While many of us around the world are sweltering in the summer heat, I thought it would be a perfect time to dive back into the deep end of the LEGO Flickr group photo pool to cool off. Swimming around, I was startled by seeing an “old school” AFOL builder breaching the surface once again with some of his killer builds. That builder is Ken Ito / 暁工房, based in Tokyo, Japan. I say “old school” as I was looking back through his photostream and I saw some of his builds that I had faved waaaaay back in 2010. Namely this cute little black-and-tan dachshund. He also built some killer dinosaur builds that still stand the test of time. The “killer builds” we are here to enjoy today, however, are killer whales (orcas), along with bottlenose dolphins and penguins. Ecologically speaking, plastic and aquatic animals are not a good combination. However,...

League of Legends is such a popular game that even non-gamers are familiar with it. That’s probably because of the Netflix hit Arcane. If you are not familiar with it and you are looking for something new to watch, then Arcane might be the show for you. It has solid animation with often vibrant colors and a captivating storyline. The same goes for this vibrant MOC built by Dan O’Connor. Forced Perspective It features wonderful colors mixed together in an often challenging pattern—a MOC that tells the story of the hero of the underworld! Dan was so kind to tell us a bit about how this MOC came together. Cheese Slopes and Friction: A Chat with Dan O’Connor Marco: What inspired you to make an arcane MOC? Are you a fan of the game or the Netflix series? Dan: Aside from building LEGO, I also spend a lot of my free...

via firstlegoleague.org Last year, at a farmer’s market, I was surprised to find a robotics team nestled in between the local fruits and veg. I watched as the young people running the booth let kids come up and control a mobile robot that was sucking up large foam rings and then shooting them at a target. The booth was run by a team of teenagers from the local high school, and they had designed, coded, and built the robot for something called the First Robotics Competition. Each year, the parent organization issues a series of challenges and rules for the playing fields and robots that the team will build. The teams then, in their own home shop, build a robot designed to complete those challenges as quickly as possible. They then meet in a series of regional events and progress to national competitions. Winners are based on the number of challenges...

When LEGO announced the new Botanicals sets 10372 Hibiscus and 10373 Mini Bonsai Trees, my first thought wasn’t that they would be just “botanical display sets.” It was more like, “This is a minifigure-scale tree battle pack!” Why do Star Wars fans get all the fun with their endless parade of “battle packs” to build armies with? As a fantasy and foliage builder, trees are my armies. And for those who need to populate a bunch of trees quickly in a MOC, set, or city, these new botanical sets appeared to bring the good stuff. So when I received this wave of botanicals from LEGO, I was eager to find out how well they’d work. The truth is, trees have gotten short shrift in LEGO sets from the earliest days to today. A few rare examples have a reasonable amount of detail. And with the explosion of new foliage elements, trees...

Have you noticed a strange influx of Middle Earth builds the last few summers? That’s no coincidence. This summer marked the fourth year of the revived Middle Earth LEGO Olympics (or MELO for short). And this year, we decided to go even bigger than ever! Thanks to bricknerd’s own Jordan Jivkov (aka Dan Ko) for designing the logo! What is MELO, you ask? For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Middle Earth LEGO Olympics, the annual contest got its start on MOCpages, a now-defunct social media site devoted to the LEGO hobby and MOCing community. It was held annually there for several years, coming to an end in 2017. After that, the contest remained dormant until 2022 when LOTRLUG held a revised version of the contest. The contest follows a tournament setup where builders face off against each other in a series of rounds, each with a unique Middle...