The Simpsons Enter A Lego Dimension In "Brick Like Me"

Even though I probably haven't watched The Simpsons in over a decade now, they've been making the right moves lately to capture a new audience. A promo for an upcoming episode called Brick Like Me draws some interesting parallels to The Lego Movie, both featuring characters existing in two realities. After waking up in a Lego form, the family begins to realize that something might be off with this brick reality. For any of our readers who still happen to have cable, the episode will premiere tomorrow at 8/7 central. The overlords at Lego continue to spread their brick agenda through every multimedia facet imaginable, but honestly we don't mind.

Legos + Acid House = Play House

Playhouse is a really curious automata developed by Alex Allmont, featuring dozens of mechanisms built in Lego Technic that generate slow acid house music. Powered by an algorithm that recreates the distinct, programmed squelched 4/4 beat, different parts of the mechanisms are triggered to layer complexity to the track and modulate simple bass patterns. Over 6 minutes you'll witness the functions of all the various systems of this curious device, which was commissioned for the UK's Audiograft festival.

The Official Lego Ghostbusters Set Incoming

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It was just recently announced on Lego Cuusoo, the blog dedicated to user submitted ideas that the Ghostbusters set will be made commercially available soon. Considering that 2014 is the franchises 30th anniversary (The original film was released in 1984), the folks at Lego are fast tracking this set for release in June 2014 as  #21108 LEGO® Ghostbusters™ with a price point of $49.99. Featuring the Ecto-1 and 4 minifigures of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and  Winston Zeddmore.

During the Cuusoo selection process, it turns out that there were actually two competing Ghostbuster projects at the same time, but Brent Waller's take ended up meeting the Kickstarter style supporter quota that the website employed. When the set comes out, he'll be entitled to 1% of the royalties from the sales of this set. Check out more shots of this set after the break!

This fun and iconic vehicle from the blockbusting ‘80s movie is fully loaded with all the paranormal detection equipment needed to track down those ghastly ghosts. It also features cool Ghostbusters logo decoration, removable roof, tracking computer and seats for 3 minifigures.

This Year's Oscar Nominees - Lego Edition

As the Oscars draw nearer, someone took it upon themselves to turn the entire cast of Best Picture nominated flicks and give them a really well done Lego-fied treatment, and the results are nothing short of amusing. On a side note, I've never had a harder time guessing which movie might be the best overall (although I will be boycotting the Oscars in support of VFX artists this year).

Revel in the strangely calm demeanor of Lego Leonardo Di Caprio as all hell breaks loose behind him in Wolf of Wall Street, look on in horror as Lego Sandra Bullock's Lego helmet is missing it's visor in Gravity, and many others after the break!

How They Created The Lego® Movie

Lego Movie was a pretty damn neat movie. Aside from being an incredibly meta idea to begin with considering the idea of all the different Lego franchises inhabiting the same universe, the movie added an additional layer of meta not seen in the trailers that surprised us in the best way possible. Overall it was an excellent, fun movie with a fantastic message to offer regarding sharing your creativity with others and not being afraid to think outside the box to create something new. A surprisingly deep message from a movie about bright colored bricks (Which I can't get enough of).

This little making of reel touches on some of the making of aspects, as well as a 15 minute b-roll reel featuring various moments from the production of the film after the break! Whether you've ever had Lego in your life or not, I can't recommend it enough.

Build - A Chrome Experiment with LEGO®

In between doing their best to turn themselves into Cyberdyne and recreate the events of the Terminator movies over the past year as well as the various Youtube and Google+ fiascos, I've been starting to think that Google has lost their playful side. However, every once in a while they seem to offer us a collaboration or experiment that beckons back to their golden age of experimenting and offering users ways to make their lives easier.

Get building.

This Lego collaboration is a pretty fun one: Claim stake to a location on Google maps and build whatever you want on it, then publish it to a 1:1 world map which will be populated by any other like-minded brick lover out there. So you could technically immortalize where you live with a living monument to your greatness or whatever else comes to mind with the limited brick set offered. It's free and situated inside your browser, and will probably result in some amazing free worlwide data collection for Lego and Google: Ingenious or diabolical?

Life Size Lego Hot Rod Is Ridiculous

This is redefining over the top..An actual functioning, full scale drivable Lego hot rod powered by air thanks to close to 256 mini Technic pistons to propel the vehicle forward. Despite the fact that it's never shown taking off at high speeds (Probably due to a fear of it exploding into a million pieces), this is a pretty amazing little piece of engineering.

