Caseymalone

Here’s a really beautiful new art print from 1xRUN and Yumiko Kayukawa. “Appetite” is a 15″ x 24″ giclee, has an edition of 50, and costs $115. Visit 1xRUN.com.

"Some kind of magic happened with that horse… I would really love to say it was by design, but it was a complete accident. Now we have stared for many hours at that horse, trying to define it’s essence… But the horse itself was a complete accident."

- The owner and CEO of Archie McPhee, the incredible novelty company behind the horse head mask, on this week’s Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show. Listen on iTunes or JeffRubinJeffRubinShow.com

“It was like trying to stop a force of nature. He was a sponge. The last time he came, he’d gotten a six-page assignment, and I went over what he’d done wrong, how he could make it better. He said, ‘You’re saying I have to draw it over again.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He said, […]

It has taken almost six years and about 43,200 pictures (give or take) but Gregory Tull‘s dream of a full length (give or take) LEGO stop motion movie has almost to come to fruition. They’re in post production now editing the roughly 50 minute long movie which is set to be released early 2015 – both online and hopefully limited theatrical release if they can find a distributor.

In the mean time check out the trailer:

I’ve seen a lot of brickfilms, but what sets this apart from the rest, besides the obvious length, is the attention to detail and big budget effects – like the rain scenes. The rain itself is easy, that’s just computer effects. But the wet surface – well that is as horribly painful to capture as you might think: they sprayed the set with water, took the image, dried off all the LEGO, and did it again…. for every frame … for 3 months … but it looks pretty darn cool.

With a nearly $127 million domestic box-office haul, an inescapable marketing campaign, countless merchandising tie-ins and a soundtrack debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, it’s safe to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is worming its way into our pop-culture consciousness. And come Halloween, the streets and malls will be crawling with little trick-or-treaters […]

No Starch Press, known as the purveyors of many LEGO books written by LEGO fans, recently sent me a copy of their latest book exploring our favorite hobby, The LEGO Neighborhood Book. Written by brothers Brian and Jason Lyles, it explores the City Modular standard through pre-built creations, architectural techniques, and model instructions. The 204-page book is 8″x8″ with a high-quality soft cover, and the glossy pages with great color representation we’ve come to expect from books about LEGO.

The City Modular standard is based on LEGO’s popular series of official advanced town kits featuring classic buildings, each of which connects to its neighbors via a standard Technic pin connection. The line began in 2007 with the introduction of 10182 Café Corner and has since expanded to 8 sets, ranging from a Pet Shop to a Fire Station. Each building comes apart at each floor, providing full access to the interior, and this function, together with the system for connecting the buildings to one another, gives the name modulars. Over the past 7 years, fans have been creating hundreds of their own buildings, each set on the same basic standard, to fill out the city streets of LEGO towns. The LEGO Neighborhood Book gives an introduction to this fan-driven side of the modulars.

The first chapter provides this basic introduction and lays out the standard for the modulars. Chapters 2-4 are where the book really hits its stride, though, beginning with The Design Process. A bit of color theory and general styling can be gleaned here, but the best part is the dozens of images of real-world architectural details paired with various techniques for recreating them in LEGO. This section also includes many interior details like paintings and dressers, and even a few exterior city elements like traffic signals. I particularly enjoyed that the authors teach how to create, instead of simply giving instructions: “Try to imagine the real-life reference model as a giant LEGO model. As crazy as that might sound, it will help you identify which architectural details actually look like individual LEGO pieces already.” The authors then provide numerous examples of their own work, which is of good quality, to show how their advice comes together to create a cohesive model.

The latter half of the book comprises instructions. The authors designed a very nice two-story corner drugstore. All of the parts necessary are laid out at the beginning of the instructions, and then at each step, and a link is also provided to a downloadable parts list. Next is a house — or rather for 3 houses. The authors developed one building with 3 very different facades, the instructions for each of which are provided here. The three are in Parisian, Colonial, and Dutch Canal styles.

Overall, there’s probably little here that will be new to a veteran builder, but to the novice or intermediate builder, I can easily see this book becoming an invaluable resource. It’s a very nice book, and would make a great gift for someone who’s just beginning to get back into the LEGO hobby. The LEGO Neighborhood Book is available from No Starch Press for $19.95 in September, and is currently available for pre-order from Amazon for $14.27.

