Your Chance To Meet Exo Suit Designer Peter Reid

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Hey UK readers, listen up. Whatever you were planning to do Saturday the 26th, cancel it. The place you want to be is the LEGO Store Bluewater from 12-4pm. Exo Suit designer and LEGO artist Peter Reid is going to be there signing sets and answering questions. Not only do you get early access to the Exo Suit and get to meet Pete, you can score one of these sets of exceptionally exclusive collector cards. Now would someone please perfect transporter technology so I can zip over there and still be back in time for my Panel at SDCC?

Exo-Suit Collectible Cards - the 5 regular cards

Big thanks to bluemoose for sharing these pics

The BrickNerd Pledge Drive Continues

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First of all, let me send a huge shout out to all that have donated so far. Your generosity has blown me away, thank you so much. I still have quite a few really cool items to give away, including the Exo Suit (need to finish episode 207 first) and screen-used MOCs from Beyond The Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary. I'm also excited to announce that Vince Paver (Hammerstein NWC) is generously donating two sets of his awesome custom minifigures. We're giving stuff away until the end of July, donate today!

SmartBrick- Bringing Bluetooth Control To Power Functions

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Power Functions are awesome. There's just something magical that happens when you can bring a MOC to life with lights and motion. Well now there's something to take that magic to the next level, like exponentially to the next level. Some very smart people in the UK (Mark Bollobas and his team) have come up with a way to control PF over bluetooth with smartphones. And it's not just a bluetooth version of the standard IR block, this thing is supercharged with features. You can, among other things...

  • Control from 100 Meters away
  • Use it in direct sunlight (try doing that with the IR one)
  • Control 64 ports (!)
  • Tweak away with programmable firmware
  • Use custom profiles
  • Control MOCs over the internet
  • Interact with other users with social functions 

There are so many cool things you can do with this awesome bit of hardware, I can't imagine what users will do with it once it's in the wild. But for now they need your help to get to mass production so head over to their Kickstarter project and throw some love their direction!

Jawas And Bricks, It Was Meant To Be

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It's no secret I'm a Star Wars fan, and when you combine Star Wars and LEGO, it's like magic. It's like mac and cheese, it's like beer and pizza, it's like tea and biscuits. They just go together. Now the fine folks at Tee Fury have combined them and put them on a t-shirt. Awesome and t-shirts go together pretty well too. You've got one day to snag this, go now! Utini!

Exo Suit Comparison

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Exo Suit designer Peter Reid has posted a fantastic side-by-side of his design vs the final product from LEGO and LEGO designer Mark Stafford. Clearly scale is a major deviation, as well as ankle joints and some of the larger body components like the barrels in the forearms. But as you can see it's faithful to the spirit, and fantastically designed. I prefer Pete's compactness and more mechanical look, but I sorta like LEGO's take on contrast. I prefer Pete's more exposed cockpit as well, but Mark's makes great use of the new handlebars. We'll have a LiveBuild and full review soon enough, in the mean time just stare at this and droooooool.

Comparison

It's Nerdly's Birthday!

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Yes, it was one year ago today that BrickNerd officially launched. It's been a crazy year, and I can't thank all of you enough for your support. I'd love to flood you with some amazing stats like number of posts, Likes on Facebook and stuff like that, but I haven't had time to gather any. I can tell you it's been a ton of fun, and you all rock! I have big plans for this year and I hope you'll all be there. Thanks for visiting!

 
 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

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I finally got a chance to watch Wes Anderson's latest cinematic achievement The Grand Budapest Hotel just a few days ago, and I loved it. And now Ryan Ziegelbauer, Gary McIntire and a team of top notch builders have created a masterpiece of their own inspired by the movie. I give you the LEGO Grand Budapest Hotel, and it's awesome!

Brickworld or bust!

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Like a scene out of The LEGO Movie Knights, Princesses, Cops, Robbers, Pirates, Superheroes, Friends, Ninjas, Jedi and more will converge upon one location to celebrate the one thing they all have in common - a love for LEGO. Hundreds of AFOLs and TFOLs have spent countless hours putting together their LEGO creations to share with the thousands of visitors who will marvel over their mastery. 

Next week Wednesday through Sunday is the BrickWorld: Chicago convention and BrickNerd will be there blogging live about the best MOCs. Come find me (Philip) at the Knight’s Forest Castle MOC display to pick up some BrickNerd swag while it lasts!

I hope to see you there!

The Wait Is Over!

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Yes Ghostbusters fans the wait is over, LEGO Ideas 21108 Ghostbusters is now available at LEGO! I've had the pleasure of building this set and it's one of my favorites of recent years. To get yours follow these links and you'll not only get a phenomenal set, you'll support BrickNerd.

And if you have any doubt the set is awesome, have a peek at either the live build (real-time) or the brief I posted on my YouTube channel. 

The Part Challenge

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This is a two part post. The first order of business to attend to is this fantastic MOC by Peteris Sprogis. Brick built lettering can be difficult, especially if you want some panache to it, but Peteris pulls it off beautifully. Although it is important to point out that this is the second iteration of this MOC, because sometimes a "P" can look an awful lot like an "F".

The second order of business is to bring up what this MOC is actually promoting. It's a Flickr group called, you guessed it, Part Challenge. It's sort of like Iron Builder for the rest of us. Check it out and get building!

Part Challenge

How The LEGO Movie Should Have Ended

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Last month BrickNerd Studios was lucky enough to have stop motion animator Kevin Ulrich help us out on Beyond The Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary. Sharp eyed viewers might have spotted him in this video of our biggest setup (he's the one wearing glasses). Well the team at How It Should Have Ended recruited him as well, and who better to determine how The LEGO Movie *should* have ended?

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batman!

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KAPOW! Check out this awesome Batmobile Cuusoo project of the classic 60's Batman. I can't decide what I love the most about this, that it's classic Adam West campiness, the design itself or the fact that it all started with a dad building a Batmobile for his daughter so Robin could ride along too. Regardless I want one, and if you want one too let's all support this project and make it a reality!