Featuring, on the best starting grid of all time; Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Spiderman, Cat Women, Poison Ivy, Wonder Woman, Superman and many more! See the full line up at the Okay Yaramanoglu racetrack!
We don’t often feature virtual Lego creations at The Lego Car Blog. The Elves can be a picky bunch and usually prefer something more solid; something that they can really get their teeth into. We’ve tried to train them not to bite but you have been warned!
The 5th July 2013 saw the first birthday of LDD to POV-Ray Convertor. This software created a user friendly method to convert well-built and interesting virtual MOCs into images which look good too. These images can then be processed in Photoshop or GIMP, just like photographs of real bricks. Over the last twelve months builders have refined their choices of settings, achieving increasingly realistic results, and in this Special we’ll showcase some of the best digital creations and builders around today.
Peter Blackert (lego911) has been extremely busy this month, publishing over 100 images on his Flickr photostream. His stylishly curved and chromed 1961 Dodge Polara, complete with a stylishly curved driver, features at the top of this post. Being made in LDD allows this car to be built in a colour which would be hard (or impossible?) to use in real bricks. Amongst the Cadillacs, Fords, Mercedes and combine harvesters that he has recently posted, is an Alfa Romeo Giulia in full Carabineri livery. These were the standard Italian police car of the 1960’s and feature in the “Italian Job” chases. Peter mentions this being part of his motivation to build this car. Continue reading
This Northrop P-61 ‘Black Widow’, built by Sydag on Flickr, shows what a long exposure can do for your pictures, in this case giving the appearance of turning propellors when no motors are to be found in the model. Clever photography for a clever build!
This is the second P-61 we’ve published here at TLCB. The first contains a brief summary and history of the American interceptor, which you can find by using the Search function at the foot of this page, or by clicking the relevant ‘tags’ under this post.
OK, OK, if you’ve been reading all today’s posts and have spotted a theme, it’s because the guy that writes our titles is on holiday. So, in light of this we bring you our third and final ‘T is for Tuesday’ MOC; PiterX’s monster Polaris 4×4 Trial Truck!
Featuring all-wheel-drive, fully independent suspension and power functions remote control Piter’s creation sure looks like it can handle the rough stuff. See more and join in the discussion at the Eurobricks forum.
It’s our second ‘T is for Tuesday’ post (let’s see how long we can string this out!), and this ‘T’ is for ‘Turbo’ – a word synonymous with fast cars. Back in the 1970s turbo-chargers on road cars were a very rare event. One of the first manufacturers to embrace forced-induction were BMW, who bolted a KKK turbo-charger onto their little 2002 saloon, creating an instant classic.
Exactly 40 years on Flickr user _Tiler brings back the first European production car with a turbo in Lego form, and rather splendid it is too! See it and his other creations via the link above.
It’s a Tuesday, and we have a Tron MOC. The title practically wrote itself! Peter Mowry‘s awesome second generation Light Cycle is a work of Lego art. Based on the vehicles from the movie about a video game-turned-reality (and featuring on the sound-track the only good noise ever to come out of France – Daft Punk) you can see more of this brilliant creation on Peter’s photostream at the link above. The Game has changed.
We round off today’s bumper edition of The Lego Car Blog with the news everyone’s talking about; the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s baby boy (or ‘Wills and Kate’ if you’re a reader of the British tabloid newspapers), third in line to the British throne.
We do sometimes like to link TLCB to current events, and we think we’ve done it rather well this time, with Brickshelf user mijasper‘s lovely BMW Isetta bubble car, which is about as ‘baby’ as a car can be.
‘But’, we hear you say, ‘..the Isetta’s German!’. Yes it is. However, the British Royal Family have a slightly German secret.
There, you see! A seamless link after all.
This glorious North American P-51 Mustang was discovered by one of our Elves today on Flickr. The work of mrutek, A TLCB veteran, it’s a model that clearly shows the advantages of LEGO’s newer smooth curved pieces, which allow the Mustang’s famous fuselage and wing shape to be re-formed from our favourite plastic blocks without losing their stunning fluidity. Check out all the photos of this beautiful Second World War fighter on Flickr here.
It’s hot here at TLCB Towers and we’re feeling a bit lazy. However, the good news for us is that this find comes with a description already written! So, over to the model’s creator, Lino M, to explain all:
“A strange phenomenon existed in the ’60s and ’70s called the show rod. Basically these were outrageously themed hot rods that could start with anything from a bathtub to a set of bunk beds and, from there, pushed the limits to what a car can be. While guys like George Barris and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth were on the forefront of this movement, one of the most famous show rods was the Popcorn Wagon designed by the lesser known Carl Casper. Was it practical? No. Was it over-the-top? Most definitely. Does it look like it was designed by a 10 year old boy with an overactive imagination? Heck yes! But that was the point of the show rod. While kids and adults enjoyed building the outrageous model kits at home, true to all Carl Casper creations, the original car has never been sold to anyone. Can it go fast? No one knows. His creations have never even seen a drop of fuel or oil.
This LEGO replica roughly resembles the original (with some minor changes) and was built for the LUGNuts Summer Of ’69 challenge all about 60’s era cars.”
And there you have it; our laziest post ever. Thanks Lino! Check out his Popcorn Wagon on Flickr via the handy link.
This little FSO Polonez made by Flickr user r a p h y is a birthday present to his brother, who owns the real-life version of this LEGO model. Talk about original presents!
Using some cool techniques and basic pieces Raphy nails the Polonez look in a tiny scale. Great work Raphy!
Billyburg’s lunar speeder with sidecar somehow collides a retro motorbike with a sci-fi spaceship. It works though, as who wouldn’t want to zoom across the surface of the moon with a mate? You can see more of Billy’s work over on Flickr.
There is a generation for whom a tumbler will always be something from which to sip a single malt. Clayton Marchetti has posted this 1960’s classic over on MOCpages. The car features a jet engine under its hood, chromed missile launcher tubes and a fire extinguisher (or is it a big cannister of shark-repellent?) in the cabin. This mini-fig scale creation uses conventional, studs-up building techniques but still manages to capture the complicated shaping at the front of the vehicle, which was originally built by the Ghia workshop in the mid-fifties.
Please remember never to offer any passing TLCB Elf a tot of whisky: even if it’s a cold, snowy night and the Elf is looking particularly bedraggled. Alcohol goes straight to their heads and they fall asleep in the dungeons of castle MOCs.
The Elves were thrilled to find that ace car builder Ryan Link has found some bricks to snap together, after a year away. He’s not out of practice either, judging by this beautiful LaFerrari. Welcome back Ryan! Not that you ever really went away… Enjoy all the details of this wonderful build over on the new, improved, reliable-server-and-everything (fingers crossed…) MOCpages.
This Lego DUKW World War II amphibious truck is certainly more fun than a yellow bath toy, although it probably doesn’t float. The real thing does though, hence the ‘Duck’ nickname. Over 21,000 were produced for the Allies during the Second World War for use in the Pacific and during the D-Day Landings, with many surviving today as tourist and leisure craft on our cities’ rivers. Daniel Siskind has built the Lego version we have here, and you can see more of it and his other Lego creations via Flickr.
Flickr user Smigol stopped searching for the one ring just long enough to build this great Swedish pair. His two Town-scale Volvo FH trucks look the business, and more importantly have allowed us to use some phrases which will return hits from searches that are, er… a little ‘different’ to the usual ones that bring people here, which is always funny. So if you’re here for LEGO, check out Smigol’s work via the link above, and if you’re here expecting Scandinavian sisters, apologies for the trickery!