Markku.lempinen

When Lando promised to bring the Millenium Falcon back from the battle of Endor without a scratch, he pretty much guaranteed something would get knocked off. And sure enough, this minimalist model by Miscellanabuilds shows the Falcon barely escaping the destruction of the second death star in one piece, let alone scratchless. The model captures the details of the much larger exhaust port perfectly, while the microscale Falcon looks great, even without her signature deflector dish. The only thing missing is the enormous burst of flames that nearly cooked Lando’s goose.

The post I have your word, now... not a scratch appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Phineas & Ferb was a work of genius. And for me, a central element of its appeal was the espionage adventures of Agent P — Perry the Platypus. In the immortal words of his theme tune, he’s got more than just mad skill, he’s got a beaver tail and a bill — and both of those are on display in PaulvilleMOCs‘ excellent LEGO version of the character. Sometimes I think those big Mixel tile eyes can be a little basic, and would prefer to see brick-built alternatives. However, the use of them here is a perfect choice, nicely reflecting the animation style of the model’s inspiration. Nice hat too.

Paul has previously built some of the other Phineas & Ferb characters in this style, including this brilliant rendition of Perry’s nemesis, Doctor Doofenshmirtz…

The post He’s a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of LEGO appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Are you ready to play? Builder Pascal shows us how LEGO and board gaming can coexist as the ultimate game night. What was once an assortment of bricks is now a modular custom tile strategy game. A mix of grass, water, rocks and mountains can be created by filling in various parts of the map. The fact that I can recreate the terrain after every batch is fantastic, assuring no game is the same.

Pascal says the inspiration for this creation was found in the 1984 game BattleTech. I’m thrilled to see each 2×2 tile piece has a single stud in the middle to balance my robot warriors. This will definitely come in handy since everyone knows you’ll need to stay on the high ground if you’re going to win at this game.

The post Bringing LEGO back into game night appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

If you enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, then you’ll love this seafaring LEGO creation by Henjin_Quilones.

Do ye know what a pirate’s favorite letter be? Ye’d think it would be “R”, but his true love will always be the “C”. All jokes aside, this is truly a wonderful little build. Ship hulls are difficult to contrive out of most bricks, but Henjin manages it by using a variety of angles. The sails are made of sloped bricks and automotive spoiler pieces definitely give off the vibe of being pushed by the wind. My favorite part, however, is barely visible. If you look at the deck very closely, you can see a windowpane lattice doubling as the deck grating.

The post Bricks on the High Seas appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) are one of the most fascinating and mesmerizing pieces of LEGO art out there. GBC layouts at any convention will always enjoy an onslaught of wonderstruck fans. But what those fans may not know is that many LEGO GBC modules were inspired by one person. Of course, not all of them – there’s tons of originality in the hobby. That said, a household name amongst GBC enthusiasts is Akiyuki. His incredible designs have been the inspiration for hundreds of builds. Now he’s back with an incredible new creation, his “Five Tilted Rings” module.

This thing is ridiculous in the best way. As the name suggests, it’s a type of elevator module, with five rings stacked on top of each other. As they turn in the same direction, their long arms come to meet each other periodically. Then gravity helps guide the ball upward. Confused yet? I’ll shut up and let the video speak for itself. Just don’t get vertigo:

Nuts, right?! Needless to say, he’s a GBC wizard. If you think this stuff is as cool as we do, take a look at some of our favorite LEGO Great Ball Contraption creations from Akiyuki and others.

The post Taking LEGO Great Ball Contraptions to the 5th level [Video] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

If you do not recognize this character at all, you need to watch the Disney classic Sword in the Stone, stat. It’s certainly one of the best Disney films ever, and I think Rickard Stensby must agree! One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Merlin casts a spell where he packs the contents of his entire house into a traveling bag. In true Disney fashion, he sings his spell, “Higitus Figitus.” Arguably, the better line is “Hockety, pockety, wokety, wack,” but I digress. Rickard perfectly sculpts the scene in LEGO, from the shrinking belongings floating into the bag, down to the rickety wooden floorboards. Merlin himself is unmistakable with his blue outfit, glasses, and an overly long beard.

