This blog is taking a few days off for this year's LEGOPalooza event. We have quite a few great models there, though, if you can make it to Chapel Hill, NC, this weekend. Let's just say for now that that rumored Green Grocer set is real and that I've held it in my hands. If you think that the front looks good, you should see the interiors and the fire escape.
Details: Wait, don't skip this one, it's NOT the set from the early 90's! At first glance, this model looks like one of the older Pirate Ships, and also a lot like the Imperial Flagship set. This isn't, though, and looking at the details makes that abundantly clear. This original model includes a full interior and hinged walls that allow you to look inside of it. A wide variety of parts were used in this model that weren't widely available when sets of this color scheme were available. Note the brown woodtones used to connect the sails, the lions on the back of the ship, and the fencing used on the balcony. Another useful feature is actual stairs and ladders for the minifigures (the official Pirates sets always seem to expect the people to get places by magic). I'm pretty sure this is the ship you want to be on when the head of the Armada tells you to travel to the new world. Those swiveling cannons ought to be able to protect you from the pirates.
Details: This LUGNET posting and the links within it are full of pictures from last year's LEGOPalooza event in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This year's event is this upcoming weekend, on February 2nd and 3rd. Details about this year's event are up at the Morehead Planetarium website. I have made plans to attend and should have pictures up here later this month. The Harry Potter and Star Wars displays from last year will be back and bigger than ever, and Joe Meno's popular LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT display is returning this year as well.
Details: This startling motorized model is another steampunk Star Wars vehicle. FBTB is running a contest to build Star Wars themed Steampunk models out of LEGO® bricks. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a few more excellent entries from that appear here, but I'd be surprised if we see more motorized ones. Or more Millennium Falcons - it's not easy to build something on this scale with these sparse retro stylings. There are some great details and photos here, but make sure you get a chance to see the video of the propellers in motion.
Details: Here is the baseball stadium Miller Park. The builder tried a few different versions of this model and is now preparing the one pictured here for the TrainTime train show on March 1st and 2nd, 2008. The show is free and open to the public if you'd like to see this model in person. Both the show and the original stadium are located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There's a ton of into on the various versions of this model at the site above.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick. LEGO has a press release about the history of the brick up in celebration. Google has a special logo it honor of it (screenshot). I haven't heard anything about them releasing any sort of anniversary bucket (Usually LEGO releases special anniversary buckets at unusually low prices to commemorate events), but there is an updated version of the 1958 Town Plan set (and the updated version does have special gold bricks). LegOficina dos Baixinhos pulled up the original Danish patent, where you can clearly see that the Godtfred Kirk Christiansen applies for a patent for LEGO bricks on January 28th, 1958.
Details: This gorgeous car has functioning innards made with Technic parts. Suspension? check. Steering? check. Drive train? check. There's even a fiber optic fuel injection style engine (I'm assuming that the builder got a bunch of the parts from an 8880 Supercar). Perhaps more interesting, though, is the sheer scale here - this is nearly solid and larger than most of the other model cars I've seen. There's even a studless undercarriage, an interior, and a sculpted top. Can anyone translate the text file in this gallery? I'd like to know if this can really run with all of that weight on it.
Details: Here is a rendering of the Parthenon in LEGO® bricks. Microscale was a wise choice for this one - otherwise it would use up a few thousand parts, easily. Tile plates were used to make the roof and studs-not-on-top parts were used to make sideways tiles serve as part of the artwork. The parts on the top of the sides are from cockpit hinges, and the top of the front uses some Technic bricks and some 1x1 clip-tiles. Although this model doesn't take up the whole 15 inch square baseplate that it sits on, there are no LEGO® studs showing in the model itself.
Details: This stunning vignette mixes various shades of grey to make a very convincing castle wall on a cliff. That's not enough for this vignette, though - there's also a brilliant riverbed with pebbles and surf. It's a great use of all of those translucent 1x1 plates. There are some frogs and leaves added in for extra detail as well.
Details: LEGO and TheNXTStep have some resources up with information on NXT sumo. They have already done one competition, and it looks like they'll be doing more competitions in the future.
Details: There's a good deal of information written about this particular city. Foo documented several of the buildings and vehicles separately with in-progress animations. Most of the buildings were built modularly for easy transport. Power functions elements were built in for use with a remote control (for the uninitiated, "Power Functions" is the name of a new line of motors, battery packs, lights, cables, and remote controls that the LEGO company is phasing in now). Oh, and did I mention that the buildings are really well-detailed too?
