I have fond memories of boxed tank games from my childhood. I would pore through the rule books and study the counters. These days I’m always interested in the convergence between Lego and gaming. The folks over at Brickmania just released their own WWII tank game using brick built micro tanks, so I decided that I had to check it out.
Lately, I’ve been spending a bit more time around train and town AFOLs and it has had me thinking about straying into minifig scale buildings. I saw some lovely models last month at BrickCon, that inspired me even further. I don’t own any of the ‘modular’ buildings that Lego has released, so the idea of building one of my own is a bit daunting. Lucky for me, The LEGO Neighborhood Book is the perfect introduction.
I follow a number of builders on flickr and my feed is full of mecha, space, and microscale builds. As I’ve mentioned before, I am drawn to Lego mecha and I follow a number of Japanese builders on flickr, just for their intricate mecha models. One of those builders, Tomoyuki Wakata (legorobo:waka) has just released a lovely how-to book for building Lego mecha
As a child, I spent a year living in Japan. My father was contracting for a Japanese company and working long hours, so I had a lot of time to myself. Some of my oldest memories come from watching Japanese giant robot shows after school, so getting to explore toy stores full of mecha models and watch anime on tv (this was the early 80s, so it was still mostly unknown in the states), was inspiring.
I’ve been playing with Lego since I was a kid, but I’ve only really been building seriously for about a year. I’m always on the lookout for new ways to educate myself on building techniques, so Jordan Schwartz’s book The Art of LEGO Design: Creative Ways to Build Amazing Models caught my eye when it was released last week. Being impatient, I bought a kindle copy and started reading it on my iPad.
I only own a couple books about Lego, I’m not particularly into collecting Lego minifigures, but when I picked up a copy of Lego Minifigure Year by Year, I was struck. Here is a book that I didn’t even know that I wanted, full to the brim with nostalgia and inspiration. The cover alone portrayed some of my favorite minifigs, capturing whole eras of my life.