Sony recently launched its new Playstation Now service that lets you rent access to streaming games. 1 Prices vary by game, but they always follow the same structure. Take, for example, Darksiders II:

Those prices are:

• 4 hours for $4.99
• 7 days for $6.99
• 30 days for $14.99
• 90 days for $29.99

You may look at those options and be baffled as to why Sony would even include the “4 hours for $4.99 option.” Four hours? There are very few games that can be fully experienced in just four hours, and Darksiders II is definitely not one of them. For just two more dollars you can get the game for 7 days –that’s 164 additional hours. So why even have a 4 hour option that nobody is going to pick?

Well, I’ll tell you why. But first we’re going to have to talk about beer. Yaaaaay! Beer!

Back in 1983, Joel Huber and Christopher Puto, both from Duke University at the time, asked a bunch of students to pick a six-pack of beer from a set of choices.2 One group had these options:

• A bargain beer that cost $1.80 and had been rated a 50 out of 100 on quality
• A premium beer that cost $2.60 and had been rated a 70 out of 100

Given these two options, only 33% chose the bargain beer.

Another group of identical students, though, was asked to pick from three options: the first two of which were the same as above, plus what Huber and Puto called a “distractor” option. So their choices were:

• A cheap, nasty beer that cost $1.60 and had been rated a 40 out of 100 on quality
• A bargain beer that cost $1.80 and had been rated a 50 out of 100
• A premium beer that cost $2.60 and had been rated a 70 out of 100

Here’s how those choices look in plot form:

What happened when that third distractor was added? Nobody wanted the nasty beer, but simply having it there made choice of the bargain beer rise from 33% to 47%.

In other words, the presence of the worthless decoy stole market share from the premium beer and gave it to the bargain beer.

Psychologists studying consumer choice call this an “attraction effect.” It happens when one choice dominates another by being mostly similar to it, but better in at least one important aspect. The reason, as usual, is because of how our brains are wired. We simply aren’t very good at evaluating things in absolute terms, like the value of having access to a game for a certain amount of time relative to how much it will cost. Instead, we are biased towards making comparisons between things that are most similar and ignoring or devaluing other choices for the sake of simplicity. The third choice –the premium beer in the example above– gets undervalued for the sake of making the decision simpler.

As you’re probably guessing at this point, the PlayStation Now pricing structure also uses a decoy to trigger the attraction effect. Look again at Darksiders II, which is currently priced thusly:3

Granted, PlayStation Now prices vary by game, but they all follow the same pattern. The Dark Siders II options look like this on a plot, which has # hours on the Y axis:

Similar to the beer sipping subjects in Huber and Puto’s study, we would expect shoppers to see that the 4 hours for $5 option is dominated by the 168 hours for $7. Thus people are more likely to limit their choice to those two options because it’s less mentally taxing and requires less wrestling with abstract concepts like value. And thus we should see an attraction effect where the presence of the 4 hour option causes more people to choose the 7 day option than if there were no decoy.

Why would Sony want people to go for the 7 day option? Maybe they have data showing that it’s the sweet spot where people are more willing to pay, or they’re likely to spend more over time if they do it in $7-ish chunks. Maybe they think customers are unlikely to rent multiple games at once, and they don’t want them tied up for 30 or 90 days at a time with one game.

But whatever their reasons, now you know about the psychology involved and you can make a more informed choice.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS.

As a child, I was a big fan of LEGO’s Model Team sets of highly detailed and realistic-looking vehicles. It will be no surprise then that I also liked the Classic Beetle LEGO released more than six years ago and that I also bought the Volkswagen Camper van. To my delight, LEGO has now introduced another classic car: the MINI Cooper.

The Mini started life as a humble economy car, but with a lasting legacy. To maximise passenger space within its short body, its engine was transversally mounted and drove the front wheels, which is a configuration copied in pretty much every small family hatchback built since. Sporty versions, called the Cooper and Cooper S, became successful rally racers and celebrities such as Steve McQueen, Paul McCartney, Prince Charles and even Enzo Ferrari owned Minis. From its humble origins, the Mini grew into a cult car, with a particularly British kind of cool.

