Brick Science wrap-up, Good Scientist impulse build category

Okay, continuing on, my thoughts on a few favorites from the good scientist impulse build category from the Brick Science contest.

Sir Nadroj's Dr. Able Tosplice was my pick for my personal favorite GEM award. There are just such great build details here, like the lightsaber table legs, that great microscope, and the clever way the skelly his held up on the stand. The real clincher here, though, is the use of that Scala necklace as a DNA model. That's just a beautiful idea. Those details are just the sorts of things you might expect to see sitting around a geneticists office.


TK1420's Marie and Pierre Curie won the category. Some nice details behind them, especially that bell jar, but the cool add-on here is the black-light version with the glowing rod.


Obxcrew's Dr. Jijikine has some nice build details in the laser, such as the use of the torso, but that little wooden table is what really grabbed me. I think it's only held together by the rubber bands, which also make a good visual detail. Nice. The tire as Russian hat goes perfectly with that beard and trench coat.


Lord Pappadhum's Professor Herbert Jaarkopf is a nice idea. The mechanism is very clean and the color scheme is good. Some nice details like the hands as switches. I agree with the person on Flickr who commented that the head was particularly well chosen.


Junsier's Leianator. LOL. Very clever idea.


Crises' Fertilizer has hands down the best fig-scale microscope I've seen (and there are a couple other really nice ones in this competition). The other lab equipment and the drawer on the lab bench are nice as well. The contrast between the unfertilized and fertilized plants is great.


Legostargalactica's D. M. Jeftinija Ph.D. has another great microscope design. Also A+ for the real science of the backstory. In general I gave higher marks to those with real science rather than "here's the scientist with his super-laser" MOCs.


Ean H.'s Bigger, Better Appleradish is really well presented. The machines are clean and well constructed (great use of that windscreen element). Good fig choice as well.


Nolnet's Tricia Schultz is a fun idea, the clear tubing as the trail of the fly is clever.


In George Fox's Frog Levitation, LEGO magnets are used in a way I've never seen before. It'd be cool to see what other levitating MOCs could use this idea.


Michael Haymore's Human Transporter is a funny trick that I didn't see at first glance.


SuperDave's high school science teacher is a great tribute. The ring stand is a particularly nice design. Love that he's testing the hammer versus feather falling (though shouldn't he be doing this in a vacuum, and if he is in a vacuum, why is he smiling?).


Marta Legominha's Robert Bunsen is both funny and gets extra points for choosing an experiment I've taught many times. I'm not sure why the arms are on backwards, though.

Technorati tags: LEGO vignette

Brick Science wrap-up, vignette category

I was one of the judges for the Brick Science contest over on Reasonably Clever. Now that the winners have been announced, I'd like to post some thoughts on a few of my favorites. Most appropriately to this blog, I'll start with the real or fictional scientist vignette category. One note overall on my judging. Since "science" was one of the criteria, I tended to give higher marks to MOCs incorporating some real scientific details. I'm also always looking for new building techniques, unique part usage, etc. Overall coolness of design is always important, of course. Presentation wasn't a specific part of my grading, but the best MOC can be obscured by a poorly lit, blurry photo from a bad angle with a busy background.

Ean H's Theoretical Physics won the category, with Moog the caveman inventing fire, perhaps the most important scientific discovery of all time. A fairly simple build, but the idea here is a clever take on the category. The rat getting at Moog's food is a nice touch.


Rknum's Louis Pasteur was one of my own favorites, as Pasteur is perhaps my favorite scientist. The ring stand design is very nice, also the old-school shields as burners, with the trans red one as hot, are a neat idea.


Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a clever two-sided vig with "before" and "after" scenes. My favorite bits are how Hyde is destroying the scene, tearing down the "E", breaking the table (note how that's connected with a stickshift) and spilling the potion.


TK1420's Dr. Bakker on a dig uses the skeletal horse from the castle line as a fossil. This has been seen before. The cool thing here is that the palentologist is someone that TK1420 knows and he even joined in the fun, being photographed with his LEGO likeness. How cool is that?


Kaptain Kobold's Charles Darwin has the scientist in the Galapagos Islands studying a giant tortoise. I'm actually not a fan of the tortoise design, but the forced perspective with the microscale HMS Beagle in the distance makes this vig stand out.


Lord Pappadhum's Eureka is a simple build, but it clearly illustrates the famous story of Archimedes in a funny way. I love the water spilled out on the ground.


While we're on it, SuperDave's Archimedes illustrates the same story. The water spilling is well done, as is his head and arm coming out of the water. The best bit here, though, is that huge exclamation mark. Well played.


Kaczor's Mendeleev includes a nice periodic table, abbreviated down to fit the size restrictions. I showed this creation to my intro chemistry students when I was talking about Mendeleev.


Rook's Dr. Ivan Pavlov has a really nice solution for the bell.


Joonce's Dr. Gaius Baltar has a nice chair design and the legs on the woman are well done.


Nightmare's Bat trap does the best job of the contest at depicting action. Most of the other builds are rather static.


Nolnet's Conrad Zuse was Graviton's pick for the winner with good reason. The computer is really well done, and the filter on the photo is really effective.