Details: This is an entry for the latest Colossal Castle Contest. It uses some nice studs-not-on-top methods for the tower and the porch. There's an interesting mix of colors used in the walls too to give them an aged and mottled effect. I don't think I've ever seen another castle model with this many doors and windows, but understandably a home is a bit different than a regular fortified Castle.
Details: Here's a stunning minifig rendition of the Croatian National Theatre (or "Hrvatsko narodno kazaliste"). This model is a beautiful and detailed masterpiece, and there's some great info on the page above. I'm a bit speechless about it - it's just such a brilliant model that there's nothing I could say that wouldn't sell it short. The use of MLCAD for planning this must have helped a bit, but I still can't imagine just how much went into this project.
I mentioned some problems with the site layout here earlier today. The culprit has been identified, and it was Amazon ad code and not Google/Blogger's new layout tweaks. I'm still looking into what happened here and what's going on with Amazon next, but for now, the offending code has been removed. The models for Friday and today should be up sometime in the next few hours.
Details: Here's a great microscale version of a Caribbean beach resort. The buildings have some nice details (note the use of windows as doors), but the landscaping steals the show. The waterfall sticks out, but the waves and tide on the beach are done exceptionally well. There's no messing with those trees or beach chairs either.
Details: This model shows two new twists on the "steampunk" theme (which, for those of you keeping score, isn't an official LEGO® theme, but a fan-created one) - first, this model is roughly based on a ship from Star Wars. Second, this ship is made with more of an upscale Victorian look than a "punk" look. It's also a well-made model - I love how the propellers were made with steps from one of the newer staircase assemblies.
I'm not sure how many people noticed, but I seem to be having trouble finding the models I was planning on writing about this week. I'm in the process of looking for other things to post now. Also, it looks like Google/Blogger is rolling out some new layout features and images, and that's making this site look pretty awful right now. I'm hoping that this will sort itself out before long (usually the Blogger staff are pretty good about spotting these bugs and fixing them), but I'll start to change the code instead sometime this weekend if there are still problems with the layout of this site. Thanks for your patience.
Details: So this is truly the model of the day - it was first spotted late last night and has already gone viral and made it's way to all of the big tech and Star Wars websites. It's deserving of the honor, of course, but gosh it seems like these things get to be well-known fast these days. I was having trouble remembering where this falls in the Star Wars storyline, but apparently it's General Grievous' command ship. This is a specific Trade Federation Cruiser that appears in episode 3 (more Star Wars info at http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tradefederationcruiser/). Here are some of the stats:
9 months of building
231 studs long
Weighs 30 pounds (nearly 14 kilograms)
The outer details leave ZERO (0) LEGO studs showing.
Details: Remember that automatous knitting machine? Well, that builder has been at it again, and has now built a fully functional braiding machine that uses only a single motor and battery box for power. I'm not really sure how this works - for some reason my computer won't play the video that's been posted - but if it's as clever as the knitting machine was, then you just know it's got to be a real treat. It's interesting to note that the construction is a bit more "modern" looking this time out, relying on studless beams instead of the bricks we saw in the knitting machine. You might recall that the LEGO TECHNIC line shifted from featuring Technic bricks (with studs on top for stacking) to Technic beams (which are smooth and studless) a few years back (Wikipedia has a good description of this topic). If not, don't feel bad - I think it's safe to say that more Technic bricks were manufactured in the 20 years or so when Technic beams didn't exist. That's right, kids, when I was your age, we didn't have studless Technic beams! We had to find ways to make our robots go uphill both ways in the snow without studless beams, or even programmable bricks! Which brings us back to why machines like this one are so interesting in the first place - not needing newfangled programmable parts (I guess the "newfangled" gambit is moot at this point, though).
Details: There was a huge gathering of some of the world's most ardent LEGO fans in Germany on 5th and 6th January. We are beginning to see photos appear online - the two galleries and photographers mentioned here are really just the beginning. You can send in your photos if you have some - let's try to make this a proper roundup. There are, of course, a ton of awesome models here. Skyscrapers, giant ships, capitol buildings, detailed trains, and I'm sure quite a bit that I haven't fully looked at yet.
Details: If you've been paying attention to LEGO at all over the past few years, you probably know about the Ultimate Collector Series and the various large and detailed models released in that line. Well, for every Star Wars ship featured in that line, there are about a hundred other spaceships that are being made in similar scales and levels of detail by devoted fans. Today's model is really a series of models - there are several galleries at the link above, and they show several different incarnations of Junsier's Slave I.
Details: Here's a reproduction of the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland. Lots of pictures here, but there's only newspaper articles to go on for info about it. It looks to me like there's 9V train track running through it, which means that this is roughly at minifig scale (even though this model is very large and probably wouldn't fit in your train layout).
