Hasta La Gadget!

ToroLUG member DarthNick made this awesome diorama to promote The LEGO Movie. It’s a diorama that includes a replica of the stylized typography of the movie’s title, as seen in one of its posters. DarthNick says that the diorama is currently on display at a movie theater, after which it will be shown off at a LEGO store.

He says the build stressed him out because he was pressed for time and the weight of the title blocks caused him a lot of trouble. In fact, DarthNick admits that he put out the diorama with the crane still tilted. It’s still an awesome piece though!

LEGO should make a limited edition playset of this build. Check out DarthNick’s Flickr page for a high resolution image of the diorama, and vote for him on The LEGO Movie Facebook page to be a fan of the week.

[via The Brothers Brick]

Welcome to Mr. J’s carnival. You must be 1.5″ tall to ride. That’s because this is a LEGO diorama featuring the Clown Prince of Crime’s headquarters of sorts. Made by Paul “Brickbaron” Etherington, it contains lots of moving parts and depicts Batman and other characters in dire straits against Joker and other villains.

Paul built the diorama over a two-month period using a number of video game levels as his inspiration. Its moving parts are powered by LEGO Power Functions motors. There’s a lot going on here and lots of villains are present, including Joker’s zealot Harley Quinn, the Riddler and Two-Face. Batman is actually in three different scenes at once. He’s being harassed by goons at the entrance of the fun house, battling with Joker on a carnival ride and is also about to be caught by a huge jack-in-the-box. Best to watch it all in the video below:

The Joker’s Fun House won the Best in Show, Evil Genius and Honorable Mention in the People’s Choice awards at the 2013 Brickcon. You can see more of it on Paul’s Flickr page.

[via Geeks Are Sexy]

Hobby Inside is a South Korean professional LEGO building crew. They make multi-layered and very detailed LEGO dioramas for display. While most of their work depict cities and landscapes, they also have a handful of dioramas that feature monsters and mechas duking it out on a wrecked city, like this unmistakable nod to Pacific Rim:

I’ve also included Hobby Inside’s two other robot versus kaiju pieces in the gallery below. One features a Mothra lookalike – Hobby Inside calls it Mothle – while the other has a Godzilla lookalike called Legora and a giant robot called Insider-V (perhaps a mix of Gundam and Combattler-V?).

What I really love about Hobby Inside’s dioramas is how they use LEGO to represent motion and objects that I would never have imagined could be depicted with LEGO. Things like the vapor trail behind the Jaeger’s missiles, Mothle’s web, Legora’s flame and smoke rings and the exhaust coming out of Insider-V’s rocket fist.

If you want to see more of these dioramas, Hobby Inside has detailed breakdowns on its website. The site is in Korean, but it’s worth checking out just for the pictures.

[via OliveSeon & Hobby Inside via io9]

As iconic as Q*Bert was back in the 1980s, it was also one of the most difficult and frustrating arcade games I ever played. I never was able to master it, though I’ve done a little better playing it on MAME – without the fear of going broke feeding the machine with quarters. That said, I’m pretty sure I could beat this version of the game.

What you’re looking at here is a 7-inch-tall handmade Q*Bert diorama, complete with wooden cubes and clay versions of Q*Bert and Coily the snake to play with. It also comes with a glass bead (jelly monster) and a couple of those colorful flying discs mounted by the sides of the cubes. Though they don’t actually fly.

Artist Evan Gothelf of Gothelf Bros. Studios handmakes these nifty retro dioramas, and sells them over on Etsy. They go for $45.99(USD) each, and you can choose from a couple of different color schemes. You can also order additional characters if you prefer to take your game board to a higher level.

It sure would be cool if they made a whole series of retro arcade dioramas.

Star Wars fans, here’s a fun accessory to place on your desktop or bookshelf. It’s a series of handmade terrariums, each depicting a scenic location from one of the Star Wars films.

They’re made by Tony Larson (aka ‘Megatone230′) of The Wonder Room, and you can choose from a scene with Yoda chilling out in a Dagobah moss garden, R2-D2 (or mini R2-D2) searching for Obi-Wan on Tatooine, or a cuddly Ewok getting ready to take down some speeder bikes on the forest planet of Endor.

I just want him to make me a tiny snowglobe with a scene of snowspeeder taking down an AT-AT.

Each one is lovingly handmade to order, and prices range from $95 to $105(USD) for the little dioramas. Be sure to check out the other scenes over on The Wonder Room’s Etsy shop too. The Ancient Goddess Ruins ($200) is pretty epic, and reminds me of God of War for some reason. I wonder why…