Specs:
- The engine is made from standard Lego pieces and runs on air!
- The engine has four orbital engines and a total of 256 pistons.
- More than 500,000 LEGO pieces.
- Top speed around 20-30km (We drive it slow as are scared of giant lego explosion)
- Built in Romania and shipped to a secret location in Melbourne.
- It's a Hot Rod design, mainly because hot rods are cool.

Akiyuky's Lego Great Ball Contraption Collective

We've featured GBC's (Great Ball Contraptions) and other contraptions multiple times before by Youtube user/Lego fanatic Akiyuky, but this is the first time we've seen a collective version featuring some of the best Lego tinkerers in the area. The goal of a GBC is to simply ferry a ball from one place to the next, while showing off your prowess with advanced Lego engineering. The end result is always an infinite loop, but it's always entrancing to see how each creator approached the same problem.

The Lego Movie Gets A New Trailer

While the debut trailer blew our minds a few months ago, the second trailer to the Lego Movie gives us a  look into the interesting, yet increasingly bizarre plot of the film. Starring Emmett, an incredibly optimistic protagonist thrust into a position of great power, the movie's plot seems to draw in the entire Lego universe and all it's franchises into a battle against 'President Business' (Will Ferrell), who's goal is to glue the entire universe together. While it all sounds kind of meta and pretty silly as well, the movie is already looking like it's going to be incredibly entertaining and well put together, especially with the star studded cast (Liam Neeson joins the fray).

The movie definitely does have me wondering what type of insane Lego set tie ins they'll be able to come up with considering that the movie features over 30 years of Lego's in just the trailer alone (Those retro space Lego's are too distinct to miss). The movie is currently slated for an August 2014 release.

Adventure Time In Lego

The fun folks at Screen Novelties, a collective of self proclaimed 'creative weirdos' specializing in stop motion work were approached by the folks behind Adventure Time to recreate the awesome opening of the show with Legos for a special episode. The end result is a completely spot on 1:1 recreation using everyone's favorite bricks. Originally featured on Youtube's spectacularly awful Geek Week, we waited until it showed up on Vimeo to feature it as to not fuel that fire.

Our friends at Adventure Time hired us to play with Lego for a couple months. It was one of the most Mathematical-est projects we've gotten to do.

Scifi Lego Goodness By Pierre Fieschi

(Via)

With the recent news of Gearbox choosing to move ahead with HD remasters and potential sequels of the Homeworld franchise (Who's original creators are working on a spiritual successor called Hardware), I'm sure custom Lego builders all around are rejoicing at a chance to see this franchise return after a long period of dormancy.

I get the feeling that Homeworld became a huge point of attraction to many Lego builders thanks to the modular, angular designs of the fleet ships that were omnipresent in the title that lent themselves well to being translated into brick form. Over the years it seems to have become a prevalent practice for any good Lego builder to take a stab at recreating these ships to prove their mettle, like hobbyist and designer Pierre Fieschi, who even went so far as to expand the universe with his own creations. Check out more of his amazing Lego endeavors after the break, and like me you'll hopefully contemplate adding another pricey hobby to your list of daily activities.

Steampunk Lego Construct - The Amagosa

Based off of Theo Jansen's incredible kinetic sculpture principles, dubbed as 'Strandebeests,' Lego hobbyist/brick head Jason Allemann created a truly unorthodox land ship with mechanized leg functions powered and controlled by Lego Power Functions, typically intended for the more advanced 'Technic' sets.



Aside from it's incredible walking system, 'The Amagosa' features a whole slew of awesome little features, ranging from a fully functional crane to a rather cool trading ship flavor with post apocalyptic elements. It's just really cool to see people replicate the engineers massive scaled creations and incorporate them into this medium, which I originally wouldn't have though possible. Allemann has shared the how-to for building the walking structure on his Rebrickable page, which allows creators to share the building instructions for their Lego creations.

The Lego Movie Trailer - Hell Has Frozen Over

Lego Movie has long been rumored as a pet project of Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs fame, but I think many people (Myself included) simply had no clue as to what a movie based off a toy franchise could possibly entail, or how it would look. The release of this trailer was so unexpected, and ultimately turned out so baffling that a few of us were simply left in shock as to the reality of this movie. It's actually happening.



Can you blame me for being so unsettled at the sight of the Lego versions of Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shaquille O' Neal in his now retired #34 Lakers outfit, Superman, Wonder Woman and a Morgan Freeman voiced Gandalf look-alike under the same roof? My sleep deprived brain shattered at this licensing nightmare presented in a scene lasting less than 30 seconds. Just imagine what the rest of the movie has in store for us.

