News Saturday

There was so much going on in the past few weeks that for today we transform ourselves into a news portal and give you an update about recent happenings.

Competitions:

• As in recent years, the Lego Military Build Competition has started. This years categories do not favor aircraft so much as during the past years, but for sure we will see lots of excellent creations. The first submissions are on the way, the deadline is July 10th.

LEGO products:

• The Architecture line has a new member, the 21018 United Nations Headquarters. Eurobricks has already posted a few hi-res images.
• TechnicBRICKs has covered the full Technic line up for 2H with the B models too. The biggest news is the 42008 Service Truck that stands out from the other sets with its color.

MOCs:

• Mad Physicist continues his coverage of the eighties, this time he built Knight Ridert.
• bobalexander has built this classic light blue Porsche 917 in Gulf livery (via the Lego Car Blog).
• Norton74 is the builder of this Scania truck. (via legozz)
• Sheepo's newest model is a Lotus Sevennel (via the Lego Car Blog).

Developments in the air force: Supermarine Spitfire

Building awesome models is cool, but I think it is even cooler to build several awesome models that match each other in scale, let it be about train engines by depi, cars, aircraft or something else. As I rebuilt the MiG-15 and finished the Messerschmitts I knew there will be more.

The new member is a Supermarine Spitfire Mark Vb. This was the last version with characteristic three-blade propeller of the early versions.

This is my first plane that uses a camouflage scheme. I think the dark green-dark bluish gray combination fits it quite nicely. It required more thinking than the previous planes as not every brick I needed was available in all the colors. I decided to build the markings from bricks as long as I can, I am quite happy with this one. With a USAF or Soviet plane I would have been in more trouble.

I was not happy with the existing Bf-109s either. As Dieterr89 pointed out, the wings were too narrow, especially when compared to the Spitfire. The Spitfire has a larger wing, but not by that much. The other problem was that the front section of the body was too wide. As I built the original version I was already thinking about how else can it be done, but the real inspiration came only while building the Spitfire.

So I rebuild the Swiss and the Hungarian Bf-109 as well. This was a serious rebuild, only the tail, the nosecone and the landing gear stayed intact. The wing is a bit longer now and the fuselage has been rebuilt completely together with the canopy.

I am much more content with it now. It looks like recently I need several iterations with all my models. With the Spitfire I am happy as it is, I hope it's going to stay like that.

Behind the Iron Curtain

After the many tanks and fighters let's see something more peaceful. There is no Iron Curtain for a while, but many of us still remember it. April's heme of the month on LUGNuts was "Behing the Iron Curtain". As my old Trabant proves this theme was one of my favorites.

Mad Physicist has built a quite recent police car from Moscow. As one of the commenters says "Ugly car in reality, and yours is true replica :)". Well, there is quite a bit of truth in that.

This fantasctic Ural motorcycle by Lino M was featured on Brothers Brick too. I have not seen this in real life a lot. The Soviet flag gives it an extra charm.

This ZISZ 110 from rabidnovaracer is pretty cool too. To me this car model represents one of the darkest ages of communism as it was used during the 50s during the most avid terror by the the highest ranked people in the party in several countries.

This is a somewhat friendlier piece, the luxury car from Chechoslovakia with a V8 engine: the Tatra 603 from lego911:

Rolic has built this Latvia RAF-2203 (yes, RAF stands for Riga Autobus Factory in this case). I have seen plenty of these as a kid.

Of course I could not stand not to build something. The Trabi has existed for a while, but the LUGNuts challenge made me realize that I did not take any photos yet. Yet another problem to solve was proportions: the old model was simply too flat. Luckily I have found a way to inject two layers of plates to make it taller without a major rebuilt. I am much happier with the result now:

I wanted to build something truly new too. As during last month I used up most of my Bricklink budget already, this Ikarus 260 was built on the computer only:

The front is quite similar to some existing Ikarus builds, not too different from the solution of ainex. I tried to build the doors, windows and the rear lights a bit more special. Hope you like it!

Clicking any of the images above will bring you to more photos.

Beyond the hobby

LEGO is very popular all over the net: if you would like to build, you will find a lot of help: you can get bricks from Bricklink, older sets from Ebay, instructions and inspiration from one of the many community sites.

But for most of us, this is a hobby to spend our time and money. Well-known builders sometimes create instructions for their creations but frequently they don't. This is no surprise: many of the models gathering fame are complicated, fragile or contain special pieces.

An interesting exception is Daniel Siskind, the man behind Brickmania. He built his own business to create and sell sets without any official ties to the LEGO Company. Wars that happened for real are a taboo for LEGO's own designers (for understandable reasons) and this is the gap Brickmania tries to fill: the website offers more than 50, mostly military themed sets starting from World War II until armies in recent history.

