Proving once again the versatility of the world’s greatest toy, a German artist named Jan Vormann is traveling around the world, “repairing” old buildings and decaying structures with LEGO bricks. This “guerilla art,” which he’s dubbed Dispatchwork, has already taken him to major global cities like Tel Aviv, Berlin, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Zuerich, and most recently, a two-week stint in New York City.

In each location, Vormann gathers an army of assistants — made up of children and adults alike — and wanders the streets in search of missing bricks, tiles, stones, and other construction materials in need of replacing. There’s no method to the placement of the plastic bricks, resulting in a mosaic of bricks of different sizes and colors. And quite often while conducting their unique repair work, Vormann and his helpers attract quite a lot of attention from passersby, many of whom are only too happy to join in.

The artist doesn’t usually ask permission to do LEGO patchwork on the buildings or landmarks he selects; he just does it. Which doesn’t seem to matter all that much, since his LEGO patches tend to fall apart fairly quickly. I think part of his reasons for doing what he does is to illicit reactions from locals — the Dispatchwork website describes a full spectrum of reactions from amusement and enthusiasm to disgruntled irritation that he’s meddling with private property.

Vormann, who regularly creates art installations of all kinds in public places, considers himself a serious artist, though he reportedly thinks of Dispatchwork as more of a fun activity than any kind of work. The LEGO Group, for its part, hasn’t given Vormann’s work an official endorsement, but the company is believed to be closet fans of what he’s doing.

Vormann already has Dispatchwork trips planned for Barcelona, Toulouse, and Lausanne.

Kinda makes me want to go try it for myself.

Yes, you read that right.

It’s not the handheld variety, either. This Blackberry is over five feet tall, and incorporates a flatscreen TV, because the client who commissioned the giant Blackberry wanted it to have a working screen. It’s so huge that it requires its own stand for mounting. (Can you imagine how hard it would be to safely mount a flatscreen TV inside thousands of LEGO bricks?)

You may not recognize the name Nathan Sawaya, but you’ve probably seen his work. Sawaya is a former lawyer who now works as a professional LEGO artist (and yes there is such a thing you doubter, you), building artistic sculptures entirely out of the iconic plastic bricks. Most of his pieces are done by commission, allowing him to make his living by crafting these incredible works of art.

Sawaya takes on projects of all shapes and sizes, and is perhaps best recognized for his life-size LEGO expressionist sculptures of the human body. Take a look around his website to see his mind-boggling portfolio — he’s done an amazing assortment of projects, including everything from a life-size “Han Solo frozen in Carbonite” to a giant Monopoly game to a working cello.

Sawaya has even been featured on Mythbusters.

If there’s something you’ve always wanted to see built out of LEGO bricks, Sawaya is available for hire for any project, large or small. Don’t expect it to be cheap — after all, LEGO bricks aren’t cheap, either.

Question: What do you get when you combine LEGO with a board game? Answer: Something impossibly awesome. Come on — you put those two things together, and I’m already in.

The world of LEGO just keeps getting bigger, and now, LEGO Games have arrived in the United States. Our friends in Europe have been enjoying these unique sets for a while now, but at last they’ve landed in America.

These clever game sets combine everything that’s great about board games with the wonders of LEGO Bricks. The result is a sort of hybrid game with rules and objectives just like a regular board game, only the board and all of the parts are made of LEGO pieces. There are even multiple sets of rules that let you play your game in different ways. (What a cool job it would be to design these games.)

Right now there are five LEGO Games available, though more are expected to follow. (Great Britain currently has 14.) Rumor has it there’s even a “Harry Potter Hogwarts” game on the way.

Each game set comes with specially-designed LEGO Dice that you build yourself. The gameplay varies from set to set, but is available for upwards of 4 to 8 players, and can last anywhere from 15 minutes to a full hour.

My favorite is Creationary, a game in which you’re challenged to build something in one of four categories — vehicles, buildings, nature, or things — and all of the other players have to guess what you’re building. Creationary also happens to be the most expensive one of the lot, at $34.99, though most of the games are priced under $20.

For that reason, and for the joy of combining the Rubik’s Cube with robotics, we present CubeStormer from RoboticSolutions.

The claim is that this Lego Mindstorms RCX Speedcubing Robot can solve any 3³ in under twelve seconds. The video shows this: I’m happy to take their word on the machine being handed random cubes.

Just brilliant.

Kinda makes your human attempts at solving the cube rather futile, eh? Never mind. You can always dress up as a Rubik’s Cube instead.

Via

I don’t know what TV ads are doing Stateside (or elsewhere) at present, but in the UK there’s a resurgence of ads from the 1970s and ’80s. I think it’s probably because the kids who grew up with these adverts are now in nostalgic mode and have kids of their own.

Narrated by the late, great British comedian Tommy Cooper, it shows off the versatility of LEGO (assuming you have a lot of it) in a humorous way, with various LEGO creatures and objects pitting themselves against each other.

This is from the days when you really built your own stuff from LEGO, and the kits even had suggestions for making up your own models, rather than blindly following a formula.

