Batman’s other ride

Calin‘s Bat Rod is a nifty creation, but the presentation really makes it stand out. In addition to the appropriate brown vintage background, the lighting texture on the model (especially the roof) is gorgeous.

Thanks for the tip Ewok in Disguise!

Catch! calls the Once-ler.

He let something fall. It’s a Truffula seed. The last one of all! You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.

The Once-ler’s house is brought to you by Jason Allemann‘s girlfriend, who built this with his advice and collection.

 

Images of Lego Avengers sets

Marvel has revealed the first pictures of some of the upcoming Lego Avengers sets. The sets and minifigs look good except for Iron Man, who must have been modeled after a bobblehead version 🙂

Via Brickset

Advance releases classic LEGO commercials! [News]

Advance has been making LEGO tv commercials for over 30 years and recently they rediscovered many classic commercials in their archives. They will be releasing them online over the next ten weeks, so look for them here, with a bit of commentary from the people involved in their creation.

I am a big fan of vintage LEGO ads and commercials, so I’m pretty excited about this project. Come take a trip down memory lane with Advance and The Brothers Brick!

Blast from the Past Trailer video:

 

Spyrius (1994):

 

Art director Christian Faber says:

“We shot this in London or LA, I can’t actually remember! It was one of the first motion control spots we did. At 0:15 We used a kind of ‘magic building’ technique where the bricks are held on the end of metal rods and then pulled apart. And if you look closely at 0:00 you can actually see the edge of the studio in the top
left corner.

“The set filled a whole studio and we used a lot of analogue techniques — the planet is just painted cardboard and the backdrop is just a screen with
little holes in it and a big light behind it. The hands you can see moving the sets at 0:05 and 0:21 secs are actually wax hands. I had quite a lot of
explaining to do when customs asked why I had a bag full of fake arms!”

Technic Racers (1997):

 

Faber says:

“We shot it in a specially built 10-metre tunnel that was hand-painted and filled with smoke. While it may look straight, if you look closely at 00:15
you can see the yellow lines bending slightly — that’s because at this point we filmed the car in a carousel to make it look like it was speeding
forward! The animatronic hand was cast on a girl’s hand so it was a perfect fit and gave her the control she needed in the more complicated movements.”

Wild West (1996)

 

Faber says:

“We juxtaposed stills of the LEGO sets being ‘magic built’ with lots of scenes from classic American Westerns. The last few shots featuring the fight scene
were filmed and then graded to fit in with the rest of the background scenes. The magic building techniques shown here are actually illegal now –
the law today requires that toy sets that need to be constructed have to be shown being built by hand.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

If you’re not familiar with the Family Guy spoofs of Star Wars, I suggest you look into them. Even if you don’t know the original source, you have to love car_mp‘s rendition of big-headed baby Stewie as Darth Vader. I like this enough that I may have to build one for myself.

darthstewie2

The spice must flow

As much as I prefer Frank Herbert’s original novels, David Lynch created a unique vision of the Dune universe that was all his own. Stefan Käsmayer (-2×4-) has recently recreated bits of Lynch’s version in LEGO, beginning with the Harkonnen ornithopter (via The Living Brick):

Ornithopter01

He followed this with a little scene depicting Paul Atreides practicing his combat skills (via VignetteBricks):

Paul