The models are built from real LEGO bricks. Since these models are much more special than the ones you can buy in LEGO stores, they are noticeably pricier. For example this Jeep at $35 is one of the cheapest models. It is part of the 'Durabuilder' series, which in my interpretation means that it will not immediately fall apart if kids take it into their hands.

For this the buyer gets an individually packaged set in similar quality, but much more rare, including minifigs and other extras depending on the set.

Tanks form the bulk of the selection: there are German, American and Soviet vehicles as well, for example the T-34 below. This set is a lot more complex than the Jeep: it includes a fully rotating turret, a driver and the tracking mechanism. It contains 724 bricks and at $345 is noticeably pricier.

Besides tanks there are other types of vehicles. The CCKW truck below was widely used by US armed forces during WWII. This is a medium set at $100.

There are a few aircraft too, like this P-51 Mustang. Similarly to the Jeep it is also a part of the Durabuilder line. The number of pieces and price at $100 are similar to the CCKW.

There are probably quite a few of readers at this point who think these sets are way too expensive. On one hand this is understandable since LEGO is not the cheapest toy and these models are clearly above the price level of the official ones.

On the other hand it is also clear that the founder has invested a lot of his time and energy into Brickmania. These models were be designed, instructions printed and individually packaged. They are likely sold in much smaller quantities than official LEGO sets. The most difficult problem is probably to acquire the required bricks in sufficient quantities at a good price. For comparison, buying all bricks for my somewhat smaller sized MiG-15 already cost more than $80 and quite a bit of time.

Overall, I think that if you are into military LEGO sets but would not like to spend time designing and buying parts for your own model, Brickmania is a good alternative.

(bricksngears.com is not affiliated with Brickmania in any way.)

The Spitfire story, part II

In the second part of our Spitfire coverage (part I) we look at models that stand out from the rest.

In terms of scale, the plane of legoleo is quite similar to others. At first glance the color scheme seems a bit unconventional: instead of using dark green and dark gray seen on many other LEGO Spitfires this aircraft uses a mix of light gray and normal green. It is not the color scheme that puts it above the field though, rather the motor built into the the nose that drives the propeller. We have seen similar things amongst the Messerschmitt builds too, but this model takes it one step further: instead of hiding the engine inside the body, the builder chose to integrate it in the shape of the body and expose it. Clever.

Next on our list is Brian Fitzsimmons. This plane has been built virtually only but still looks good. The fuselage and the wings are a bit narrower than on most other builds. The invasion stripes make the details more interesting. The three-bladed propeller looks a bit out of style though: the Spitfire versions used during the Normandy campaign had four-bladed propellers.

We have already covered Lego Monster in the previous part. As one would expect from a British gentleman he did not stop at building a single Spitfire. This is his second model, built a couple of years later at 1:20 scale. The larger size lead to more details and nicer shapes: in my opinion the wing, the body and the tail all look more nicely shaped and closer to the real Spitfire.

We saved the non plus ultra for last. thirdwigg has been already covered on the blog too, but I think his model is well worth another look. This plane is the largest of all, built at a grandiose 1:12 scale. As one would expect, the larger body makes it possible to have a really nice shape all across the board. But not only the shape is perfect, it is full of working details too, like the adjustable propeller (see video). If you are interested in how one decides to build something like this, it is all covered on his blog. It is also interesting to look at the two work-in-progress photos (1, 2) that show the plane in half-ready state.

And what comes next? As you could expect, I am preparing my own version. Not sure exactly when yet, but stay tuned!

The Spitfire story, part I

We have covered Messerschmitts on the blog earlier (part I, part II), let's take a look at the other side, more precisely Britain.

The Supermarine Spitfire is probably the most well known British fighter from World War II. It was a protagonist of the Battle of Britain when the Royal Air Force defended British airspace in spite of being in numeric minority. According to statistics there were more aerial victories by Hurricane pilots, but still somehow the Spitfire emerged as the symbol of victory. It could have been be due to its slightly better performance, or simply because it is somehow more aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Hence it is no wonder that numerous LEGO versions have been built over the years. Let's start with the model of Exploded LEGO. This is one of the smallest one I have found on the net. It is less colorful than the others, but still has plenty of interesting details. For example the yellow leading edge of the wings, or the small "flag" on the tail. In spite of its size it even has a retractable retractable landing gear!

We have introduced Mattias Martenssonnal (alias eremms) already during the Messerschmitt coverage. His model is a bit more colorful, light gray and dark gray gives you the characteristic camouflage pattern of  Spitfires. Unlike most others, the insignia are built from bricks rather thank stickers. I think it looks really good.