The vehicle
The set represents a late-model Mini Cooper (produced in late 1997/ early 1998, judging from the license plate) in dark green, with white stripes on the bonnet (hood), white wing mirrors and a white roof. The dark green colour is a close match for traditional British racing green and the colour scheme just screams Mini. The front of the car is spot-on, with the shape of the radiator grille, front-mounted fog lights and the silver bumper pieces. The curved elements used below the windows have neatly-printed thin white lines on them, that run the length of the car. Small details such as the fuel filler cap and indicator lights are nicely represented. Remarkably, for a LEGO set, the finished model is almost completely studless, which suggests that LEGO also hopes to cater to fans of the Mini who may not necessarily be into LEGO.

The model is not without faults, however. Especially when seen from behind, it does not look quite round enough. Having built my own models of Minis, I know that both the front and rear windows ought to be curved, but on the model they are built using large flat window panels. I also don’t particularly like the way the pillars supporting the corners of the roof are built, using 75-degree slopes covered with stickers marked with a black triangle. The stickers are intended to make the pillars look narrower, but I don’t think it really works. In fairness, though, alternative solutions would either require completely new part shapes or would add greatly to the complexity, parts count and cost of the set. Despite the compromises, it definitely looks like a Mini.

The chassis of the model is built using plates and traditional studded Technic beams and feels rock-solid. Most of the construction is fairly straightforward, but there are a few really clever features. The one that struck me in particular is the construction required to create a small gap (of half a plate in width) that allows the doors to open easily. Another neat feature is the spare wheel, which neatly fits into a 6x5x1 panel mounted in the bottom of the car and is covered by a hinged panel that also forms the floor of the car’s boot (trunk). The model has fairly wide wheels, with nice wheel covers that look very much like the alloys fitted to the real car. Unfortunately, the front wheels don’t steer and their width, combined with the small clearance around them, suggests that fitting the model with working steering yourself will not be easy.

For me, the interior is the highpoint of the model. There is a lot of detail throughout, with a dashboard with a glove compartment (that doesn’t open, however), speakers and a few dials. It is built using brown elements, making it look as though it is covered in wood veneer. The seats have a neat chequered pattern built out of tan, dark tan and white elements. The insides of the doors are covered in tan tiles, adding to the classy look. The interior can be appreciated by removing the roof. This is held on by just a few studs at the back, which allows it to be easily removed. Because of the strength of the chassis, this construction doesn’t seem to weaken the model much. Opening the bonnet (hood) reveals a faithful representation of the engine, including its two carburettors. Besides the previously-mentioned spare wheel, the boot (trunk) houses a pick-nick hamper (with bread, glasses and cheese), a large bottle and a red-and-white cloth pick-nick blanket. I can imagine this is just the sort of stuff people might take with them to a Mini-owners meeting.

Parts
I bought the set for €99.99 from LEGO’s on-line shop in the Netherlands (it costs $99.99 in the US, £74.99 in the UK). This not exactly cheap for a set that set contains 1077 parts, but the dark green makes it a useful parts pack.

Military builders who like camouflage, in particular, will definitely love this one. It has several elements that previously were not available in dark green, including plate hinges, 1×1 plates and 1×1 bricks with a stud on the side. It also includes a fair few 1×1 tile pieces in dark green and in dark tan. Unlike in the earlier camper van and the Beetle, the parts come in numbered bags, which is a great help when building. The model comes with two sticker sheets with Mini and Mini Cooper logos and license plates to represent either a British registered car (R-reg) or cars registered in Denmark, Germany, Australia or Connecticut. Mini lovers may want to build their own car in a different colour, but this will require a fair bit of creativity, since the elements used for the mudguards and for the curved boot lid (trunk lid) are available in only a handful of colours.

Overall verdict

If you like classic cars and Minis in particular, this is a great addition to your collection. It is not built to the same scale as the older camper van or the Beetle, however. Car builders often base the scale of their models on the size of the available wheels and that also seems to be the case for this set. The model is a bit too boxy, but it shows great attention to detail and the colour combination is simply classy. The colour is also the main attraction if you are looking for useful parts for your own builds.

