Out of the Ashes...

a new racing ship is born

This ship was built over Memorial Day weekend made entirely from parts in my "waiting to be sorted" LEGO bin. A lot of the parts are from the disassembled ship I built for the FBTB Gunship Alt Model Contest.

For some reason I latched onto the name Jupiter Jump Ship so this is a Jupiter Jump Class Ship called The Phoenix.

I was completely out of stickers so I ordered a few sheets from a local seller on bricklink and stickered this one within an inch of it's life earlier this week.

Of all the ships I have built over the last few weeks this one is the largest and by far the most sturdy.

This ship was played with for hours by 3 little boys ages 3,4 and 6. The only parts that fell off were the engine ports, which I even manage to knock off from time to time.

That being said this bruiser of a ship will just plow through the competition. There is no need for agility as The Phoenix will just push you off the race course as it passes and continue on its merry way.

Etch A Sketch

I still vividly remember the reason why I built this MOC. I was standing in line at a Walmart checkout and there were a stack of pocket Etch A Sketches. Looking at the knob on the toy I realized it was almost 1:1 scale with the 2x2 round brick and I would possibly be able to build a faithful recreation of the Etch A Sketch in LEGO.

The most challenging part of the build (besides my lack of red parts) was the grey "drawing screen" The height of the opening is a little less than 5 studs high so the 5th tile is actually partially pushed into the bottom of a 2x10 plate.

The internal support system is also a little weird and uses 4 lightsaber blades to perfectly fill a few small areas.

The "Etch A Sketch" text was added digitally, but I would eventually like print the text onto the build and take this one with me to a brick convention sometime in the future.

I am still very happy with this build and would not change a thing. I was also gratifying when my friends asked me why I was sending them pictures of an Etch A Sketch as they did not realize at 1st glance it was made out of LEGO.

How it's made: It's A Trap!

It's A Trap! - 2013

I have a love hate relationship with the time spent taking this photograph.

This specific image was a breakthrough for me because I finally figured out how to successfully photograph black colored LEGO (lots of strategically placed index cards and carefully bounced light)

with only 7 frogs on hand for the photo shoot it was necessary to combine several photos

This photo was also a huge pain to shoot. Unfortunately when you correctly photographic black LEGO you can also see every speck of dust. I physically removed as much dust as I could (Vader had been sitting around gathering dust for years) and removed what little remained digitally.

Color correction, brightness/contract correction and more frogs added

The Vader minifigure is precariously balanced and he kept tipping over when I would begin to place the frogs on him or if I would accidentally bump the table.

I only had a limited amount of frogs (7) so I had to take several photographs and combine those together to get the small horde of attacking frogs I wanted. Looking at the final image now I am suffering from Spielberg regret and I should have added more frogs.

Final corrected photo

Overall this photo was an extreme exercise in patience, but it was worth the time and frustration.

So next time you are walking around and randomly see a small group of frogs, steer clear or you may be the victim of a random attack.

Revenge of the Puppy

My youngest dog is in the process of exiting puppyhood and although he never really destroyed or chewed anything up to this point, he has managed to destroy several things this week.

The latest victim...my Techinc Vader Helmet.

This helmet was special for me because it was a part of the 1st LEGO set I purchased as an adult.

I guess I need to put my "waiting to be sorted" box a little higher up and out of the reach of puppy teeth.

Flickr Stats

If I manage to check my Flickr stats at the right time of day my graph looks like a mountain range. The highest peak is always a weekend and the lowest is usually on Wednesday. The lowest point in this graph is because I checked my account as a new day was starting for the Flickr stats. My flickr day seems to start somewhere around 7pm, and I'm not sure why that is.

Great Showdowns by Scott C.

 Before you say, "What the...." please take a second to head over to Great Showdowns by Scott C. and this build will make a little more sense.

I have been a fan of Scott's watercolor artwork for a little while now and when putting away the head part of this build I immediately saw the smile Scott puts in every single watercolor.

This build is also really top heavy and I had to add bricks to the back of the head to keep it from falling flat on it's face. I had to add more bricks that I thought it would need and the build look bizarre from any view other than head on.

Flashback Friday: 1957 Battleship

new photo - 2014

Lets blow off the dust and roll the clock back to June 2012.

I keep less than 1% of the MOC's I build and the 1957 Battleship playing board is one the builds I have kept and display proudly in my office.

If I remember correctly this was the 1st or 2nd "everyday object" I tried to build in LEGO. As this was the beginning of my adult building career I had virtually no bricks, plates or tiles to work with so this one took almost a month to complete. (I had to order at least 90% of the parts)

Although it took forever to finish I was, and still am, very proud of the way this build came together.

original photo - 2012

Out with the old, in with the new

A few days ago my office chair died a sudden and tragic death. No amount of duck tape, screwdrivers or 10 ton epoxy could fix the problem so I had to face facts.

I needed a new chair.

After a few agonizing days of using an uncomfortable kitchen chair I finally picked up my new office chair today and it's like sitting on a pillow of clouds and rainbows.

I should have thrown out my old chair years ago.

Catch of the Day

My friends son Nathan, who is 5, has started to draw quite a bit in the last few months. He also love to throw out LEGO building instructions and do his own free builds, which are usually pretty darn cool.

I've decided to start turning his drawings into LEGO creations for him and 1st up for conversion from drawing to LEGO is his Lobster.

The Original Drawing

And for those who wonder how much correction goes into these photos here is the original, uncorrected image:

Not much correction was done to this photo. Colors were adjusted, areas were darkened and the photo was cropped.

Minifigure Monday - Mr. Freeze

This weeks featured figure is the Arkham version of Mr. Freeze designed by Fig-Nation

Check out Tony's other figures and builds on FLICKR and if you want to pick up this figure for your collection it can be found here on EBAY

Revenge of the 5th

Today we celebrated yet another Star Wars day, Revenge of the 5th.

May the 4th be with you

Unleash your inner geek and celebrate May the 4th be with you Brick Nerd style!

Anarchy on the Death Star

I really enjoy coming up with builds to feature my new items. Anarchy on the Death Star was a very quick build and  pretty easy to photograph. Total time for the build, photography and editing was a little under 2 hours.

Originally I was going to have more signage on the walls, but I was unable to fit everything I wanted to hang. This scene was entirely built to showcase the new Anarchy tiles so I wanted to make sure they were a prominent feature.

I  built just enough of the walls and corridor to cover what would be seen through the camera lens and the full size of the build is less than 32x32 studs. The final photo (above) is actually 3 photos combined together to accommodate the depth of field that I wanted in the photo. I have dealt with this type of photo before so I knew how I was going to need to photograph the scene and the corridor was built with this in mind.

The last items put up were the 2x2 tiles on the walls. After all the figures were positioned the tiles were placed accordingly.

Back of the build

Front of the build

The 3 original, uncorrected photos before they were combined:

mid ground

foreground

background