vimeo.
The later arrivals will bring either a bit more rag tag aesthetic or might even have a corporate look.
Landscape color palette: The main planet surface will be tan with a Mediterranean or moderately arid climate. Modules that include water features, stone outcroppings, hills, mountains or forests will be fine just as long as the builder figures out some way to transition back to the rest of the display at the edges of their sections.
Modules: For the main part of the display we’ll be using a base plate plus one brick standard (BP+1B) in 32×32 stud sections. The little bit of height will hopefully allow for people to work in little depressions, gullies, plowed fields or hillocks. Simple tan base plates for countryside and farmland or gray base plates for the newly established spaceport part of town will be workable. Smaller or larger modules in multiples of 16 studs (e.g.: street, aqueduct, landing pad) will be okay and even helpful in breaking up the 32×32 grid pattern.
Display size: Width we won’t know until much later, but depth will be about six or seven 32×32 modules, just in case someone is thinking about building a stream or mountain range across the display. We’d even be open to cliff dwellings, underwater stuff or hill and building cutaways that go to (or even over) the edge of the tables.
Build a Community, play well, and ask yourself how you would sustain a community in a new land.
If you have any questions or ideas please participate in our Flickr planning group or leave comments right here.
Vincent Cheung’s (fvin&yan) sculpture of the ballroom scene from Beauty and the Beast is flourishing with details. This was built for Ani-Com Hong Kong and made its way into the top 12 entries, which you should definitely check out.
Croatian LEGO fan Matija Grguric has been on a Wild West building spree lately. His most recent diorama captured the look of the American West better than any American builder has (to my knowledge), complete with the banded colors of the Badlands.
Matija is building all of his Western creations — from the Black Cat Saloon to Market Street — for an upcoming Club Kockice exhibit.
That little mesa is worth a closer look:
One of my dearest memories of the summer in 1994 that I spent working on an archaeological dig in Jordan was a weekend trip to Petra. We arrived from Amman late in the evening, but several of my fellow archaeology students couldn’t wait until morning to see the amazing structures carved from the sandstone 2000 years ago, so we snuck across wadi after wadi, avoiding the main paths. Once past the guard posts, we walked through the narrow gorge known as al-Siq — pitch black at night — until the passage opened in front of us to reveal Al Kazhneh, lit only by starlight.
ArzLan built his LEGO version of the Treasury for the Hong Kong Animation Festival, and features Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade visit to this UNESCO Heritage site.
LEGOLAND California Master Model Maker Ryan Ziegelbauer built a mosaic of a Junior Model Maker contest winner, which he captured in this time-lapse video.
Now that you’ve watched it once, watch the video again for all the funny animations in the background, including an homage to a recent blastoff into space.
No clever title for this post, just a fascinating combination of space and foliage in this creation. The builder, Shamisenfred, has provided an explanation as to how a tree was engineered to grow in space. I’m more concerned with how cool this looks. The organic shapes of the tree and the structures built into them contrast quite nicely with the repeated architectural forms of the “pot.” Similarly, the contrast of the clean white engineered portions really make the colors of the tree pop out.
Space Shuttle Atlantis blasted off on the final mission of this 30-year-old program yesterday, ushering in a very different era for NASA and the American human space flight program. When LEGO set 10213 went out of stock earlier this year, it seemed like the end of the line for this unique set, too. Thankfully, LEGO was just re-engineering the model for re-release as 10231 Shuttle Expedition (note the inverted set number).
Via FBTB, where they have complete details on the changes.
The LEGO Shop online is also having a special deal through this next week, with free shipping on all orders of $75 or more, with a free Kingdoms set thrown in to sweeten the deal. In case you missed it, all the summer sets are out, too.
Happy shopping, and remember that whether you buy online through FBTB, Brickset, The Brothers Brick, or whatever other LEGO fan site you visit regularly, buying your LEGO through one of these sites online helps keep the lights on. Thanks!