While the story seems to follow the basic journey of the hero format, with an average Joe Lego minifigure being bestowed with great responsibility to stop a Lego Tyrant from gluing their entire universe together, what I actually see through that thin veil of plot is one of the most diabolical product placement schemes since The Wizard; A true slurry of surreal franchise-bending eye candy that I will inevitably end up paying $15 to watch in 3D, followed by dumping my life savings into purchasing the absolutely insane Lego set tie ins for this movie. Those Danish brick warlocks have done it yet again, and I pray that your minds (And wallets) will be ready to assemble in 2014.

The Lego Axle Sorter AS-L40A

Akiyuki, the Japanese engineer who spent close to 600 hours on his absolutely mind blowing Lego Great Ball Contraption has returned with another amazing Lego creation, the Axle Sorter AS-L40A. The intricate miniature factory is entirely powered by one motor, and is nothing short of a brilliantly designed organization machine. Put this guy in charge of designing factories already.

Awesome Lego Tribute Work By Jerac

(Via)

Most brickheads (Lego addicts) tend to start off their hobbies by paying tribute to some of their favorite franchises, typically ones that LEGO hasn't officially created into lines or licensed. Flickr user Jerac has dedicated a large chunk of his time to tribute work, mainly focusing on the rich world and factions of Warhammer 40K, as well as pumping out original designs.

His ingenuity has allowed him to recreate some truly amazing Space Marine and Ork pieces, down to faithfully capturing the look of chunky space marine armor on his figures (Contrary to popular belief, Starcraft did not do it first). Check out more of his amazing work after the break!

One Impressive Custom Lego Batcave

(Via)

We've featured Lego creations in the past, but I don't think we've featured one this intricate. The Batcave is a large part of the Batman ethos, and Wayne Hussey and Carlyle Livingston have built a stunning recreation of the legendary hideout. According to Hussey & Livingston, it took just over 400 hours over about three months, with modifications constantly being made.

Estimated at over 20,000 bricks, the installation weighs in at a hefty 100 pounds and features four LEGO Power Functions motors. Check out more photos of this breathtaking diorama after the break!

Bonaparte - 40°42'48.46 N 73°58'18.38 W

Bonaparte's ridiculously named official video for their Rube-Goldbergian noise fest was made possible thanks to the power of Lego. Using a variety of Mindstorms working in tandem, Peter Cocteau assembled this synchronized take on the 1:20 track, taken from the album 'Sorry We're Open,' the third studio album by the Berlin based indie-punk band.

The Lego Great Ball Contraption - 2012 Edition

With 600 hours to spare, one man set out to create a mindblowing feat of Lego engineering: The Great Ball contraption. I've seen a variety of these on Youtube in the past, but nothing as elaborate as the device that user Akiyuki assembled. The point of these GBC's is to create a device which moves balls on a self sustaining cyclical course, via a menagerie of engineered sorting devices, using Lego Technics/Mindstorms components. I can't even imagine how much this cost to put together, but it sure is a mesmerizing watch for anyone with an appreciation for everyone's favorite colored bricks.

The LEGO® Story

In honor of the 80th anniversary of Lego (1932-2012), the company has released an awesome little look back at the history, and humble beginnings of the company as a carpentry business. The CG animated retelling of the companies history goes into the idea of a carpenter called Ole Kirk Christiansen, who spun a wooden toy idea into the famous interlocking brick business millions have come to love.

It's an amazing story of a man with an ambition, who one day took the Danish phrase 'Leg Godt,' which meant 'Play well' and created the famous company name (It also means 'I put together' in Latin).

If you've ever loved the plastic bricks, you'll love hearing about how this company came to be, especially when it came to Ole's uncompromising standards when it came to quality. The story spans 3 generations, and features a narration from the perspective of the latest generation of the Christiansen line.

Theo Jansen's Lego Rhinoceros Needs To Become A Reality

Remember Theo Jansen? He's a Danish industrial designer who left many in awe when he unveiled his 'strandebeests,' incredibly intricate large scale kinetic walkers powered by none other than the wind. The Rhinoceros, which premiered in 2007 blew many minds with its incredibly fluid, yet complex motion.

Fast forward a few years later, and a Lego enthusiast/industrial designer called Kvanb recreated the Rhinoceros in Lego form as a tribute to Jansen's genius. With Jansen's blessing he hopes to get enough interest on Cuusoo (Kickstarter for Legos) to make his project a set for the masses. It doesn't cost a thing, just a show of interest. If you're interested in contributing, head over to his project page! A brief video of the Rhinoceros in motion at Jansen's workshop below.