Zwitl's Robert Goddard has some really interesting parts usage in the design of the rocket (for instance, check out the SW blasters).

Technorati tags: LEGO vignette

Brick Science Contest

Chris Doyle, of Reasonably Clever is hosting a Brick Science contest and Shane Larson and myself are guest judges. The connection? We're all scientists. That's right, with fancy degrees and everything. Build something inspired by good or evil scientists, real or fictional to win fabulous prizes. Of particular note for this blog is the vignette category. Here are Shane's Particle Accelerator and Lenny Hoffman's Galileo for some inspiration (though Lenny's wouldn't fit the contest rules for the vig category).

Technorati tags: LEGO vignette

2008, a year in vigs

It's been another great year in LEGO. Let's take a look back on the vigs of 2008.

There were a few new developments this year. Back at the start of the year we noted Corran101's Balcony. Since the inclusion of magnet bricks makes it possible to stick these to the fridge, Nelson dubbed these "magnettes." It turns out that this wasn't the first - Paul Donnis had done some previously, and you could argue that some of the more elaborately decorated fest badges have the same idea. Hopefully now that magnets are for sale again we'll see more of these. Nelson says he has some ideas up his sleeve and I've got one of my own pinned to my bulletin board awaiting photography.

Another different trend I saw this year was the use of Fabuland and Duplo in vigs. Maybe we can start featuring the under-5 crowd more on this blog.

With the release of the new Pirates sets and contests held by Classic-Pirates and the new website Forbidden Cove, we saw many vigs in this theme, such as DNL's End of the World and RichardAM's Sharkbait.


Current events were often the inspiration for vigs and related MOCs. It may be hard to remember it now, but then-candidate-now-secretary-of-state-designate Hilary Clinton got kind of nasty during the presidential campaign, as Nelson depicts in Witch Doctors. Diegoboy's And now what? looked at recent economic trends.

Jarod Uses Film and 713 Avenue celebrated the Summer Olympics.

RebelRock took a less cheery look at China with Organ Harvesting and Dunechaser sparked a bit of a firestorm with Extraordinary Rendition.


Over the last four years, vignettes have become popular subjects for contests. Since they can be fairly quick builds contests can be conducted with short turnaround times, and the small size is an equalizing factor so that those with large collections of bricks don't have massive advantages. Let's just take a quick look at some of the contests and other events of 2008. Early in the year, Classic Castle held a storytelling contest that was won by MrTS' But it wasn't me. The LEGO Military Group Contest had a vignette category, won by Obxcrew's Silent Approach.

Klocki hosted an Indiana Jones contest, and the memorable scene category was won by Ciamek's Cart Ride. Vigs are small and easy to transport, so they can be great to take to fests, like Ken Dowd's Wizard of Oz scenes.

When the new set of LEGO Ambassadors were chosen (in a new process this year where LUGs and on-line communities got to nominate people), and LEGO challenged these representatives to build vigs to represent them, such as Marcin Danielak's Out of Dark Age. The Potuguese group Forum 0937 held a contest to celebrate the 50th year of the LEGO brick where builders had to use a large-sized brick in a scene, such as Ztp's Let's Play.

LowLUG regularly holds MiniMocMadness, or MMM contests, with 16x16 footprint restrictions. One theme this year was "back to work," and Mahjqa's scene took second place. I was asked to help judge the Brick Science contest over on Reasonably Clever. My thoughts on the entries are here. The vig category was won by Ean H's Theoretical Physics.

The Brothers-Brick celebrated thirty years of the minifig by hosting the Go Miniman Go contest. There were a ton of entries; my own favorite was Rupi's Miniman Go Downhill. Eurobricks holds regular vignette contests, such as their Halloween Contest won by BaronSat's Halloween's Puppeteer

FBTB held a Christmasification contest, with a category for Star Wars themed Christmas vig won by Larry Lars' Star Wars Nativity. Finally, Classic-Castle's annual Colossal Castle Contest had a castle vig category with 56 entries. Since I'm a judge I'll hold off commenting until the winner is announced, but I'll post my full thoughts on this category here after judging is finished.


Several builders created series this year. Some favorites included Nelson Yrizarry's Gangsters and Mike Crowley's Leafblower Man series.


A couple of builders vigged other members of the community this year. This is a nice trend and it would be good to see more like Keith Goldman' series on Ley Ward and Jon Palmer's vigs of Aaron Sneary.


Batman was a popular subject this year, with series by Obxcrew, Kurtis Harris and Ken Dowd.


Some other great MOCs from this year:
Michael Jasper is great at creating little scenes, like his series on peer pressure. Barbara Worth did this neat little series of four vigs on growing grain.

Noddy's Yin-Yang definitely deserves two looks.

I got real laughs out of Matt S' Summer's End and Rocko's Rapture.


Those are just a few of my favorite vigs from 2008. To those saying "New post!!", I've had this one simmering now for a week, but I hope the delay was worthy getting in a fairly comprehensive post, and I'll try now to start updating more regularly with new MOCs.

Technorati tags: LEGO vignette