The lonely caveman

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Etzel/Prehistoric/prehistory01.jpg

Brickshelf user Etzel has made a nice little scene depicting a part of the daily life of a caveman. There is some really nice scenery to look at here: some bare rock that of course would be riddled with little caves for a caveman to dwell in....sigh, duh. Some of his trees are really nice, like the ones in the foreground that use the 1x3x3 arches new to this year. With those little arches he's able to achieve a nice vine-like tree with lots of variations in direction, something very hard to do with LEGO arches. This little caveman likes to fish and it would seem that he's a bit of an inventor; at least that's what that little wheel outside of his hidey-hole tells me. Oh yeah, don't drink the water. Good thing he's discovered fire so he can boil it.

FTW, wtf? Epic win or lolfail?

Nerds the world over, not just LEGO nerds, are spewing phrases that used to be simple shorthand. Word are being replaced by colloquialisms that make no sense because they're being used out of context. Fine, if you really want to use FTW (For The Win) as a part of your comment, go ahead but remember that it should only be part of the comment. Maybe I'm just old and crotchety but seeing somebody drop one of those in a comment box somewhere drives me crazy. "WHAT is 'for the win'??" I don't mean "What does it MEAN?" I want you to use some descriptive words. Don't be shy. Don't be lazy. Say what you mean, it's not that hard and believe me, you aren't being 'cool' by using geek-speak.

One day you'll grow up and understand where I'm coming from. Heaven help the next generation....

I love monochromatic LEGO creations

Army Men
Originally uploaded by "Orion Pax"

While so many LEGO builders fall all over themselves to add details to their creations while uttering words like 'scale', 'realism' and 'scale' Orion Pax has decided to just play around with his green bricks. Everyone who wanted to buy a bunch of the green army men from the Toy Story line had thoughts that they would build a MOC of this type. Well, maybe not everyone. There is a section of LEGO fans that have been labeled as WWIItards because they browse Wikipedia and build machines and weapons from that era while cut and pasting encyclopedia pages. Do kids study WWII in school anymore or do they learn about the Gulf war now? I digress though.

Again, I'm blogging a MOC and I don't want to talk about technique or colour blocking or some of the various other things the artsy builders go on about. You decide what you like about it. Me? I just think it's just good old green army men fun with a capital L.

Make sure you check out the rest of the pictures too!

Republic Gunship

Republic Gunship
Originally uploaded by \/\//\R |_[]R[)

The Republic Gunship is easily one of my favorite ship/aircraft from the Star Wars saga. This MOC is easily one of my favorite renditions of the ship. Why do I like it? It's clean, it's a good scale, it's full of really nice angles that follow the source quite well but most of all...it seems to follow right along with a couple of my own failed attempts to build my own. Eerily so. I never tried to do the green potion like this fellow or use those 1x4 studless slopes but quite a bit of it looks like something I tried to build but gave up on. The 1x3 wedges on the side of the fuselage was something that hung me up as did the curvature on the upper hull. My fault, as I see it now looking at this, was trying to uses so many of the older round bricks like the 2x2 'macaroni bricks' or the 1x4x1 1/3 curved top bricks or even the 1x2x6 arch bricks. Those all looked pretty good but I always felt like I would be settling by using any combination of them. Never mind trying to find a decent hinging point that would allow upper fuselage to sit on those snotted wedges properly with a decent structure. Yes, structure is extremely important to me. Well done Warrior, well done indeed.

Castle Belisaere

Castle Belisaere
Originally uploaded by \/\//\R |_[]R[)

This is very nice. It's deceptivly small, it seems much larger than it really is. The roof is made of wonderful angles. The large SNOTted tiles are different than we're used to. The arrow loops and rockery are nothing new but nonetheless are a nice touch but, those fish. Those fish are that touch that really bring a MOC to life.

Tank Battle - Overview

Tank Battle - Overview
Originally uploaded by BMW_Indy

Yeah yeah the fire and smoke are really neat (read: very awesome), but I won't go on about that. What really caught my eye was the base you put this on! Useless parts? I've had a few of those bumpers laying around for a few years now, knowing that there is a use for them outside of hovercraft but not knowing what that use is. Now I know. The base makes this diorama for me because it makes it looks so finished which is something a lot of MOCs are lacking in and we didn't know it until we see something like this.
Thanks Brian, now I'm going to go build a base like this and I figure out later what I'll put on top of it!

This takes all the angry out of me

A use for the semi-circles...
Originally uploaded by eilonwy77

I hate when words fail me but I really love this. Every now and then a development comes along in the LEGO castle genre that become one of those accepted ways of building. A standard to reach for if you will. In the past, castle builders had to stack up trans-coloured brick or plate to achieve a stained glass effect but then along came the idea of a SNOT mosaic. The mosaic technique made it easier to create a recognisable design but it was never really that stable.

Cheese slope cubes are not a new idea and now thanks to a few builders, we get to peruse through a myriad of geometric designs that push the boundaries of what you should be able to do with little plastic blocks that supposedly connect to each other in millions of different ways.

I have asked eilonwy how stable this is. Sometimes a construction with so many friction connections can be prone to crumbling when you move it or constantly having certain pieces falling out. Frustrating. I think this idea is so worthy and is such a progressive idea for castle/stained glass that if it did indeed have such structural problems, I'd find a non-purist way to fix it.
Simply put.....clear packing tape on one side. I'm a bit of a cheater like that sometimes though.