The LEGO Mini Cooper is available from the LEGO Shop online:

• United States: MINI Cooper ($99.99)
• Canada: MINI Cooper ($119.99)
• United Kingdom: MINI Cooper (£74.99)

Among the bigger announcements to come out of Comic-Con International was that Marvel will resume publishing Star Wars comics after a nearly 30 years, 23 years of which the license called Dark Horse home. We’ve known it was happening for a while, of course, but this was the official unveiling of titles and creative teams. […]

Fans with a little extra cash in their pockets — OK, a lot of cash — have a chance to acquire pieces of Dark Knight history, as ComicConnect and Metropolis Collectibles are auctioning Batman co-creator Bob Kane’s own file copies of the character’s earliest appearances. Those searching for pristine editions of Detective Comics #27 or […]

An official image of the series 12 collectible minifigs surfaced today, revealing the full lineup for the October 2014 release. The retail price will be $3.99.

EDIT (AB): As always, here’s our best guess at what these figs could be called (pending the official names from LEGO closer to the release):

• Gamer
• Miner
• Rock Star
• Swashbuckler
• Jester
• Princess and Frog Prince
• Japanese Horror-Movie Ghost
• Pizza Delivery Guy
• Barbarian
• Genie
• Lifeguard
• Wizard
• Hunter
• Space Dude
• Athena
• Pig Suit Guy

Frozen Pizza Reviewed by a Pizza Expert, my newest video starring (who else?) Scott Wiener of Scott’s Pizza Tours.

With a front page that rivals anything J. Jonah Jameson has published, the New York Post trumpeted the news Sunday that Spider-Man struck a police officer in the face during an altercation in Times Square. Or, if you prefer “Times Square rampage.” Interestingly, after countless crimes (allegedly, in some cases) committed in the past couple […]

Apparently, I’m not the only one who finds the LEGO Simpsons Collectible Minifigures vaguely unsettling. Nooroyd has put the Krusty the Clown head to good use as rubber masks hiding the identities of a pair of bank robbers. Beyond the use of these minifig parts, the scene is wonderfully photographed, with overhead and ambient lighting.

Galerie F has a number of prints from Rob Jones’ “Grief” gallery show available. These are all 8.5″ x 11″ screenprints, have small editions, and cost only $30 each. Visit GalerieF.com.

“I use ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’ interchangeably — I don’t make a distinction. I’ve said that being a nerd is not about what you love, it’s about the way that you love it. So you can be a nerd for football, and obsessively follow stats and player trades and figure out things that give you an […]

Start saving your money now, collectors. Hot Toys has unveiled its Rocket Raccoon and Groot action-figure set for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s undeniably awesome (and I say that as someone who hasn’t collected action figures since childhood), but it’s also $360. I should point out, however, that you can set up a payment […]

LEGO has unveiled a massive UCS-scale version of the Tumbler from The Dark Knight. The vehicle will measure over 15 inches long and 9 inches wide, has a full interior cockpit, and includes a nameplate, and Batman and Joker minifigs. Although LEGO has produced several versions of the Joker previously, this will be the first appearance of Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight. UCS Tumbler (76023) will be available in September for $199 USD, and includes 1,869 pieces. You can see more images of the set here, or listen to the one of LEGO’s designers talking about the set here.

The People’s Print Shop will release another beautiful new art print by Julian Callos today. “Eclipse” is an 11″ x 17″ giclee, has an edition of 40, and is yet unpriced (if past releases are any indication, it will be around $30). It goes up today (Thursday, July 17th) at 8am Pacific Time. Visit ThePeoplesPrintShop.com.

We talk to producer Takashi Tezuka about creativity, sharing, and the prospect of a portable version.

I’m not sure why I was so surprised that Matt Inman’s The Oatmeal received an Eisner Award nomination this year, but judging from some other online reactions, I wasn’t the only one. It’s not like it doesn’t deserve it. The Oatmeal easily has a larger following than the other nominees. How many copies does a […]

hannanimal:

hannanimal:

I started playing the Kim Kardashian game yesterday and today I went out on a date with a woman named Kloaca. I love this game. 

I’ve just figured out Kloaca is

kfan

and I’m very ashamed for not realizing this sooner.

Careful readers will note that in an earlier post on the topic of this game I indicated that the name of my character was Koatl. Hannah has now outed me as a complete liar. I was just really embarrassed that I named my character Kloaca, and there’s no way to change it without starting the game over. I’m sorry for not being honest with my tumblr fans about the name of my character in the Kim Kardashian game. In the future I will be more respectful to my readers. I’m very sorry and I hope you can forgive me. 

