The Great Wall Made Small

Flickr user lisqr has built this wonderful microscale model of one of the most impressive architectural feats in mankind’s history, the Great Wall of China. While the real Great Wall was several thousand miles long, lisqr employs a nifty series of connected vignettes to capture the wall’s serpentine path.

Happy Chinese New Year!

As OJ says over on The Living Brick, “The great thing about Japan and China using the same zodiacal chart but celebrating the New Year on different dates is that I get to do this twice!” Indeed.

Schneider Cheung celebrates the Year of the Dragon with the most wonderfully sculpted Chinese dragon I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, rack911 celebrates with a depiction of Cai Shen, the God of Wealth, complete with a golden dragon and a bowl for treasure.

Revisiting downtown Tokyo

I’m still not satisfied with my indoor, winter/rain/Seattle photo setup, so I’ve been playing around quite a bit with post-processing to make up for the less-than-optimal lighting in my recent LEGO photos. After I finally posted my completed microscale Tokyo that I’d built a year earlier, I went a little wild with this next photo. I ended up turning it into a 1960s postcard, inspired by Godzilla battling some sort of kaiju as a visiting King Kong looks on.

The scale varies within the scene, and is wildly incorrect for the Micropolis standard I used as the base, but my tiny Tokyo has everything I remember from the time I spent there in the 70′s and 80′s — old-style bullet trains and neon-hued commuter trains, brightly colored advertising cubes atop buildings in Ginza and Shinjuku, the ever-expanding industry around Tokyo Harbor, Meiji Shrine, the National Diet, and the iconic red and white of Tokyo Tower.

Lego sculpture of Beauty and the Beast

Vincent Cheung’s (fvin&yan) sculpture of the ballroom scene from Beauty and the Beast is flourishing with details. This was built for Ani-Com Hong Kong and made its way into the top 12 entries, which you should definitely check out.

Here you shall find your inner peace

Sam W. (-infomaniac-) presents the Temple of the Tan Tiger complete with an interior, a backstory and his thoughts. It’s also a surprise to see a sci-fi builder build castle. Even among castle builders, it is rare to find a Japanese castle of this size and quality.

Beyond imagination: a LEGO exhibit in Hong Kong

The talented group of LEGO fans in Hong Kong have put together a large exhibit organized by and hosted in Cityplaza from April 15 – May 2. There are 3 sections of the display. The first features a panel of storyboards detailing development of the LEGO Company. The second is a display of 2,000 figures and large figure sculptures spanning over 30 years of minifig history.

The third and most exciting section is a display of 17 famous world landmarks and icons such as the Grand Palace in Thailand by Vincent Cheung, a pyramid from Egypt by ArzLan, the Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Russia by Schneider Cheung, and Tiananmen in China by Andy Hung. Some early pictures taken by Joey Kwok have been uploaded on Flickr. I’ll update this post as more pictures of the event show up.

Human-powered transport

As much as I like to see more Asian elements within the available palette of LEGO elements, and as addicted as I am to the collectible minifigs, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the hair piece used for both (both?!) the sumo wrestler and geisha. Nevertheless, I can’t help but love anything that springs from the brilliantly bricking fingers of Michael Jasper.

Via twee affect, which has a nice discussion of the various interesting techniques that Michael inevitably applies to his LEGO creations.

2011 bounces in on rabbit ‘tocks

かわいいレゴずき (“I Love Cute LEGO”) has their annual roundup of New Year greetings from Japanese LEGO builders up on the blog, replete with adorable bunnies to honor the Year of the Rabbit.

But most unique of all this year’s New Year creations is this set of osechi cuisine by mumu from the resident builders at かわいいレゴずき:

I always thought osechi food was a bit of an acquired taste, but I’ve said the same thing about traditional American holiday food. (In both cases, it doesn’t help that my choices are further limited by being a vegetarian from birth.) Whether you appreciate the source of inspiration or not, the LEGO version is a lovely evocation of a uniquely Japanese tradition.

Happy 2011, LEGO fans of the world! Scientists, please provide a status update on your abject failure to give us flying cars and personal robots. We are, after all, living in The Future…

Kyomachiya – “capital town house”

Brickshelf user midnightcat built a detailed kyomachiya townhouse complete with a fully adorned interior. The technique of building the roof with a combination of cylinders and tiles create a good effect.

MS GUNDAM, RX-78

It takes at least a second look at GYUTA K.’s Gundam to appreciate this creation. I personally like the transforming core fighter chest piece, which you can see in the gallery on MOCpages.

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