Top marks for perfectly recreating the body pose, as well as the use of bananas and droid heads for fingers.

This one had me feeling all the nostalgia. How about you? Click here to see more Disney builds. We also have more from Rickard too!

The post “Higitus figitus migitus mum! Prestidigitonium!” appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

While we realize May the Fourth was yesterday it’s hard to contain so much Star Wars awesomeness in one day. Take, for example, this stunning LEGO Royal Guard TIE Interceptor by Jarek Książczyk. The complex shaping, the build techniques, even the breathtaking photography are all several notches above standard. The Emperor would approve.

As if the striking red Royal Guard Interceptor wasn’t enough, here is a shot of some other TIE Fighters he’s been working on and perfecting lately. Here we have an updated TIE Fighter, a color variant for Iden Versio (I had to look that one up), the aforementioned Royal Guard Fighter, and a new TIE Interceptor.

He is a Star Wars spaceship aficionado as evidenced by this Razor Crest, and this Y-Wing. If you’re still craving all things Star Wars check out our archive of news and other fabulous creations from a galaxy far far away.

The post This Star Wars Royal Guard TIE Interceptor has us seeing red appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

If you haven’t heard of the Arvo Brothers before, they’re Ramon and Amador Alfaro Marcilla, a pair of Spanish builders who are known for truly amazing LEGO sculptures. Their latest effort pays tribute to the 1987 classic, RoboCop. Standing around 2 feet tall, this towering figure is a dead-on recreation of Peter Weller’s portrayal of the titular character and is filled with intricate and screen-accurate detailing.

The first thing that becomes apparent is that there’s a level of articulation built into this sculpture. The shoulders, elbow, and head can all be adjusted to create a variety of bad-ass poses. The next thing that you notice is the spectacular part usage. There are just a few LEGO studs exposed, enough to let you know what he’s made of, but so few that you’re still required to really lean in to be sure. Curved tiles and slopes are everywhere, smoothing out the shapes and creating a perfectly streamlined set of armor.

RoboCop is perched on a simple brick-built display stand. This matches the style they used in their incredible Alien figure. (Their Iron Man, in contrast, was free-standing, or at least free-sitting.) Once again you can see how even minor changes to the position of the arms and head can create some very different looks for this creation. And if you look closely at his right leg, you’ll see some old-school phone handset elements adding a bit of detail. A very apt retro choice.

RoboCop also looks great from the back. The shaping on the calves is particularly nice, and those ankle-pistons are just swanky. It’s not easy to get a figure this large to stand, but the Arvo brothers have made it look effortless. And there are subtle details to enjoy, too. I like how the edges of the angled brick and plate in the rear of the upper thigh create just a touch of texture and break up what might have been an otherwise dull stretch of anatomy.

Finally, we need to talk about the great techniques in use in RoboCop’s face. The use of the back of this odd 2×2 slope brick for his signature grimacing mouth works really well, and the quarter-dome bricks in the helmet are the perfect choice. The 2×2 round tile w/center hole used for the earpieces is another great match.

Does this build inspire you to try your own hand at building the perfect cyborg? Take a look at our RoboCop archives to see how others have approached it, and be sure to check out other amazing builds we’ve featured from the Arvo Brothers!

The post Arvo brothers bring Robocop to life with LEGO – I’d buy that for a dollar! appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

The nostalgia brought on by a quality LEGO Back to the Future DeLorean build is always welcome. Joey Klusnick has us looking forward to the future, too, with a version of this iconic vehicle that’s perfectly scaled for minifigure adventures. I’m really digging the use of transparent trapezoid flags and grey spikes to construct the windshield.

