Category: LEGO

LEGO is not a tool of Satan

I am not proud of every citation I receive, and I certainly do not agree to Father Slawomir Kostrzewa who used our study to conclude that the increased diversity of LEGO faces has “…compounded their evil potential”. Yes, we have been able to show that the number of angry faces has increased, but our study did not investigate what effect this may have on children. We simply cannot provide any evidence one way or the other.

Father Slawomir Kostrzewa continues that “These toys can have a negative effect on children. They can destroy their souls and lead them to the dark side.” He really should know that the only way to join the dark side is by submitting to Darth Vader.

But then again, the report was published on April 1st, so maybe this is just a joke?

Mr. ReBrick visited Kura Tawhiti

Mr. ReBrick, during his visit to LUG 4/2 visited the Kura Tawhiti rocks today. Some scenes of the 2005 movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” were shot on this location. Mr. ReBrick took all his climbing gear with him and had a fantastic time.

He also took a interactive panorama of the location, so that you can get an impression of its beauty:

Here is the location of Castle Hill rocks on Google Maps:


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Mr. ReBrick visited the Castle Hill Cave

Mr. ReBrick was on a big adventure tour through Canterbury, the home of LUG 4/2. He visited the amazing Castle Hill Cave. Thank god he remembered to bring all his safety gear.

At the entrance of the cave, Mr. ReBrick posed for an interactive panorama created with my LEGO Panorama Maker. Here is the resulting panorama:

And for all the non Kiwis, here is the location of this amazing Cave. It takes one hour to walk through it.


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Honda CB77 Superhawk LEGO MOC

This is a model of the famous Honda CB77 Superhawk on which Robert Pirsig rode across the USA with his son Chris back in the 60′. Their journey has been captured in the global bestselling book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“. Robert Pirsig’s philosophy of the Metaphysics of Quality is the basis of most of my LEGO models and this motorcycle is a tribute to Pirsig’s mind changing ideas. You can see more photos of the model at my flickr set.

You can make this model become an official LEGO set by voting for it over at LEGO Cuusoo. Here is a poster of the model:

Tutorial on how to create a LEGO Mosaic (Part 1)

Creating mosaics made of LEGO is a popular activity and you may enjoy looking at some examples at Mosaic Blocks or at the Flickr LEGO Mosaic Group. I started out with absolutely no LEGO mosaic experience and I wrote this tutorial along my way towards my first mosaic. I hope that the lessons I learned may also help you creating your own mosaics.

1. Selection of a source image and basic dimensions of the mosaic

Selecting your source image does seem like an easy task, but you need to be aware of some of the constraints to make a good choice. First, you should have as little detail in the photograph as necessary. You will be heavily limited on the resolution of the mosaic. The smallest unit of a LEGO mosaic is a single 1×1 plate that measures 8×8 mm (actually 7.8mm plus 0.1mm of play between bricks). This results in a resolution of 3.175 dots per inch (DPI) or 1.25 dots per centimeter. Maybe it would be wiser to refer to this as 3.175 bricks per inch (BPI) or 1.25 bricks per cm. A large base plate is 48×48 studs, resulting in 38.2 x 38.2 cm dimension (0.8*48-0.2). Photographs often use the proportion of 2:3 and hence a 2×3 base plate design would result in 96×144 bricks or 76.4 x 114.6 cm.

For my mosaic I selected a portrait of Robert M. Pirsig, one of my personal heroes. The source image is a grey scale image, but creating colorful mosaics follows the same process as a grey scale mosaic.

robert-pirsig Continue reading “Tutorial on how to create a LEGO Mosaic (Part 1)”