Details: For months now, Katie Walker has been posting a string of spectacular and unusual mosaics on flickr. Her techniques range from fanatically precise LEGO geometry with headlight bricks to impossibly patient trial-and-error with cheese slopes. She has inspired, humbled, and scared many a LEGO builder. Recently, she was interviewed for the MosaicBricks blog - to mark the occasion, she built the two mosaics of the blog's name shown here (by the way, if anyone does something like that for us, we'd totally change our header to use it too!)
I actually try to hold back from posting too much of Katie's material because most of it isn't really what most of us would consider "models". Everything is a work-in-progress, a study, or a proof-of-concept. Some of it gets worked into a larger creation later, but most of it is quickly taken apart after the photos are taken (the photographs serve as enough documentation to rebuild the designs later if they are needed). It is, though, always worth a look through her flickr photostream to see what she's been up to. As I said before, her work inspires (with clever techniques), humbles (with the fact she's using a small collection and a very small variety of pieces), and scares (with the amount of time that goes into some of the more ornate small designs). I've featured some of her studies before, but there's way more where that came from. Due to the popularity of her few finished models, I've actually backed away from featuring those here as well (out of respect for the readers who also follow other LEGO blogs, I try to keep repetition to a minimum) - but you should absolutely take a look at the courtyard and the atrium that she built for an as yet unbuilt queen's palace.
Of course, the most intimidating part is realizing that this "beginner" already knows more about how you can fit LEGO pieces together than most experienced hobbyists will ever figure out. It's a rare person who is willing to work with DUPLO and Technic alongside regular LEGO pieces, never mind actually willing to figure out these geometrical quirks. Which is why we should all pay attention here - the techniques you'll pick up will save time later and make you a better builder.
Details: The day has finally come. A LEGO robot is now capable of assembling a variety of LEGO models on its own, working off of LDRAW instructions generated in MLCAD. Would you like a robot like this? You can download instructions and programs for it in a number of formats, including MLCAD. That MLCAD file will be handy when a later version of this robot needs to know how to make other robots.
For now, though, this robot is limited to various 2xX sized bricks - 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, and 2x8. This limits it to fairly simple models, but the concept has been proven. Actually, the concept, in a way, had already been proven by the robots that this LEGO 'bot was inspired by. MakerBot and RepRap can print any shape three-dimensional shape using extruded plastic. The plastic? It's frequently a type of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) - the same sort of plastic used to make LEGO bricks (naturally, LEGO uses a variation on the ABS formula that is kept fairly secret). We already knew that the possibilities were endless, this was just the variation on this sort of robot that we all wanted to see.
...and speaking of which, if you want to see this in person (without building your own or a robot that can build one for you), you can see it at LEGO WORLD 2010 in Zwolle, The Netherlands, from October 22nd to October 26th, 2010.
Apologies for the late posts the past few days - I've been feeling very sick and having a hard time focusing. Things should be back to regular speed for the rest of the week, although I'm still pretty stuffy.
Found at: ? (I haven't been able to find an official link - photos of the event can be found at the links below.
Details:
For reasons unknown to me, there have been increasingly more LEGO events overseas lately that aren't getting much of any attention on the internet. News about shows doesn't seem to be getting out as much in advance, making it a bit confusing when the photos show up online afterwards. This also poses an issue for our efforts to keep the BrickJournal shared calendars up to date - we can't let everyone else know about an event if we don't know about it ourselves.
Anyway, it turns out that on October 9th, there was a LEGO show Madrid, Spain called MadBrick 2010. Here's a mini-roundup of photo links:
Details: Cavemen collectible minifigures are as exciting as ever. We've previously seen a caveman in the woods, and now we see one taking his date's mother out for a drive in a Flintstones-esque car. The Hong Kong LEGO Users Group is having a 16x16 Vignette Competition, so we'll probably see a few more great little creations like this one.
Details: Maersk LEGO sets have never been easy to come by. Since a special color of LEGO brick is manufactured for use in these sets, they're highly prized among LEGO hobbyists - the slightly greenish shade of light blue is useful in a variety of settings. On those rare occasions when Maersk-colored parts are available to the public, they're quickly bought up for use in larger creations. The popularity of the bricks leads to extras of the stickers being available. Naturally, the challenge then becomes finding models to use the stickers. Microscale Maersk models have been done before, but this one seems particularly realistic and compelling. The builder has a nearly magic touch when it comes to greebling on very small space vehicles.
Details: This almost double-size sculpture of a cassette tape isn't entirely purist, but it is pretty clever. Technic half-pins with a stud on the end flip the direction of the studs upside-down so that the same curved elements can be used for the top and the bottom. The clear section in the middle is another interesting trick - since LEGO actually uses a mold without a center tube for translucent and transparent parts, you can use two of them (one upside-down) to create a small compartment of sorts. Inside that area, black paper is used to create the look of the actual magnetic tape. A few stickers complete the model. Surprisingly, only 100 parts were used.