This build looks great from every angle, with just the right level of detailing to get key design elements across without falling into a mass of incomprehensible greebling. It’s sleek and smooth, and a stunning example of what you can do with pop culture if you really put your mind to it.

I think this really shows how LEGO creations can evolve over time. Compare this build with the 2013 LEGO CUUSOO DeLorean – both have their merits, but I know which one I’d rather have on display at my house today.

The post The future is looking brighter all the time. appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

I love a good old classic set, the 1986 Guarded Inn is no exception to this. Sets like these remind us of simpler times where LEGO only had 9 colors, and everyone supported the same smile. I love it when creators use a set like this as inspiration and manage to bring it to 2020 by using newer parts and techniques. Stuifzand didn’t use any of the tudor wall panel. And this set came with a lot of panels, 8 to be exact. The door was replaced by a brick-build but door but in the same style as the original set. The yellow shutters add a nice pop of colour as do the dark green half-round windows.

The post Updated Guarded Inn appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

2020 finally bears good news: All 403 episodes of alla prima virtuoso Bob Ross's Joy of Painting are free to watch on Ross' official Youtube channel. Above, the first (1/11/1983) and final (5/17/1994) episodes of the show.

From Open Culture:

It's said that 90% of the regular viewers tuning in to watch Ross crank out his signature "wet-on-wet" landscapes never took up a brush, despite his belief that, with a bit of encouragement, anyone can paint.

Enlarge / Facebook's European headquarters in Dublin. (credit: Brian Lawless - PA Images / Getty)

Facebook has warned that it could be forced to pull out of the European market if European regulators push forward with limits on data sharing between the European Union and the United States.

Until this year, an arrangement called Privacy Shield allowed US technology companies to move data easily between the two jurisdictions. But Europe's highest court nixed that arrangement in July, arguing that US law lacks robust protections against surveillance by the US government.

In the wake of that ruling, Ireland's privacy regulator ordered Facebook to stop sending data on European users to its US data centers. Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) leads enforcement of European privacy regulations with respect to Facebook because Facebook's official European headquarters is in Dublin.

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RSS Box generates the "missing" feeds for Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Instagram users, and various other sites that fail to offer RSS.

This website lets you subscribe to RSS feeds for websites that do not support RSS themselves, by using the respective website's API and then translating that data to RSS feeds.

If you get a page saying "Application error", simply try again. This website resolves shortlink URLs to give the reader a better experience, and embeds linked content directly into the RSS feed. You will get this error if this takes longer than the web server allows.

Some websites, like YouTube, support RSS feeds but they are quite hard to find, so this website will provide the URL.

You can get that pin from Diesel Sweeties.

As we learned on the first US season of LEGO Masters earlier this year, LEGO creations are best when they tell a story that is easily understood. Keith Reed has been setting up a story through his series of apocalyptic modular buildings, and the plot has become very clear with his latest scene. Here you see a family trying to escape their own impending doom, their car broken down, taking refuge in the back of a Nuka Cola truck.

They figured they’d be safe there for the night, but unbeknownst to them, they’d almost made it to the shelter. Turns out they didn’t make it. Whatever they were running from caught up with them that night, and they died right there, baby in arms.

Earlier this year, back when we could still gather in groups, this model was on display at Bricks Cascade. Keith was standing proudly beside his creation engaging with the public. A twelve year old kid came up and described the scene to his dad. Keith was floored at how well the intended story came across — I thought he might cry.

The post We’ll be safe in here appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

The recent trend in the LEGO-sphere community has all been about magical floating compression structures, better known as a tensegrity – a portmanteau of “tensional integrity”. The fad started with a very rudimentary build on a Reddit and soon spawned many more creative iterations. We pick a few of the more outstanding ones that we’ve seen that has impressed us. A couple of them come with build videos and instruction guides for you to build your very own.

Tensegrity LEGO Model by Jason Allemann from JK Brickworks. One of the early builds to give a clean design was by Jason Allemann. Something that if you start digging enough from the parts in your LEGO bin, you may just be able to pull one together albeit with a more colourful representation of it.