The days before LEGOland when you went to conference centres hosting what felt like almost impromptu exhibitions, with people showing off humungous models, some animated, and you could play amongst huge piles of the multicoloured plastic bricks.

Great stuff.

Constructed from some simple bits of LEGO, servo motor, LEDs and simple microchip, the Rovin’ Pumpkin isn’t exactly a hit on the dance floor, but with its glowing green eyes and sneaky little movements, it could scare a few trick or treaters this weekend.

Via

As you might imagine, it’s quite a complex procedure that involves scanning the digits already present and working out which squares are blank.

Processing the scanned image requires setting a threshold value to remove noise, segmenting to work out which marks are part of the digit, thinning to one pixel wide and then checking the features to find out what the digit is.

Solving the Sudoku puzzle is the relatively easy bit, though the Mindstorm processor is slow and doesn’t allow recursive functions, so took some time to optimize.

Then comes the time to write in all those digits, column by column. The whole process is very slow, for all sorts of reasons, and it won’t be beating a human Sudoku champion any time soon (even if it solved the puzzle more quickly), but that’s not the point. This is a trés cool application.

Read more at Tilted Twister

Both via Hello Namoi, cupcake designer par excellence.

Today be no exception to this as we present you the Lego coffee table Foosball table top by MTDewMonkey

I’m proud to introduce you to my latest and greatest M.O.C. The all new never before seen LEGO Coffee Table Foosball Table! That’s right! The soccer set we actually wanted! Entertain your AFOL friends at your next LUG meeting and challenge them to a game. Battle it out and claim victory for your custom minifig team. All LEGO fans will love the LEGO Coffee Table Foosball Table. It fits any theme, as long as you have the minifigs. And for all you Steampunk Lovers out there it comes in an authentic “faux” oak woodgrain finish.

Source: MTDewMonkey’s flickr.

Actually, there’s a lot of other stuff besides robots, but that’s what caught my eye. The pic above is Industrial-Grade P-8 Lifter Robot. Be sure to check out the original artwork.

How about this Crusader:

Or how about Gundeer:

Really, go and check out the rest, they’re awesome.

Again, we are not religious here at FG HQ, but we already expressed our love for the New Testament narrated with Lego and this is no exception. How could we not love a Jesus made out of 30.000 Lego blocks?

40 Swedish parishioners needed 18 months to build the statue and unveiled it on Eastern in front of around 400 people. The statue is all white, many of the donated colored Lego blocks have been used for the inside of the sculpture.

Tyler Clites (Legohaulic), Lego guru par excellence, has released an other piece of Lego art. This time he built a Lego DeLorean, completely with motor and remote control. No words on the maximum speed and chances that he will be able to time-travel with this Lego Delorean are rather slim.
Still a nice piece of Lego art, which we always admire here at the FG HQ.

Watch a Flickr video of the Delorean zooming round after the jump.

Lego is fun, Lego is ace, Lego kept us geeks busy for many many hours during our youth. And we love Lego at FG HQ. No surprise we were positively surprised by the website The Brick Testament which narrates the New Testament in Lego form.

Not that we are religious here at FG but this _religious testament_ still deserves a mention. An honourful mention that is and a listing in our Dept. of Awesomeness.

He says that there’s no actual Apple hardware inside the iMac G4 Junior at present. Much of the base is simply a weight because the photo frame is quite heavy.

Cool idea anyway. Check out a couple more pictures here then head over to his blog for more.

Art Asylum and Diamond Select Toys have have presented a new set of customized Lego figures. This time they based the minimates on Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho.

The pack includes 4 figures (Norman Bates, Norman as Mother, Marion Crane and Mother Bates). The new line was presented at CustomCon.

Psycho Minimates.

So it’s no surprise that LEGO has a solution for those looking for something a little different to share their contact details on.

Hardly practical – try fitting a load of these in your wallet – but pretty darn amazing, these LEGO “business cards” are a must if you’re lucky enough to actually work at the plastic brick company. Personalised with your name and possibly some other information (maybe that’s hidden inside on a paper scroll and you have to separate the little person’s legs and torso to read it?) it’s certainly different.

You could probably make your own, though if you wanted it to look at least a little similar to you, some DIY on the hair and face might be in order.

Now, I wonder who went for the Action Man version?

(Via UberGizmo)

This YouTube video really has everything needed: Lego, H.G. Wells’s time machine and is awesomely detailled. A must watch even though 12.31 minutes long.

For more news about awesome gadgets and accessories, visit our forums.

Today seems to be Lego day. Not much information is available around this Lego mobile phone from French provider Alcatel, but it seems that the aim is to get kids even earlier hooked to phones.

Apparently this will be a very cheap phone with the most basic of features, although a camera is rumored, for a very low price of $60. Pictures show that the front Lego bricks are interchangeable.
I am curious to see how this will develop further. Loving the concept.

Via BoyGeniusReport.

W00t!

