Details: The birds are angry. The pigs don't stand a chance. Particularly if the other birds are also built out with studs facing every direction. The eyebrows are actually adjustable (the joys of mounting a 1x2 tile on top of small plate), but the really angry look captured here seems to capture the feel of the popular game surprisingly well.
Details: Yes, I know we've already talked Pac-Manonce this month, but we must do it again today for the 30th anniversary of the game. This time, the build is a bit more ambitious: a Pac-Man themed cabinet for a tabletop arcade machine. The structure is solid enough to hold the electronics and features a few neat Pac-Man mosaics and classy angles.
If you're looking to play a bit of the game yourself, have a look at Google's frontpage today - they're commemorating Pac-Man with a playable version of their logo.
Details: This is a 23-inch doll of a Spartan from the videogame Halo:Reach. A brilliant combination of slopes, wedges, and well-placed details captures the armor just right. The figure is even jointed, with holsters on the legs that can hold the pistols.
Details: The LEGO Prince of Persia Battle of Alamut (7573) kit includes lots of fun and exciting new parts, including some in the fairly rare color of pearl gold. Of course, when you only own a handful of pearl gold (which, let's face it, is most of us - it's not an easy color to stock up on), it's hard to build much of anything. Here, though, we have one example of something you can build in that rare pearl gold color - Pac-Man! It only takes a few pieces, too, so you can build your own without using up the whole kit.
Details: Here's an interesting idea - using the NXT tethered to another small computer to play a game on a PC. Apparently the builder had some custom embedded computer vision (CV) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in use. From his description:
Tetris-Bot is a Tetris-playing robot. Jay Leno would say "How lazy are we getting? Now robots play games for us!" Well, not exactly, but I agree, we are getting lazy. I made it in order to engage my kids in a fun and educational project. Tetris-Bot consists of a camera, a TI DM6437 DSP board (running my embedded vision and artificial intelligence algorithms), and a three-finger NXT robotic hand (that presses the keys on the computer keyboard). I was inspired by the NXT Rubik and Sudoku solvers and the Segway-like NXT robots. Unlike them, Tetris-Bot is not an NXT-only system, because the Brick has a limited input bandwidth. That's why I use a TI DM6437 DSP board to analyze the images coming from the camera, recognize the new shape, and find the best place and orientation for it. The instructions are communicated to the NXT robotic hand via LEDs on the board. HOPE YOU LIKE IT !!!
Details: To promote their song "8-bit trip", the Swedish band rymdreglage decided to put together a BrickFilm as the music video for the song. It wound up being a pretty spectacular BrickFilm, very craftsmenlike in it's use of bricks and plates to create something of high-resolution look. One moment we're seeing a large sculpture build itself, the next we're seeing flawless mosaics animate a scene (or render various classic video game characters). Technically proficient and animated in a more professional manner than most BrickFilms I've seen, this one's a winner just on the merits as a LEGO creation, before you factor in how well the video game references work.
The only thing to critique about this viral video's run around the Internet? The BrickFilm is so good that it seems to be distracting us from the song it's supposed to promote.
It turns out that in Wednesday's post, I featured the wrong video - the guy behind this one (which is the one I meant to share) managed to churn out a second one (which was what you saw Wednesday). They're both spectacular videos worth sharing, but I personally have more experience with this one's selection of games.
Details: Words fail. These classic games were captured here so well (through the art of LEGO mosaics and stop-motion animation). I was particularly impressed by the small area used for these mosaics - in some cases, the intuitive parts to use to create the characters wouldn't have fit into the space used.
argh my Flash installation got messed up since I first set this video aside to be blogged - I can't re-watch it now. I remember it being quite awesome, however. I'm afraid that's all I can say for today, though.
Details: It seems like it's been far too long since I've seen a great new RCX-based model (sure the NXT programmable brick is cool too, but the RCX never stopped being awesome). Here's a new one that combines video-game graphics with RCX-based motion and music. The imagery is spot-on Donkey Kong, and the rolling barrels / jumping Mario synchronization is absolutely charming. Of course, this is already starting to go "viral" (appear seemingly everywhere online), but it takes a LEGO fan to catch some of the little details that make models like this one exciting. Take a closer look at the Donkey Kong character, and you may recognize it as one of the trolls LEGO makes for the current "fantasy"-based castle line. People tend to think of Technic as one thing and ridiculous fantasy figures as another, but the LEGO company is surprisingly good at designing parts that can be used in a variety of ways.
My only gripe is that there aren't more photos - we need to know how good that custom Mario fig looks. I'd also be interested in seeing close-up shots of the jumping mechanism and the barrel-launching mechanism. It's kind of surprising that there isn't a great repository of Mindstorms music programs out there too (it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get a tune just right - you'd think people wouldn't want to see the efforts duplicated). Anyway - as much as I'd like to see more documentation of this (and the builder's other great models, which you can find in http://wrench.vib.org/lego/ if you don't mind poking around a bit), this is still an awesome model.
Details: I think this very-late-in-the-day Friday model is fairly self-explanatory. It's a nice sculpture, though, even if it is just for an ad campaign. Heck, you could put that in any modern art museum and easily convince millions that it's an ironic statement about the history of popular modern playthings.
The birds are angry
. The pigs don't stand a chance. Particularly if the other birds are also built out with studs facing every direction. The eyebrows are actually adjustable (the joys of mounting a 1x2 tile on top of small plate), but the really angry look captured here seems to capture the feel of the popular game surprisingly well. 
. A brilliant combination of slopes, wedges, and well-placed details captures the armor just right. The figure is even jointed, with holsters on the legs that can hold the pistols. 
kit includes lots of fun and exciting new parts, including some in the fairly rare color of pearl gold. Of course, when you only own a handful of pearl gold (which, let's face it, is most of us - it's not an easy color to stock up on), it's hard to build much of anything. Here, though, we have one example of something you can build in that rare pearl gold color - 
! It only takes a few pieces, too, so you can build your own without using up the whole kit.