The very first time looking at it simply stunned me as if there was some sorcery or soul sacrificing tasks needed to be performed. Once you get used to it, it just looks like an amazing wonder of science coupled together with our favourite toy, LEGO! You can find Jason’s Video Build guide here or if you prefer old school professionally designed pdf formatted guides, you can find them here.

Floating DeLorean from Back to the Future by hachiroku24. I simply love the tiny details used from the final scenes from Back to the Future ][ where the flag rope is dropped by Doc to give Marty a ride to save him from Biff while still on the hoverboard.

Sensei Wu tightrope walk by Rollon Smith. I can’t vouch if this is lifted from a movie or the TV Series, but it’s one that could have happened. A Sinsei Wu minifigure from Ninjago balances ever so fine on a piece of LEGO string with end studs while the tensegrity build just provides the perfect Zen-like magic balancing contraption.

Floating LEGO Classic Castle Tower by David Roberts. If there was ever a magic castle tower with an overlook, this is one that needs to exist. The signature yellow bricks of the castle against with a guard at watch – simply brilliant.

The Upside-down from Stranger Things by Richard Jones. If I had to choose a favourite, this has won my vote for being the most appropriately used theme to showcase the dark and evil side of the Upside-down.

Tensegrity Dragon by captainsmog is so good that it deserves another mention here although we’ve already featured it not long ago. It makes the best use of all three tension chains built seamlessly into the vignette. It does not get any better than this and just showcases the fantastic talent we have here in the collective LEGO custom creation community.

The Impossible Apartment Complex by Jeff Friesen, our winner of The Brothers Brick 2017 Creation of the Year takes a leaf of his winning and mesmerizing design and incorporated it into a futuristic building.

We hope you enjoyed some of our favourite picks of the magical play of tensegrity with LEGO elements. If these builds inspired you, why not give it a go? Take great photos and drop it in the LEGO Flickr Pool and you can bet we’ll be looking at them. If not, tell us about your favourite or drop us a favourite or two of yours in the comments.

The post The art and science of LEGO tensegrity builds appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Here's Shuki Levy's theme from Inspector Gadget performed on an 8-pack of cellos by Samara Ginsberg. The gadget theme is a variation of the melody from Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King and a widely-sampled and borrowed motif in pop music.

There’s a danger to building realistic LEGO creations in that there is a chance writers like us could pass it up. While seeking out inspiration for articles, my thought process went as follows, LEGO build; cool. Another LEGO build, our readers will like that one; cool. Someone selling their old Atari, maybe? Pffft, whatever, move on. LEGO creation; cool. Wait, go back. Was that? Holy shnikies, that’s LEGO! That reaction is courtesy of Joe Klang and every bit of this stellar Atari 2600 is genuine LEGO. The Atari logo is comprised of 1×2 curved slopes, the chrome jack is a harpoon piece and even the rubber bands are LEGO. Notoriously spotty quality control with brown works in Joe’s favor here as it replicates woodgrain nicely. Even the Pitfall box art with its 8-bit graphics are well played indeed!

The post The pitfalls of realistic building appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Assembling LEGO's official Star Destroyer kit [Amazon] is no mean feat: it has nearly 4,800 pieces and retails for $700. But Matt Benner, aka TheBrickWiz, went 30,000 better, constructing a collossal Star Wars spaceship to put the fear of Vader into any rebel fool enough to fall into its gravity well. He even made the interior – check out the conference room (below)!

Matt Benner (screengrab)

It is rare for a LEGO build to make my jaw drop and leave me drooling on my keyboard, but that is just what this stunning layout of Imperial Rome by Rocco Buttliere did. I have a Master’s degree in Classics, primarily in the Latin language, and so anything and everything Roman is right up my via, but there is a lot of great information to learn in the descriptions of the photos, even for one with an advanced degree in a tangential field. In fact, I could spend hours looking through all the pictures, and have already spent the better part of one skimming through the descriptions. It is fascinating stuff. And the build! It is huge, about 1×2 meters in size, with 66,000 bricks going into its construction. And not one is wasted or superfluous. So let’s take a brief tour of the Eternal City, shall we?