Details: This detailed castle scene is a masterpiece. The color scheme, the characters, the details - everything looks amazing. It even opens up in all sorts of places to make it easy to see what's going on inside. It's been a while since I've picked up a new Castle set, but I think I recognize some of the archetectural features as being parts from Wild West and Harry Potter themed sets. I'm pretty sure we're seeing some large orange portions in the front too. I'm jealous of this guy's fairly-new-colors collection.
Details: This brilliant spaceship has a number of excellent features. For one, there's that perfect classic LEGO Space color scheme. For another, there's an X-Pod for a cockpit here. That alone would be enough to make this model stand out - but there's still more. The underside has a number of bizarre details - controls, hatches, landing gear, and such - and it's not really clear how most of it stays on. I have no idea how he got this to work.
Details: This is one you really have to look at to believe. It's a combination of a roll-bin, a space station, and the Cafe Corner set. We've previously featured the set and some models inspired by it, but this is the most original twist I've ever seen on the concept (I ought to clarify - when I first blogged about the set, Amazon had a bargain price for it, but they're currently selling it for about $60 more than the LEGO store is). The rounded sides of this model unfold out, and then you can see the colors of the set mixed with a variety of Space theme parts. The door with the Exploriens half-cylinder really stands out, but there are tons of great details here.
Details: This robot chassis has a number of great features. For starters, it has a sturdy bed for placing a laptop computer (which can then control the robot and use the Vision Command Camera and a LEGO MINDSTORMS RCX). If you look at the mechanisms in play, you can see that the MINDSTORMS motors are connected to polarity switches - which in turn make battery boxes actually drive the chassis. The polarity switches change the directions of two motors in each position - allowing for a decent enough drive mechanism that is strong and agile but only uses two motors. It looks like there's a suspension system for the drive system too. Most essential, of course, is the well-placed IR dock (which allows the laptop to communicate with the RCX). I'm not really sure just what this chassis can do or what the software is like, but it looks like a great robot base to me.
Details: There are a number of great models to be seen on the website of BrickVention 2006. BrickVentures has scheduled another BrickVention for later this month - if you are in Melbourne, Australia, you really should try to check it out. The BrickVentures website mentioned above includes info on this year's event, which will be held from 25th January through 27th January. The photos at the link above are from the 2006 event (I suspect it will be mostly things built more recently at this year's event). The thumbnail above features 2006's best-in-show winner, Aaron A's "Micro Melbourne"
Details: This skyscraper is deceptive - at first glance, it looks like a far larger masterpiece - it's so detailed that you'll have to find the little people and trees in order to get a grasp on the model's scale. This skyscraper is also a great reproduction of the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan (which has been the tallest building in the world since it was completed in 2004). The details here are brilliant, and the colors and parts uses are perfect (apparently quite a few special pieces were ordered specially so that this model could be made). The LEGO® version takes up a grey 15x15 baseplate and stands .8 meters tall. This puts it at roughly a scale of 1:636.5. There are some small concessions that were made to simplify the design, but I'll let you read the builder's account of that.
Details: This spaceship revisits the original Blacktron color scheme that LEGO introduced back in the 1980's (Not to be confused with the "next generation" Blacktron line that came out in the early 1990's). Even in the few shots shown here, you can tell that this is a treat - several rare parts from the sets that inspired this model make the large cockpits, and you can see minifigs with newer faces inside the old Blacktron uniforms. The newer slopes give the ship a unique shape and work surprisingly well with the older pieces. Details worth noting include the 1x1 window bricks in the rear of the ship, the use of minifig heads next to the old trans-red antennae, the backwards cockpit pieces on the top, and the jets on the back (I think those are yellow wheels!)
Details: This charming Belville layout gives us some interesting examples of regular parts and minifig-scale elements working well in a larger-scale layout. I'm finding the use of rare Aquazone baseplates here to be particularly entertaining. I have my suspicions about the amount of pink bricks on display here, but it might be possible to do that without cheating (I haven't exactly been buying every "pink pack" that they put out).
Details: Here's an interesting experiment with the new Power Functions elements - it's a simple remote control car. The final version mentioned at the site includes a compact dual differential drive. The video also shows a few other versions of this car and even a video of a camera riding on top of the car!
Details: This large bear sculpture might look a little silly in yellow, but I think the cartoony look suits him fine. The color decision may have been made to keep costs down - brown bricks are still much harder to find (and thus more expensive) than yellow bricks are.
remotely through BlueTooth.