Details: As I'vementionedbefore, there are never enough good Aquazone models. At some level, I can understand the distaste - as the first "playtheme", Aquazone looks a little like the beginning of an annoying trend to long-time LEGO fans who preferred the days of evergreen themes always being available. Alas, the days of always having Town, Space, Castle, and Pirates around are behind us, and we're now stuck in the world of themes rotating in-and-out every two years or so for the foreseeable future. In spite of that baggage, though the Aquazone theme actually was pretty interesting, and since it lasted three years originally AND has had tworeboots, it's arguably an "evergreen" theme itself (a recent BrickJournalissue recapped LEGO's on-and-off habits with underwater themes).
This is not "just" an Aquanauts base, though - it's built as several modules in the moonbase standard. This was actually featured as part of the Space layout at BrickCon 2010 (which worked well as a way to open up the theme and include this in a collaborative layout). The details on this model are every bit as stunning as its size - while the vehicles around the AquaLAB look like they could be sets, everyoneof them is an original creation. All of the modules are fully furnished - this is one of the few bases that actually has enough amenities to function as real living quarters for its inhabitants. The modules even have removable roofs so that you can see all the interiors. True to theme, there's also a room for processing crystals.
Details: A dutch family with three generations of LEGO enthusiasts recently built this set of animals. A brilliant mix of NXT robotics and more traditional LEGO sculpture techniques, these life-size animals act out the action in the video above. It seems like there are never enough animations that use this technique instead of stop-motion. Here, we see the animals run around in a fairly realistic manner, down to the mother duck laying an "egg" (a ball from the NXT 2.0 kit, previously known as a Bionicle Zamor sphere) and the rat taking it to eat. A surprising amount of detail went into the robots here - check out the MOCpages links above to read more about them and see photos of the source material. Also of note (but I'm not aware of more of a close-up than in the video) is some of the background scenery - the life-size squirrel sculpture and duck's nest look great too.
Some tape (vinyl) was used to cover some of the NXT parts and make the NXT colors blend in well with the rest of the models. Further "cheating" was used to make the smaller ducks work with power functions motors and a battery set-up small enough to fit inside them (they're controllable through IR - which presumably is controlled by a third party NXT IR adapter). There's another video that explains how the ducks are made.
Details: Tucked away in Billund, Denmark, somewhere around the current headquarters of the LEGO company, there's a house that was once lived in by the company's founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen. That house is currently the scene of a private museum known as the "LEGO Idea House". Although it is not generally open to the public, there are occasions when some LEGO fans are let in. Primarily a place for employees to look back at the history of the LEGO company, it also houses a variety of rare LEGO sets, prototype parts, unreleased creations from LEGO designers, and other interesting goodies. It's also been rumored (said in a recent book) that the basement is the "secret undisclosed location" of the vault where LEGO keeps (or at least attempts to keep) a copy of every set they've ever made. The secrecy related to some of the house's contents has made photos of the interior rare - for obvious reasons, photos of things like prototype elements are not something LEGO wants leaking out. The photo set I've linked to above is a peek inside some parts of the house where photography has been allowed (at least, I didn't catch anything that looked like something we're not allowed to see).
Brick Town Talk has coveredtheLEGO version of the house (it's been given out as part of some tours of the Idea House, so it's a very rare kit - I'm told that newer tours use different kits every time, so it won't be showing up again). If you're interested in getting in on one of these tours, check out the info on the official LEGO website.
For months now, Katie Walker has been posting a string of spectacular and unusual mosaics on flickr. Her techniques range from fanatically precise LEGO geometry with headlight bricks to impossibly patient trial-and-error with cheese slopes. She has inspired, humbled, and scared many a LEGO builder. Recently, she was interviewed for the MosaicBricks blog - to mark the occasion, she built the two mosaics of the blog's name shown here (by the way, if anyone does something like that for us, we'd totally change our header to use it too!)
I actually try to hold back from posting too much of Katie's material because most of it isn't really what most of us would consider "models". Everything is a work-in-progress, a study, or a proof-of-concept. Some of it gets worked into a larger creation later, but most of it is quickly taken apart after the photos are taken (the photographs serve as enough documentation to rebuild the designs later if they are needed). It is, though, always worth a look through her flickr photostream to see what she's been up to. As I said before, her work inspires (with clever techniques), humbles (with the fact she's using a small collection and a very small variety of pieces), and scares (with the amount of time that goes into some of the more ornate small designs). I've featured some of her studies before, but there's way more where that came from. Due to the popularity of her few finished models, I've actually backed away from featuring those here as well (out of respect for the readers who also follow other LEGO blogs, I try to keep repetition to a minimum) - but you should absolutely take a look at the courtyard and the atrium that she built for an as yet unbuilt queen's palace. 