Rocco built it for the Museu da Imaginação (Museum of Imagination) in São Paulo, Brazil, and his attention to detail is certainly worthy of being enshrined in a permanent display. Every building is unique, all showing the architectural style we associate with the Romans. There are innumerable fora, aqueducts, bathhouses, and temples galore, including my favorite, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. He is the best and greatest Jupiter, not the cousin of an Autobot. A tap does a good job of depicting the triumphal four-horse chariot at the peak of the roof, and roller skates and hooks add other details to the temple. I love the use of vent slopes for microscale tile roofs.

Contrary to appearances, Rocco did not build the whole city (but wouldn’t it be awesome if he did?) Most of what he built of the city is brick construction, but there were a lot of wooden structures too, allowing massive fires to destroy the place from time to time while emperors fiddled (or harped, more probably). Nero used the aftermath of the most famous fire as an opportunity to build a massive palace to his ego, and then that palace was turned into public areas after his death by the Flavians. The private lake, for example, became the Colosseum, or the Flavian Amphitheatre. This rendition of the gladiatorial arena is gorgeous, making brilliant use of brown wands and white curved modified plates.

Prior to the construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre, public spectacles were held in the Circus Maximus, a huge racetrack for chariots. It could hold over 150,000 spectators, and much more than racing happened there. Gladiator events, deaths of Christian martyrs, parades, animal shows, all happened there before the Colosseum. The Imperial Palace overlooked the circus, and emperors had their own private access direct from their house. No need to mingle with the hoi polloi. Rocco used a ton of wedge plates on their sides to recreate the slope of the stands, with their tiny gaps adding detail, and it looks great.

Heck, the whole thing looks great, but I have gushed and rambled on enough already. Check out the full album here, and brush up on your Roman architecture and history, or even better, go see it in person next time you’re in São Paulo.

The post Check out this incredibly huge and detailed LEGO diorama of the Eternal City, Rome appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Writing for PCGamer, Alex Kane takes a long look at the creation of the video game Tie Fighter, where the player becomes an ace in the Imperial Navy between the Battle of Hoth and Battle of Endor. Supposedly, this was Lucas's reaction when he saw the copy on the package:

As the story goes, George Lucas was shown the packaging for TIE Fighter in a board meeting shortly after the game had come out and had started performing well financially and earning acclaim. Lucas picked up the box, examined the cover, and then turned it over to read the copy on the back. "'Imperial Navy'?" he said. "There's no navy in Star Wars." A moment later: "Well, I guess it doesn't matter."

A key moment in the marketing of the game came when a deal was reached to co-promote the game along the Dodge Neon:

"I think what really helped the game is that we were approached by Dodge, the car company," Gleason says. "I wasn't in much of a bargaining position; I didn't have a whole lot to give in return, other than they get to use Star Wars in their advertising. For the Dodge Neon, which was nothing like a sci-fi or futuristic car. It was from Michigan. There was nothing sexy about it; it looked like a family car. But it was a big win, because we couldn't afford to distribute 400,000 demos on our own, or do a TV commercial."

With an unlikely marketing companion in Dodge, Gleason got a TIE Fighter demo onto the PCs of thousands of gamers. In early 1994, Computer Gaming World magazine released a single-mission demo of the game on a pair of 3.5-inch floppy disks. After clicking their way through an ad for the then-brand-new Neon compact, players were rewarded with an early, rough build of the game.

