Most readers probably know by now that my favorite anime director is Hayao Miyazaki. It should be no surprise that I’ll pretty much blog anything Miyazaki-related.
First up, here’s pero’s small round Totoro, or “Totoroll”:
Next, Poizunn-05’s Cat Bus:
Finally, no post of My Neighbor Totoro LEGO creations would be complete without Todd Kubo’s ginormous Totoro:
Search Brickshelf and discover even more!
First, the video:
Dave DeGobbi of Burnaby, B.C., Canada attended NWBrickCon 2006 over this past weekend, and stole the show (well, at least the steampunk section) with his Goliath airship:
Naturally, the Goliath won the Best Steampunk prize for the show! Inspired by my favorite movie of all time, Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the airship includes many cool features:
Dave says it took him about eighty hours to build, based on three years of parts collecting. The movement is powered by seven regular LEGO motors and one micro-motor. He estimates that Goliath includes over 7000 LEGO elements, which he spent more than $1000 CDN to purchase. (Multiple Yoda sets on clearance helped with the tan.)
Those of you who transport large LEGO creations may also be interested to learn that Dave included a 3/4″ x 1 1/4″ x 4′ Brazilian cherry beam in the Goliath, which makes it strong enough to survive long trips. As an added bonus, it makes the airship strong enough to hang from the ceiling. Here’s a picture of the DUPLO cradle and straps he uses to secure the Goliath:
Be sure to check out the full photoset on Flickr for lots of detailed shots. Dave’s awesome airship has been showing up in lots of Flickr photostreams, so you might see some new details in other people’s photos as well. Thanks for sharing this info and sending me the video, Dave!
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Try as I might, I can’t think of a better way to build Princess Mononoke minifigs than the way Moko did. With San and Ashitaka out of our reach, the rest of us mere mortals are stuck building minor characters, as Andrew Horvatits does:
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Horace Cheng continues his series of creations inspired by Hayao Miyazaki movies with princess Nausicaä’s “mehve” (or “möwe,” which means “seagull” in German), from the 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (click for gallery):
Horace also puts a beast from Star Wars to good use as a “bird-horse”:
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Horace Cheng puts his Laputa minifigs and flappters to excellent use in his first vignette (via VignetteBricks):
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Inspired by anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Horace Cheng presents a great set of “flappters” with excellent minifig passengers:
Horace has a fleet of four flappters, so be sure to check out the gallery to see them flying in formation!
And here’s the crew of the air-pirate zeppelin Tigermoth (inspiration for all steampunk airships since):
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I’ve been subscribed to Japanese builder Ken Takeuchi’s blog for some time. (Ken goes by “Ken-Tucky” online.) However, it wasn’t until Soren Roberts mentioned Ken’s creations as a source of inspiration for his recent “Heavy Missile Cruiser” (Blocklog post) that I took the time to explore Ken’s Web site, LEGO Works.
Since 1998, Ken has been posting fantastic LEGO creations. (And it’s interesting to see his building style evolve over the last eight years — integrating newly available parts and new building techniques.) With an English version of his LEGO pages, exploring his site is well worth your time. To whet your appetite, I’d like to introduce a few of my personal favorites.
One of dozens of micro-scale vehicles in his “L.E.G.O Force,” here’s an awesome “Armed Starfighter Carrier”:
Demonstrating that Ken’s not just a Spacer, here’s the bathouse building from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away:
A whole fleet of micro-scale World War II planes:
A camel Ken built while participating in the LEGO King Championship TV show:
Moko has been updating his minifigs fairly regularly, and I’ve missed a couple, so here’s a nice batch of anime-themed minifigs.
From director Hayao Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke, first up we have Ashitaka and San:
And some soldiers from the same film:
Next, a minifig dressed as Gundam:
Finally, a character from Sailer Moon (sorry, I have no knowledge of the show whatsoever):
My favorite anime director by far is Hayao Miyazaki. Although my favorite movie is Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (「風の谷のナウシカ」), I’ve always enjoyed Laputa: Castle in the Sky (「天空の城ラピュタ」). With my increasing collection of US-released Miyazaki DVDs, I thought I’d try my hand at some minifigs.
From left to right, Muska, Uncle Pom, Pazu, Sheeta, and a couple of air pirates.
Watch this blog for more Miyazaki minifigs soon!
I highlighted Brickshelf user comic’s Robonoid MOC a couple weeks ago, promising to post (must…resist…cross-linking!) about his Star Wars stop-motion movies. Before I had a chance to do so, he posted some really cool creations based on my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie (and lengthy comic book saga), Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.
First up, the fighter/gunship from the city of Pejite:
Admittedly, the gunship is dark red in the movie, but the shape is great! Nice use of the canopy from Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter.
Second, the powered glider Mehve that Nausicaa herself flies:
I like the little Ohmu in the fourth image in the gallery, as well as comic’s use of the submarine bubble as the Ohmu’s eye that Nausicaa gets from the forest. My only suggestion would be to use this torso for Nausicaa instead of the plain blue one. But maybe the plain blue works — I’ve never entirely liked the Nausicaa minifigs I’ve made myself…
Overall, great job!
Brickshelf user comic has posted a robot walker based on Hayao Miyazaki’s first film, Conan, the Boy of the Future:
Of course, Robonoid also looks a lot like “Steve” the ride-pod from Dark Cloud 2 for the PS2. I’d love to make a version of this that looks more like Steve and put an improved version of my Maximilian minifig in it.
Incidentally, “comic” also runs a blog called LEGO INC where (as “Ichigou”) he regularly posts stop-motion LEGO Star Wars movies. Cool stuff — and a blog I’ll be highlighting over on Pan-Pacific Bricks soon. ;-)