All formats

If you’ve seen the new Indiana Jones film you might just want to take after your hero – and bearing in mind that it’s not very safe to start using a whip indoors then you might want to consider this game.  It might just be right up your street.  As with the previous (and up and coming) Lego games, the characters and elements of the game are made up of those wonderful, colourful little blocks we all used to play with.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an adult or a child – the simple control scheme means that just about anyone should be able to pick it up and have a go.  Simple however in this case still means fun, as it can be hugely rewarding when you get a puzzle or action sequence right.  Naturally you’ll get plenty of both of the previous elements as well as building things out of Lego (hammer that button!), fighting with the ubiquitous whip and of course hunting for artefacts in the game.

There’s a certain charm to shrinking the characters down to pint-size proportions and then marvelling at the little details on their square(ish) heads – such as the stubble on Indy.  They’ll very quickly raise a smile and it’s unlikely to leave you as you play through the game.  Of course, Indiana isn’t the only one – in fact you’ll find 60 Lego people in here just waiting to be discovered.

Similar to previous games in the ‘Lego’ series, the game works on the premise that you’ve got at least some awareness of the film to get the most out of it.  That isn’t to say that you won’t have a good time if you’ve not seen any of the Indiana Jones films, but you’ll get a lot more out of it if you have.  For a quick example, there’s a scene where he gets chased by a (now Lego) boulder down a decline.  It’s humorous and quirky, but this could be lost on someone who hasn’t seen it before and won’t truly appreciate the in-joke.

Gameplay wise, there isn’t a huge amount of time needed to complete the game – but you’ll have a lot of fun doing so in the various interactive environments.  There’s less fighting in there than the Lego Star Wars games but just as much fun to be had.  If you’re a hardcore gamer, maybe it’ll appear to the geek in you.  If you’re more ‘casual’ in nature then I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun with this.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is available now and is suitable for ages 3+.

Yeah, I think this can also pass as a “geeky thing”.  I mean you’d need to at least have firm grasp in structural engineering, materials engineering & physics.   This lego tower was built by a team in the Legoland Windsor theme park in the U.K. of 500,000 LEGO bricks, and stands at just about 100 feet high (beating the old record by about 4 feet).

Why was this built, you may ask.  Well this tower is to honor Lego for it’s 50-years of fun.  The first lego set was distributed in the early 50’s, and to date remains one of the strongest toy sets worldwide.  Who would have thought it would survive the challenges of new toys and technology.  In my book, nothing beats Lego.

From Wikipedia:

Legoland Windsor is a child-oriented theme park in Windsor, Berkshire in England, themed around the Lego toy system. The park opened in 1996 on the site of what was the Windsor Safari Park, as the second Lego Group Legoland (the first was Legoland Billund in Denmark). In common with the other Legolands across the world, the park’s attractions consist of a mixture of Lego-themed rides, Lego models, and Lego building workshops.

With that being said, the latest lego tech product is actually a dock for your iPod. It is hard to believe, but inside that small lego block there are tiny speakers. I doubt the sound will be anything good, but in this case the “looks” are worth more than the “features”.

Priced at approximately $16, the Lego iPod Dock is available at 10×10 from Korea.

PS – I wonder why companies do bad photoshop jobs instead of taking a photo of the product?

[Via - technabob]

It takes a lot for a USB drive to matter these days. There are so many of them, and it’s really hard for them to stand out. However, Zip Zip has managed to do the impossible…they have merged the worlds of Lego and very small USB drives into…well…you saw the picture up there, didn’t ya?

It’s awesome. I want two.

Click Here for more info

Personally, I think it’s awesome. It’s an awesome piece of lego construction, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Stephen Hawking wants one if he sees it….

What do you think?

via brickshelf

As if the cow hadn’t been milked already, LucasArts has decided to grab the two relatively popular LEGO Star Wars titles, put them together, add some new characters, “revamp some levels” and charge you a full price for a product that is already mostly developed.

This new title will be available on all major consoles except for the PSP, and the 360 and PS3 versions will have an online cooperative mode which might prove to be a bit of fun, although I didn’t find any of the previous games challenging enough to require the aid of another player.

Newsarama reports that Batman fans, Lego Fans, and fans of the insanely popular Lego Star Wars games will have something else to geek out about in 2008.

Warner Bros. announced today that they will be releasing a Lego Batman game that follows the same style and model of the highly successful Lego Star Wars series.

The game is set for a 2008 release, most likely to coincide with the release of “The Dark Knight” which is set to hit theaters on July 18th of 2008.

We’ll have more info on the sure fire hit when it is released.

Once again, a Lego fan proves that too much free time can result in amazing things. Justin Stebbins created models and sets for most vehicles and characters from Halo and Halo 2.

What’s so great about this? Well, you can kill the Monitor for starters and break him apart piece by piece! You can also create your own (better) ending for either game. Just be sure to have a good excuse handy for stealing your son’s or little brother’s toys.

Be sure to also check some of his other “Lego Game” projects like Metal Gear and Star Wars.

Thanks Jay Shisky

I loved to play with my legos when I was younger, but never did build anything cool. I stuck with very simple jets and high-rise buildings. Seeing these types of things makes me wonder how do you even plan something like this?

And where the hell are my legos now?