You can see that demo in this video:

My personal favorite mission was Battle 12, Mission 6: Recon Military Summit, which takes place just before the Battle of Endor. You're given two tasks. Jump into the system where the rebel fleet is amassed, scan the capital ships, and jump back out before being destroyed. Along the way, locate and assassinate a Bothan who has grown suspicious the rebels might be walking into a trap. Just make sure you don't destroy so many fighters that the rebels might abandon the assault on Endor! Here's a no commentary playthrough:

The gritty vision of a major metropolitan city after a mass-migration off-world is just one of the stunning visual elements in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. What is left behind is a world filled with the poor and downtrodden remnants of humanity struggling to eke out a living among crumbling infrastructures, lawlessness and an everyone-for-themselves dystopia. But at least they have flying cars, as depicted in this wonderfully detailed LEGO scene built by Keiichi Kamei. Keiichi’s scene features the classic flying car more commonly referred to as the Spinner, which is how the few police that are still around get a bird’s eye view of the city. It’s also perfect for dropping in and out of potentially dangerous situations.

The builder uses custom stickers to give the police vehicle it’s signature details, and I love the brick-and-slope-built steam clouds that really give the scene a dynamic aesthetic.

The post Spinner from Blade Runner takes off in a blast of steam appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

The character attributes that I’ll always remember Starscream for are being whiny, always going around his boss’s plans, and frequently retreating when things go wrong. I guess those are also his best attributes that make him memorable after all these decades. What’s more interesting, however, is YouTuber Starscreamer’s creation of his namesake, the Transformers Generation 1 Decepticon Starscream. It’s created with an uncanny likeness, with the signature colors and parts that give it the perfect shaping.

The best part of the build is really to see how it transforms with ease and demonstrated in the YouTube video below. Trust me, it’s not something you’d want to miss. At this point, I think I’m just gonna scream for some instructions pretty please! Do note that if you’re attempting to replicate this build, the wings include a part with studs on the outer slope that’s no longer in production since 1999 and the only source would be from the aftermarket offerings from Bricklink.

The post I scream, you scream, we all scream for Starscream! appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Builder Alex Jones (Orion Pax) has a laser-focused talent to bring our favorite Transformers to life. They not only look great and recognizable in their humanoid form, but it takes skill to also make the same builds look fabulous in their alternate vehicle modes using LEGO bricks. This is not an easy task indeed and would likely take tons of hours of experimentation. These sets of builds feature; Autobots Ironhide, Cosmos, Mirage, and Powerglide each decorated with the unmistakable patterns and prints from the original box designs from the 80s. They certainly don’t make morning cartoons like they used to!

The post Blast to the past with Generation 1 Transformers appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Nostalgia time! Let’s travel back to the early 1980s and the classic sci-fi TV mini-series V. If you’re unfamiliar, the basic plot is that friendly human-looking aliens visit Earth. Yep. Just some run-of-the-mill totally benign alien pals. Totally legit. The fact that any more summary would require a “spoiler warning” tag should give you an idea that things go downhill from there. But I digress. We’re here to look at a great LEGO creation, after all. Huw Gwilliam has recreated the iconic Visitor Tanker Shuttle. This sleek craft has lines very similar to the Eagle-One from 1975’s Space: 1999. What? You haven’t seen that show either? *sigh* It’s probably streaming somewhere. Go watch it. You’ll be glad you did. Even if 1999 didn’t play out quite the same way in our reality.
Anyway. Huw’s model. It’s cool. Check out the Technic toothed plates in white on the cargo pods and in grey in the landing gear. The custom graphic work on the windows, Visitor logos, and minifigures is also top-notch.

Retro-TV-Space is totally a theme, right? Because I could sure use more of this sort of thing.

The post V is for Visitor, and Virtual, and Very Nice appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Twitter has a setting that (nominally) allows you to turn off its default of showing you "top" tweets (as selected by its engagement-maximizing, conflict-seeking algorithm), but periodically, Twitter just ignores that setting and starts nonconsensually eyeball-fucking you with inflammatory headlines.

