Bricks LA Is This Weekend

If you're in the Los Angeles area and want to see some awesome MOCs, meet some excellent people and maybe, just maybe score some BrickNerd swag (hunt me down like an animal) then get to Bricks LA in Pasadena!

Ice, Ice, Baby

Sometimes the best builds are the ones with that tiny little detail most people wouldn't notice, one that makes FOLs like us say "Dang, that's an NPU!"  In this case, it's that lovely little cupcake acting as the ice brush on Tyler Sky's excellent Zamboni. He shoots, he scores!

View fullsize

View fullsize

Lime Explorer

Builder Rogue Bantha continues his exploration of color, and things are getting interesting. Not that I have anything against some classic grey, blue and yellow, but seeing some splashes of unusual color, combined with his spectacular building style and skill, makes for some eye popping MOCs. The overall shape is unusual, the greebs are nice and the build is clean. This is pretty awesome.

Kerbal Space Program 1

I know next to nothing about this game or the concept. But the characters look fun, the game looks fun and the premise looks fun, so I'm interested. From what I gather you help these little definitely not minions guys start a space program and conquer the final frontier. Builder grubaluk seems to have a grasp on what's going on, or at least how to build some fun little characters.

Inside Every One Of Us There's A Skeleton Dying To Get Out

Fun facts about bones

• The adult human body has 206 bones in the skeleton. These bones are grown together from about 300 bones at birth.
• The longest bone in the body is called the femur, which connects the pelvis to the knee.
• Bones are broken down and remade constantly, just like skin. In fact, all of the bones are slowly replaced until they are new bone once every 7 years!
• The human skull contains the brain, at least in most humans.
• The lower arm contains two bones called the radius and ulna, there used to be three, but you know, three's a crowd.
• Bones are made of calcium, ice cream is rich in calcium, ice cream is made of bones.
• Building a skeleton in LEGO is not easy, but umamen did it, what have you done today?
• "The bones song" was originally about the Los Angeles freeway system, but not as fun.
• Bones is a good character on Star Trek

Full Metal Fetus

Well, this is disturbing on just about every level, but it's also oozing with style. Leave it to builder D-Town Cracka to paint a dystopian future where even the newborns are mechanized, and put to use collecting body parts. But it can be argued those body parts aren't going to collect themselves...that's a totally different dystopian future.

Far Out, MOC!

Sometimes, a good backstory along with a quality MOC from an established builder is just too hard to pass up.  Stephen Pakbaz -- who previously designed NASA's Curiosity rover for the LEGO Ideas line -- has come up with a great one here in Pieceout, "a civilian scientist researching alternative energy on the planet Cybertron."

Hippie Transformers out to make the world a better place? Love it! Transformer MOCs that actually transform?  Excellent!  Clever moniker playing on the themes of that era while simultaneously paying tribute to the very hobby we all love?  Just plain awesome.

Where The Wild Things Are!

Wild indeed!  Luke Watkins Hutchinson has been a busy guy.  In fact, he's announced a project with Bricks magazine where he'll be demonstrating, month by month, how he builds these amazing scenes.  That's why he's only posted the one pic, you'll have to get a subscription to see the rest. 

Both Bricks and Brick Culture are high quality publications, and for those of us in North America, not particularly expensive, even with the postage.  Definitely worth checking out!

Nick Wilde

Jordan Schwartz has built this fantastic fig of Nick Wilde, a sly fox from an upcoming Disney movie entitled Zootopia.  What I really appreciate is how Jordan captured that smarmy, con artist expression.  I figure since this turned out so well, he's going to be creating the entire cast--Hint hint!

Light Cycle

I personally didn't care for the sequel to Tron, at least not the movie as a whole. I still listen to the soundtrack, it's brilliant. And the art direction was top notch, the movie is an end to end eyegasm.  One of the stand out designs was the new light cycles, like this outstanding rendition by MortalSwordsman.

More Than Meets The Eye

Your mileage on the Bayformer movies may vary, but this Bumblebee moc by Jonas is a great, faithful recreation of the character in brick.

2015...You...Shall Not....PASS!!!!

For some reason everyone uses the analogy of old man time welcoming the baby new year, but this is really how it goes down, as recreated by builder K.Kreations. 2015 was certainly an eventful year, with good times and bad, but now Gandalf is here to put the smackdown on it. Happy New Year everyone!

Are You Threatening Me?

I'm a huge Mike Judge fan. I think he's a true genius, even if he can't resist a good juvenile joke. And while many people think Beavis & Butthead is very low brow humor, I think it's humor on multiple levels, and hilarious. So this Beavis as the Great Cornholio by 6kyubi6 just made my day.

Rogue, Smuggler, Scoundrel.

This guy was perfectly happy (well, as happy as a guy can be with a price on his head) smuggling and hopping planets before he got mixed up with the rebellion. Then it was nothing but shoot and run, shoot and run. At least he ended up with a pretty spiffy medal. Finally builder Luc Byard's brilliant Leia has her love interest and eternal frustration, Han Solo.

Whole Lotta Pizza

This is all kinds of clever. When builder koffiemoc accepts a challenge, he goes all out. These were all build for a revamp contest on lowlug.nl. He decided to build interpretations of LEGO 6350 Pizza To Go, and did so in the styles of City, Friends, Pirates, Wild West, Roman, Castle and my personal favorite, Star Wars. Yes, that sign is in Aurebesh.

Gray Cliff Fortress

This eye-catching MOC by builder W. Navarre looks right out of an 80's fantasy movie, and I love that. It also seems to tipping it's hat to Pirates of the Caribbean, which is also pretty awesome. I think with some tweaking and more play features (and of course, good guys and bad guys) something like this would be a cool official set.

So Much Shiny

I don't know if I'm part raccoon or what, but I'm sure a sucker for shiny things. As far as I know, the 1x2 tiles in this are aftermarket chromed gold, but I'm ok with that. Chrome parts from LEGO are getting more and more rare, and there are parts that have simply never been offered. But just look at the punch they give this spectacular MOC by Moko.

The Cutest Kylo Ren Ever

I won't go into much detail on the character, you won't find spoilers here on BrickNerd, but he's a compelling character from Star Wars The Force Awakens. And while he's got a fierce temper and dark heart, but this version by torokimasa makes him absolutely adorable.

Gordon Parks Arts Hall

My good friend and fellow VLUGer Dave Kaleta recently completed an architectural piece commissioned by the University of Chicago to celebrate their new Gordon Parks Art Hall.  Turns out the George Lucas Family Foundation was a main contributor to this vast facility.  The director of the University Laboratory Schools then recruited Dave, who's also an alum, to build this model as a gift to George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson.  Yeah, you read that right.  Congrats, Dave!

Brick Sanchez

Rick and Morty, LEGO and quality apparel fans rejoice, Tee Fury has a ]cool new shirt today. But you better act fast, it's only available today and the clock is ticking!