Alien

Me and a friend of mine were talking about this guy at lunch a couple days ago. He’s reading The Making of Alien book (still need to get my copy) and the story of how Ridley Scott came to direct and how HR Giger landed the job of designer is interesting. It’s just one of those series of events in life that seem pretty uneventful in time, but when looking back, it was fate. And the result is one of the most iconic creatures ever to grace the screen, and make us scream. The version by Build Better Bricks will get your heart pumping too, and what’s even better is you can buy instructions for him and build your own!

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The Making of Alien

By J.W. Rinzler

The Disney Wonder And Extended Fish

At this very moment I’m sitting in a hotel room in San Diego with my family, waiting for our boarding time for the Disney Wonder cruise ship. We love cruising Disney, and do so fairly often. One of the things we do to bring even more magic to the journey is participate in “fish extenders”, a sort of secret gift exchange. Outside every stateroom is a fish emblem that is used to deliver messages, participants bring little multi-pocket hangers to hang on the fish (thereby extending it, get it?). You sign up to a group before you depart and bring gifts to drop off for others, and in turn find little surprises in yours every time you come back to your room. One of the gifts we’ve given away is this little model kit of the boat I designed. Perhaps some day we'll be cruising together and you'll find one of these in your Fish Extender.

Modular Arcade

If you're not familiar with Chris McVeigh's modular arcade series you need to be. While the coin-op arcade seems to be a thing of the past, you can relive those blipity blopity sore thumb days with these rad little machines. This year the collection expands with some new designs and they look absolutely awesome. You can build your own with free instructions (and dozens of others) at chrismcveigh.com or preorder the kit right now. *Quarters not included

Build This Porsche

The Arvo brothers are back, this time with some classic German automobile engineering. Way back in 2009 they built their first 911, and haven't lost their passion for this iconic performance car. This time however they've gone a step further, by making instructions so you too can build this beast. Hit them up at arvo@arvobrothers.com to get your hands on them.

Updated Classic

Builder Chris McVeigh has taken advantage of some new parts and building techniques to update his excellent little model of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System. Makes me want to play a little Super Mario Brothers or Legend of Zelda, in all their 8-bit glory. The 2.0 building guide is available know at chrismcveigh.com

TESS

Meet TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. TESS will be in space planet hunting sometime next year, but thanks to builder Apojove you can have one on your desktop right now. You can download instructions and learn all about this fascinating satellitr and it's mission on Rebrickable.

Huge 8-Bit Link

The Legend Of Zelda, in all it's forms, is over 30 years old. It's amazing to me that we've been following the adventures of young Link for so long, yet every release is just as exciting as the last. The world just got Breath of the Wild, and it's absolutely stunning (and will occupy all of my spare time for probably the next year). Builder BRICK 101 is clearly a fan, and has built this amazing large scale 8-bit version inspired by the Amiibo version. Not only that, but he's made a video detailing how it's built so you can make one yourself!

*Boop Boop Boop, Weeoo Weeoo Weeoo, Wop Wop Wop*

I was totally a kid of the 70's and 80's, I saw the rise of the video game and the subsequent decline of pinball. And like an entire generation of kids, none of us ever had a quarter in our pocket that wasn't itching to be converted to a few minutes of pixelated fun. Now you can recreate this bygone era with Chris McVeigh's charming little modular arcade. You can get instructions and full kits at his website chrismcveigh.com

Build This Earth, Moon And Sun Orrery!

Mechanical mad genius JK Brickworks is back with another fun project, and something that everyone needs on their desk, an Orrery. I'd call it simple, because it just has the sun, earth and moon, but as you can see in the picture and video, it's far from it. It's also surprisingly accurate in rotation and orbit, having cycles that are really close to the actual celestial bodies. And with instructions generously shared by the builder, you can make your own!

You Can Build This Awesome Y-Wing

What's better than a kickass Star Wars MOC? A kickass Star Wars MOC with instructions that's what! This beast of a Y-Wing packs an incredible amount of accurate detail into a UCS scale ship, it's practically camera ready. And you can build your own because builder Brickwright was kind enough to provide us with instructions. What are you waiting for, get the parts list and get building!

Get Walkin'

Jason at JK Brickworks has posted this excellent little video of some walking MOCs based on classic wooden toys. They're a lot of fun and I can see all kinds of potential for some really cool variations on this style. He also posted some instructions so you can build your own so what are you waiting for?