Kent Brewster has created a free/open plugin for Chrome and Firefox that undoes this reversion and shows you the Twitter you've expressly asked for.

Twitter reports that email address and phone numbers added for security reasons such as two-factor authorization "may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes."

When an advertiser uploaded their marketing list, we may have matched people on Twitter to their list based on the email or phone number the Twitter account holder provided for safety and security purposes. This was an error and we apologize.

We cannot say with certainty how many people were impacted by this, but in an effort to be transparent, we wanted to make everyone aware. No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties.

User data that Twitter cannot sell ended up in an advertising product that lets Twitter monetize such data without revealing it directly to third parties. Inadvertantly.

To celebrate the launch of the third season of Netflix’s sci-fi drama Stranger Things, TBB kicked off a contest on the Fourth of July, challenging our readers to build other locations from Hawkins, Indiana not featured in the LEGO Stranger Things 75810 The Upside Down. The challenge was actually quite simple — the LEGO creation needed to feature both the normal world and its “Upside Down” counterpart location, as we showed in our own free instructions to build a LEGO Castle Byers. It’s been great to see builders interpret this design brief in so many different ways, through the contest entries on Flickr. Today, we’re happy to announce the clear winner of our contest — “Barb’s Disappearing” by talented German builder Jonas Kramm.

Jonas interpreted the contest’s concept perfectly with his recreation of Steve Harrington’s house, where Barb Holland rejects the immature behavior of her best friend Nancy Wheeler, Nancy’s boyfriend Steve Harrington, and Steve’s awful friends. After injuring her hand, Barb sits quietly on the pool’s diving board awaiting her terrible fate at the hands of the Demogorgon. The Harrington residence in the real world is captured wonderfully, with vertical siding on the house, shingle roof tiles, an irregularly shaped pool, and trees surrounding the home. Jonas has added to the atmosphere in this photo with some excellent lighting flowing from inside the house.

Like the official LEGO set, the Upside Down version of the Harrington house is a mirror image of the real-world version, but built in darker colors, covered in slime and overgrowth, with the human structures in a dilapidated state. Most terrifying of all, the Demogorgon approaches the diving board from behind…

When we say that Jonas executed the concept perfectly, it’s not just that he built two excellent scenes that are real-world and Upside Down mirrors of each other. Also like the official set, Jonas’ model flips upside down, and can carry the weight of the entire model on the trees and the house’s chimney. Click the animated GIF to watch a slightly longer video, where you can get a peek at Jonas’ LEGO studio.

By choosing an unexpected location shown briefly in Season 1, Jonas has made us pause and think about this fateful moment when Nancy made the wrong choice, setting up her character’s growth throughout the rest of the series. We’ll be contacting Jonas to arrange shipment of 75810 The Upside Down and Castle Byers soon!

Honorable mentions

Despite running shortly after a more general Stranger Things contest directly from LEGO, the TBB contest generated numerous original entries that also captured the spirit of what we were looking for, even if they didn’t quite live up to Jonas’ amazing Harrington house. Let’s take a quick look at several honorable mentions.

Jonathan Fictorie is new to Flickr, but brought a strong dose of talent for the first LEGO creation he shared there. He’s recreated the Soviet lab under Starcourt Mall, with the Mindflayer just on the other side of the wall. The highly detailed laser device is excellent, with the addition of some nice Photoshop effects on both the real-world and Upside Down sides of the LEGO creation.

The laser device is worth a closer look as it tries to open a gate to the Upside Down. Jonathan’s LEGO version incorporates actual lighting, and the entire lab is highly detailed.

“Scoops Ahoy! at the Starcourt Mall” by Josh captures an idyllic 1980’s summer scene when everybody goes to shop and eat at the mall. Josh says, “After you’re done picking out your new outfit at the GAP, head on over for a Banana Split Sail-Boat Surprise! But this is Hawkins… so watch out for the deadly flavors scooped out in the Upside Down.” Be sure to click through to Josh’s Flickr for more photos of the interior and the Upside Down.

