The Argo sails for the last time.

Golden Shpleem is down for the count, in case the lack of new posts didn't clue you in.

One half of the illustrious team, namely Jonesy, has joined up with his fellow Colorado resident, Soren, in a new blog called "Tourist Bot's Diary".

Alternatively, I find Lukas's "Builder's Block v2" and the 4-person "The Brothers Brick" to be fun reads at times.

You can, as always, get your fix of exciting Kevins news at neutronbot.com.

Just one more play time, please?

We have a theme for tonight's post. It is "mecha". We also have a subtheme, which is "mecha that involve things that I like".

Mecha+Steampunk Brickshelf user and suspected frenchard Legohaulic has combined technic goodness and an odd assortment of barrels, cannons, and this part oddity to create a wonderful 4-legged steam mech. Note the hose placement, nice detail there. The cannon doesn't seem to be connected to anything very well. I'd expect it to rip right off the mech whenever it's fired, and considering it's current angle, that would be bad news indeed for the driver. Let's hear it for gratuitous hook-hands!


Mecha+Panda People who know me know I like pandas. I have two shirts to prove it. Mike Crowley has taken the incredibly cute concept or a panda piloting a panda mech from "Panda-Z" and made it BrickFA style. While Crowley's is nice, I'd really like to see this made in a larger scale. Perhaps I'll have to do it.

Mecha+Bunny Real nice use of Bionicle in this mech by " Toa-Ju". He (or she) really has a knack from combining the Bionicle parts with the regular system parts. Surprising to see a bunch of technical bits form an organic whole.









Mecha+Community Yes that is right! There is a new site out there, following on the heels of such sites as FBTB, Classic-Castle, and Classic-Space, there is Mecha Hub. Formed by Bryce McGlone and his crew of big name mecha folk. I look forward to reading new articles there, and for them to eventually include the author of said articles in a logical place.

Architecture!

Just some quick stuff...

Check out this site, Building Utopolis, for some kick-ass microfig buildings. Site navigation is tricky sometimes, but there is cool stuff inside. Makes me want to build a microscale city of my own.





Thanks go to Soren for bringing this to my attention, this is a totally hot Shinto Shrine. Note the bent-wedge plate roofs and the inset sidewalks.

Oh those Happy Days

Whenever I am at a place that sells icecream and other such things (not like a grocery store, but an ice cream parlor) I get a chocolate malt. It reminds me of my younger years, going to the corner malt shop and sharing a malt with my sweetheart. Yay for 2 straws!

Unregardless, the best car for driving to Drive-In Movies and in participating in other "retro / nostalgic / halcyon / neveractuallyoccuredhowevermuchthereligiousrightwishesitdid" activities was the 57 Chevrolet Bel Air (allegedly unrelated to the Prince).

I suppose I'll mention something LEGO-related now. Check out how cool MisterZumbi made it look. Now I challenge him: doors that open, and a driver fitting inside! And a less tacky jukebox!

Prolific!

Arthur Gugick, a builder who has been featured in at least 2 newspapers (The Washington Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer) has added at least 8 new enormous models to his Brickshelf gallery today.

There is way too much to comment about, but lets get started.

Actually, first, a helpful message to the populace: Resize your pictures! Some of Arthur's are more than 4000x4000 wide! If you don't know how, I wrote an article about it awhile back. Read it! GIMP is free, Photoshop is great, iPhoto comes with all Macs... I'm sure everyone can find some way to resize their pictures. Keep them less than 800x600 people, and don't use BMPs!!

OK, now on to the good part

Tower of London ::: Dig the detailed windows on the side walls. I'm not too keen on the the excessive huge-part usage on the rounded tower, but I'll admit it's hard to make that round a curve while including a bunch of windows otherwise.

Arc de Triumph ::: The details in the top half are amazing. As an architecture student, I should know vaguelly what things are called, but alas, we've covered nothing like that yet. Also, examine closely the inset light gray boxes with white details made from technic bits. Yay for inset panels!

NYC Flat Iron ::: The windows! The roof seems iffy, though... maybe some wedge plates would do the trick better?

UN Building ::: Talk about the Model UN, eh? Har har... Anyway, rather ho-hum, but a ho-hum building breeds a ho-hum model.

Big Ben ::: I think I may have seen this one on BS before, but the 2 newer pictures help show off all the nice details.

Notre Dame ::: I don't really care for this one, but I can't quite place it. It has inconsistent levels of detail from top to bottom. Maybe once "Part 2" is done, it'll look better.

Forbidden City ::: Nice tilework and use of grills on this one. Not my favorite, but an excellent rendition nonetheless.

Tower of Pisa ::: "With real leaning action!" If only Marvel sold action figure-esque architectural models.


Looks like Arthur will be filling up multiple tables this Brickfest.

From Robots to Rants

Robots is a 3d movie released just over a year ago. Brickshelf user "Legohaulic" seems to think its new news, or something. I think he is french, so maybe it just got released over there.

Anyway, no matter the timing, the robots from Robots are cool, as are "Legohaulic"s renditions of them.

I eagerly awaited the debut of Robots back in the day, and enjoyed the robots and their robot-world immensely, I found the movie lacking.

I didn't like the jokes. They were all cheap jokes at pop culture and other movies. Just look at all the cheap jokes. Such jokes are very easy to make, but can fall flat even easier, as they depend completely on the viewer/listeners knowledge of the referenced item. Shrek, Robots, and their ilk can never be timeless movies!

I fell into this trap once too, and consequently the comic made little sense to a non-AFOL, having already made not too much sense to actual AFOLs.

So to Hollywood and Big Media: Don't endlessly reference pop culture. And bring back Arrested Development! You were crazy for cancelling it!

When acronyms attack!

Aaron Sneary (also known as "AMS LLCA MB GOP PBS BBQ BYOBB") presents a Gnomish Treehouse. Of course, by "presents" I actually mean "presented" because he posted about it on Lugnet and Classic-Castle almost 3 weeks ago. But we here at Golden Shpleem pride ourselves in operating on a different time scale than you cretins. I've had 10 minute tasks on my "To-Do" list for 5 months, just ask Nathan Wells about his musical instrument article!

But I digress...

Aaron's treehouse is fantastical! As in being filled with fantasy, not as in being fantastic, although I suppose it could be described by that term as well. Let's pretend, just for a moment, that "fantastical" actually means that something is fantastic and full of fantasy. Done pretending? Great!

Oddly enough, I'd say the treehouse and tree are the weakest parts. The tree seems a bit blocky, especially from this angle. The house is ho-hum and featureless. Put an arch on that window! But what shines are the animals, gnomes, and 'shrooms. Aaron deftly adapts Lenny's hafling design and combines it with racoons from LLCA (he does seem to like throwing that acronym around a lot, but I'd do the same thing), turtles, birds, snails, and a cute ladybug to make a wonderfully whimsical scene. And the mushrooms! Dig that magnetically attached big one! Hmm... looking at that last picture I suddenly notice how plain and flat the landscape is, which makes me frown. Well, perhaps Aaron should take a second look at this creation; a wonderful concept marred by a negligence towards detail. Either way, it's a genre that I hope is explored by him and other builders more.