Stefan Johansson has been missing from with his Messerschmitt, but he will not be missing from this one. He also uses a dark / light gray combination. (Maybe this is a Scandinavian thing?) The plane is graceful but still has the typical Spitfire contour:

Scott Peterson has chosen the more typical dark green - dark gray combination. Somewhat unusually though he chose to use the airbrush to reach the perfect color combination. This is a later Spitfire version with four-bladed propeller:

Today's last creation is from Lego Monster who should be familiar to our readers already. He took his fair share of Spitfire building too. Today we look at the 1:36 scale version that was built a couple of years ago. The plane is built from real dark green and dark gray, which looks pretty nice, just like other details: the yellow part of the wing and the flag.

To be continued next week!

Cars, Cars

This week's post is more peaceful than the last couple of ones. Peter Blackert alias lego911 is probably the most productive car builder on the net, or at least in LUGNuts, the best car builder community.

A while ago he started to build the friends of Lightning McQueen. Although the LEGO Company has an official product line around the movie Cars, I like these ones built from real bricks a lot more. Take a look at Flo:

These are not real photos, but they look good nevertheless. The realistic lighting and the POV-Ray treatment makes them quite professional in my opinion. David Hobbscapp is a Jaguar E-Type, built from bricks:

And this is Finn McMissile in action:

At last, one of the most recognized characters, the Sheriff:

It is worth taking a look at lego911's other photos as well, there are many good ones from Cars and unrelated too.

Family photo

I still have pretty ambitious plans to build, but not so much time recently. Until I manage to carve out more, this is a family photo of two of the planes built so far.

Ikarus in all quantities

Although many years old, the Ikarus buses are still one of the most recognizable products from Hungary. The KLIKK blog has recently published a nice summary of the LEGO versions (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). The text is in Hungarian, but the models are international :)

Although it exist on computer only, my personal favorite is this Ikarus 280 articulated bus created by gabor1980 alkotása. It looks simply fantastic:

It is worth checking out the other ones too.

I am into LEGO again. What next?

I have several friends who have started buying and playing LEGO recently. Assume you are one of them: you have bought a few sets, built them, built the B-Models too and you find it cool. The obvious question is: what next? You can buy more and do the same. Apart from financials, there are other bottlenecks: you will have to store them somewhere. And unless you are one of those LEGO Investors, this is going to become a problem.

So besides buying more, what other options do you have? Let's take a look. Some of the options is biased towards Technic, but I hope non-Technic fans can also get some starting points.

First, I would recommend watching the hilarious keynote by Hillel Cooperman from BrickCon 2012. It's 25 minutes, but worth it. (Not for your kids though.)

Ok, now that you have realized where you are on your path, let me show you some pointers. (Just in case you are wondering: AFOL = Adult Fan Of Lego, MOC = My Own Creation.)

Most importantly I recommend you try to build things yourself. Some of these places may give you inspiration:

Rebrickable. This is a site for people to share their creations. While it is not necessarily easy to navigate, the best thing about this site is that all creations have building instructions available, so this is a great way to get started. (Yes, some instructions cost money, but many don't.) For many creations you are able to download an LXF file that allows you to investigate a virtual model in Lego Digital Designer.

It may be helpful to look at what others have created. There are several sites specializing in this:

• The good old Brickshelf is probably the oldest site doing that.
• Mocpages is a bit more modern, but has good content too.
• Finally, the most vibrant place is certainly Flickr. Yes, I know, Flickr sounds a bid oldschool in todays Web many-dot-o world, but that's how things are. A good way to start is picking an interesting community and browse around. For example LUGNuts is all about cars, or this group is mostly about aircraft.

There are also some really good books around building that may give you more inspiration. My favorites:

• The unoffical LEGO Technic Builder's Guide from Sariel explains you how to do suspensions, gearboxes and all sorts of LEGO Technic magic.
• If you are wondering about non-Technic magic, The Unofficial LEGO Advanced Building Techniques Guide is a free download that sheds light on some of the magic.

There are some pretty cool magazines too:

• Hispabrick is a free magazine that is available in English, with really good content.
• Railbricks is all about LEGO trains. Premium content too.
• BrickJournal is something you have to pay for. But it's only a few bucks and really worth it.

TechnicBRICKs is a blog you may be interested in. It is mostly about LEGO Company products and specacular Technic creations. On the other hand Technicopedia is the encylopedia of our childhood's favorite Technic sets.

There are probably 1000 others that I have left out, but I am sure these will get you started.