Entries didn’t have to be huge or flippable like the official LEGO set to be great, as KevFett2011 shows with this vignette, showing Jonathan Byers pulling Nancy Wheeler through a hole in a tree that leads to the Upside Down. This is just one in a great series of Stranger Things vignettes that covers all three seasons of the TV show.

A huge thank you to each of the builders who contributed an entry to the contest — it was especially great to see so many young builders share their LEGO creations for the first time. Keep building, asking for feedback, and improving, and you could reach Jonas’ level someday too!

The post Announcing the winner of TBB’s Stranger Things “Darker Hawkins” building contest [News] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.

Back in 2017, tastenmann77 took inspiration from The Empire Strikes Back and built an impressive Imperial AT-AT Walker. However, now he’s taken things to a whole new level and put together a huge maintenance hangar diorama to surround it. This LEGO creation is enormous – the walker itself is 45cm tall and 50cm long, which should give some impression of just how big the hangar is.

Sometimes larger LEGO creations rely on their sheer scale to impress, but this one is also filled with a frankly astonishing amount of detail. We’ve got Darth Vader arriving to carry out an inspection welcomed by a formation of Stormtroopers, there are Imperial officers overlooking the maintenance efforts from a gantry, there’s welding going on inside the AT-AT’s hold, and the floor is marked with realistic-looking warning stripes and is covered in interesting cargo and equipment. There’s even a mouse droid tootling around!

However, my favourite section has to be the crew room area. From its shiny floor to the detailed ceiling, this is an excellent piece of Star Wars modeling, and it’s been beautifully photographed too. I’m struck once more by the builder’s attention to detail — check out the time that’s been spent getting the design of those lockers just right! The crew room would be an impressive enough creation on its own, yet it forms only one small part of this excellent diorama. This is LEGO Star Wars building at its absolute best.

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Enlarge / No need to knock, Electron left the code unlocked. (credit: Getty Images)

LAS VEGAS—The Electron development platform is a key part of many applications, thanks to its cross-platform capabilities. Based on JavaScript and Node.js, Electron has been used to create client applications for Internet communications tools (including Skype, WhatsApp, and Slack) and even Microsoft's Visual Studio Code development tool. But Electron can also pose a significant security risk because of how easily Electron-based applications can be modified without triggering warnings.

At the BSides LV security conference on Tuesday, Pavel Tsakalidis demonstrated a tool he created called BEEMKA, a Python-based tool that allows someone to unpack Electron ASAR archive files and inject new code into Electron's JavaScript libraries and built-in Chrome browser extensions. The vulnerability is not part of the applications themselves but of the underlying Electron framework—and that vulnerability allows malicious activities to be hidden within processes that appear to be benign. Tsakalidis said that he had contacted Electron about the vulnerability but that he had gotten no response—and the vulnerability remains.

While making these changes required administrator access on Linux and MacOS, it only requires local access on Windows. Those modifications can create new event-based "features" that can access the file system, activate a Web cam, and exfiltrate information from systems using the functionality of trusted applications—including user credentials and sensitive data. In his demonstration, Tsakalidis showed a backdoored version of Microsoft Visual Studio Code that sent the contents of every code tab opened to a remote website.

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Readers from eastern Europe will instantly recognize this adorable critter from the Czech cartoon Krtek (which means “little mole” in Czech). Having read books and seen cartoons of Krtek’s adventures throughout my childhood, I never thought to see the character built out of LEGO. But when I saw this perfect recreation by Eero Okkonen, I went full “aww-mode”.

The pose on the image is so iconic that one would hardly notice this is LEGO, were it not for a jagged edge here and there. Curved pieces capture the character’s shape very well, but my favourite parts are the red nose and the three long hairs on the mole’s head. As a master character builder, Eero has explored many different source materials and themes, but none quite as iconic as this one. Thanks for the nostalgia trip, Eero!

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