2011 in Lego Pictures. From the royal wedding to the death of Osama bin Laden, the English summer riots and the fall of Gaddafi, here are some of major news stories of the past 12 months captured in Lego by Flickr members.
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 19, 2011 -
13 comments
"Over the years, Lego has had five strategic initiatives aimed at girls. Some failed because they misapprehended gender differences in how kids play. Others, while modestly profitable, didn’t integrate properly with Lego’s core products. Now, after four years of research, design, and exhaustive testing, Lego believes it has a breakthrough.
On Dec. 26 in the U.K. and Jan. 1 in the U.S., Lego will roll out Lego Friends, aimed at girls 5 and up....
"The Lego Friends team is aware of the paradox at the heart of its work: To break down old stereotypes about how girls play, it risks reinforcing others. “If it takes color-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains,” says Lise Eliot."
From Businessweek (print link, above; via
BoingBoing), an interesting look at Lego's new girl-oriented initiative.
posted by MonkeyToes
on Dec 15, 2011 -
189 comments
The Greatest LEGO Diorama in the Galaxy! Imperial Employee of the Month
Jay Hoff has been hard at work building the greatest LEGO Diorama in this or any other Galaxy. An impressive, most impressive 37,000 pieces of LEGO (as well as, presumably, a scary amount of time and money), including 388 mini-figurines, went into this custom commemoration of the Emperor's arrival on the second Death Star. This great moment in Imperial history was made in 2011 for Science Discovery Day at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa. It uses an Imperial Shuttle Kit with custom designed Death Star hangar.
[Via Death Star PR]
posted by Fizz
on May 27, 2011 -
41 comments
"Day by day we pass by vacant lots downtown ... Neighbourhoods that, although having a huge potential, have more and more unused spaces ... Sometimes, the tourists are the ones who open our eyes by mentioning or questioning whether this situation is normal. On other occasions, we pay attention to it for a moment only because the secondary problems that those spaces imply affect us directly. But in most of the cases, they are only a part of our way."
Habit Makes Us Blind is a series of colorful images by Spanish studio
Espai MGR that seeks to draw attention to the problem of wasted space in urban environments (specifically, in the city of Valencia) -- by building conceptual LEGO structures in them. [
via]
posted by bayani
on May 9, 2011 -
8 comments
Many people have described the popular freeform game Minecraft as
"kind of like Lego", so a few enterprising stop-motion animators have decided to
jump on that idea.
posted by The Whelk
on Mar 26, 2011 -
27 comments
Badass Lego Guns, a short YouTube video (1.55) showing five working guns built from instructions from the book of the same name by Martin Hudepohl.
[more inside]
posted by bwg
on Jan 27, 2011 -
18 comments
Ever wonder how the folks who make all those
cool Lego creations get all those pieces? It's not because they buy multiple sets to get thirty or so
cheese slopes. They go to
Bricklink, where hundreds of sellers offer up individual parts you can get in pretty much any quantity. Bricklink was started by Daniel Jezek in 2000 (it was originally called "BrickBay" but
someone pressured him to change that) and is at the top of every Lego enthusiast's list of bookmarks. Jezek passed away suddenly on September 24th at the age of 33. His
memorial page on Bricklink reveals that his was not an ordinary life, as this Americanized entrepreneur was born in Communist Czechoslovakia. The Lego Community would simply not be what it is without Dan Jezek.
posted by Legomancer
on Oct 28, 2010 -
20 comments
Mike Doyle (
blog one,
blog two) is an artist who was previously known (by boardgamers) for
boardgame artwork. He burned out on boardgame art and has taken up a new medium...
with stunning results. This is his very first model and it's an astounding work of craftsmanship, detail, mood, and tone. This is the kind of work that many builders would kill to do after several years of building.
[more inside]
posted by Legomancer
on Sep 30, 2010 -
13 comments
HELLO WORLD (SLYT) "Lego felt tip 110" printer connected to an Apple Mac. This is not a kit you can buy and does not use mindstorms. I designed/built/coded it all from scratch including analog motor electronics, sensors and printer driver, the USB interface uses a "wiring" board.
posted by grumblebee
on Jun 2, 2010 -
42 comments
Nate Neilson is a name that is not only unfamiliar to most people, it's unfamiliar to many of his biggest fans. That's because he went by the
nom-de-brick of "
nnenn". Neilson was a huge presence in the online Lego community, regularly putting out
amazing and
unique Lego creations on a regular basis, including entire
building genres.
He was also the driving force behind
Novvember, a month-long celebration of the "Vic Viper" (from the videogame "Gradius") in which he and others "riffed" on a basic central design to see how many interesting variations on it
they could make.
Sadly, Neilson passed away recently following an automobile accident. Many of his online fans only learned this way of his real name, his job as a stay-at-home-Dad with two sons, and his
other artistic outlet. He was a huge presence in the online Lego community, and he will be greatly missed.
There is a fine eulogy for him (along with an overview of his work and influence) over at the premiere Lego site,
The Brothers Brick.
(And yes, his icon was a Lego
rubber band holder.)
posted by Legomancer
on Apr 14, 2010 -
24 comments