About a year ago, we featured a beautifully rendered LEGO Songbird from Bioshock Infinite by the talented Imagine Rigney. At BrickWorld last month, he exhibited a complete scene that recreates the entrance to the Financial District in the game.

Imagine has included a rail system and various enemies for a full-scale battle, including Booker using Shock Jockey on a Handyman and some Founders.

Columbia looks hauntingly gorgeous at night.

Check out Imagine’s full photoset on Flickr to see more detailed photos of this massive build.

Dark Ink will release the final print in Dave Perillo’s Indiana Jones trilogy today. It’s an awesome 12″ x 36″ screenprint, has an edition of 250, and will cost $50. It goes up today (Friday, July 11th) around 10:30am Pacific Time. Visit DarkInkArt.com.

A-Team Summer (Via FYATeam)

Tommy Bahama Island Shirt

Steven Alan Relaxed Fit Check Shorts

Super Basic Yellow 

Within reason, I think if you’re craving something, you should go for it, although this theory is mostly born of my own poor logic. I’ve all too many times craved, say, a brownie but thought I shouldn’t eat a brownie and so instead snacked on (just for a completely random example) 12 almonds, 1 slice of cheese, half an apple, 1 banana and then, oops, a handful of chocolate chips, amounting roughly 3x the calories of a brownie, a brownie that I craved exactly as much as I did 500 calories ago. And so, when I really want a brownie, I make my favorite brownies and we each eat one and then I stash the rest in the freezer, so they are not out on the counter, calling to me that we haven’t been cut in a straight line and you should really even us out or we’re going to go bad soon and you don’t want us to go to waste or any of those things that brownies tell me when we’re alone together.

[Hm, here I should probably interject some sort of "sure, okay, brownies talk to me but I'm not like crazy or anything; it's not weird. Brownies talk to everyone, right? Haha?" reassurance but I'm not going to. I'm going to make this as awkward as possible.]

... Read the rest of brownie ice cream sandwiches on smittenkitchen.com

---

© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to brownie ice cream sandwiches | 166 comments to date | see more: Chocolate, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer

Oh God, I Spent $494.04 Playing the Kim Kardashian Hollywood App:

embfitz:

Oh God, I saw this in the app store a couple of days ago and almost went for it

I’ve been playing this! As soon as Kim announced that she had a game coming out I was like: Welp, that’s for me.

My starlet’s name is Koatl and she is strikingly beautiful. 

The character Kustomization is definitely my favorite part. It took me a WHILE to decide the perfect hair and makeup for Koatl but rest assured I fully immersed myself in the task. 

I’m on board with freemium games but the K stars are really expensive and all I really want to do is try on new outfits and do photoshoots. I don’t care as much about the missions or becoming a bigger celebrity or managing my social media, I really just want cooler clothes. I became a D-list celeb and haven’t spent any money yet, but I kind of need to decide how much having a better wardrobe is really worth to me at this point. Which is very real.

Also, activities like talking to your agent and Kim and running around town aren’t bad, but I got to a part where I had to flirt with someone and I was terrible at it and I ran out of Energy, which was also very real. 

This is my review of a game.

Hello and welcome to Shelf Porn, your weekly invitation into one fan’s life. Today’s collection comes from Blaine in Murfreesboro, Tennessee — a graphic designer, comic book collector and toy collector “for many years.” He shared his comics, toys, metal signs, Pez dispensers and more. If you’d like to see your collection here on Robot […]

Ryan Duggan continues his Poster of the Week series with another hilarious, super-limited print. “POTW #22″ is an 11″ x 23″ screenprint, has an edition of 15, and costs $40. Visit his shop.

Galerie F will host a solo exhibition by Rob Jones starting Thursday, July 17th. “Grief” will feature over 100 original drawings and a small number of art prints. The work is very personal and will be very affordable. I’ve been lucky enough to be in correspondence with Rob as he’s worked on many of the pieces and can honestly say that it’s one of the weirdest, most unique bodies of work I’ve ever seen created. I really can’t wait for everyone to see it all. Most of the info is below, plus some brand new reveals, and you can always get further info at GalerieF.com.