LEGO

Lego bricks builders wish they could buy

Lego bricks builders wish they could buy

Anyway, among the many interesting discoveries I’ve made there was a link to the Brick Wishlist Flickr pool, which is a collection of doodles, diagrams, and renderings, made by Lego fans, of elements they wished existed, but do not. These “requests” range from simple color options (as in user d-higdon’s “fall colors” idea for the “leaves” element (#2417), currently available only in green) to what would be, for Lego, anyway, fairly radical departures, like plates with studs on both sides.

The passing of a Lego legend

The passing of a Lego legend

My favorite Lego blog, The Brothers Brick, is running an extended series of posts eulogizing nnenn, and this line jumped out at me: “You know a builder is big-time when he not only gets an entire scale named after him, but an element as well.” Nnenn also pioneered the iconic Vic Viper design (based on the video game Gradius), a classic example of which is shown above. Entire contests have been dedicated to Vic Vipers, and hundreds, probably thousands, of variants on the theme exist. Plans are in place for a “missing man formation” of Vic Vipers to be arranged in memory of nnenn at the Brickworld 2010 fan convention in Chicago. I’ve included just a couple more of my favorite nnenn creations below.

Featured Maker: Shannon Conrad

Featured Maker: Shannon Conrad

If you follow CRAFT, as well, you may have seen Rachel’s post back in January about Oregon jeweler Shannon Conrad’s interlocking Lego rings. Shown above is the result of Shannon’s very first experiment with casting from Lego elements, a one-off solid silver Imperial Stormtrooper minifig she made for her 11-year-old son. It weighs 1.5 oz (44g). I know Lego fanboys who happily would trade their own teeth for one of those.