Sideshow Collectibles will release two Xenomorph busts this year. Both the Big Chap and the Alien Warrior will be in “Legendary Scale”, the toy maker’s term for 1:2 scale. Unless we’re talking about a Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann scale model, I refuse to call anything that’s half the size of the original “Legendary”. That said, these busts are freakin’ scary.
Come on Sideshow, use a banana. Get with the program. The Big Chap is 14″ high and has its trademark slimy shine, semi-translucent head and French kiss-ready mouths. It also bears a relief of a xenomorph egg and a facehugger at the back of its base. It also comes with a plate that bears the Alien movie title in its stylized font.
The Alien Warrior is not as slimy or imposing as the Big Chap and has its distinctive ridges. Its bust also has an egg and facehugger relief has an Aliens film plate.
Get in the power browser and head to Sideshow Collectibles to pre-order the busts. The Big Chap costs $400 (USD) and will be released this November while the Alien Warrior costs $350 and will be released this July.
We usually hear of fictional worlds brought to life in Minecraft, but there’s more than one way to skin a globe. A group called the Middle Earth Digital Elevation Model Project or MED-EM has been using a program called Outerra for the past 5 years to make a realistic model of the world of The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s other fantasy books. Redditor and MED-EM member cameni shared some images of their virtual planet online.
Outerra is a 3D graphics engine specialized for creating planets and terrain. It’s been in development since 2008 and is still in alpha, but it seems to have attracted a following already. One of its defining features is that it lets users create a world with “unlimited visibility”, where you can start viewing the planet as a whole and then zoom in and see details of entire hundreds of kilometers of lands, landforms and so on, up to tiny blades of grass. In other words, you can explore every inch of virtual Middle-earth. There’s not much to see, but that’s what imagination is for eh?
If you’re a Middle-earth tourist like me, check out these two annotated images by Redditor coomb. Here are some of the important locations in Middle-earth:
And here’s Frodo’s journey, as told in The Fellowship of the Ring.
That’s one long journey. Even if it wasn’t dangerous I can see why Gwaihir and his homies didn’t join the trek.
Before Tolkien fans get upset, MED-EM knows that their model isn’t perfect. For instance, Redditors and MED-EM members Redrobes and monkschain pointed out that Mordor is a desert and even has a little snow, but that error stems from limitations on Outerra’s biome options.
Monkschain also said that they used several real world locations as inspiration for some of the areas they made: “Parts of NZ were used for the White Mts. The Alps for Misty Mts. Carpathians for Mordor. Chalk Downs of England for parts of the Shire, Africa for Far Harad. Finland and Norway, etc for the far north.”
There’s a banana for scale in there somewhere.
MED-EM is only focused on building the planet, not populating it.
Hence you’ll find no structures, elves, hobbits or monsters.
Here’s a video of the world that monkschain made last year:
Shotaro Kaneda’s red motorcycle has become the unofficial symbol of Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk masterpiece Akira, beating out its memorable characters or even its visionary plot and themes. Two highly talented LEGO builders going under the name The Arvo Brothers pay tribute to Otomo by constantly working on a LEGO model of the bike.
The Arvo Brothers have been working on the scale model for more than a decade and are now on their fourth version. Writing about their latest build on HispaBrick Magazine, the brothers describe it as “a stylised model that is not very aggressive, homogeneous, without excesses, but it works as a whole.” Their dedication to this single build led them to create a 200-page book about it.
HispaBrick Magazine writer car_mp summarized the Arvo Brothers’ book as follows: “It isn’t a book about ideas, although in its pages you can find many, nor is it a book about building techniques even though from its pages you can decipher the way these guys build. It isn’t an instruction manual either, even though one is included. It is all of that and more. It is a book about an evolution, the evolution of a model and its builders, about a constant search for perfection to confer physical qualities to a dream that arose from a manga.”
The Arvo Brothers will release a digital copy of their book for free. You can get it from them starting December 14 by contacting them at arvobrothers[at]hotmail.com. They will also make it available on their website, although they didn’t say when. Meanwhile you can read more about The Arvo Brothers and their scale model on issue 18 of HispaBrick Magazine, which is available as a free PDF.
If you think that car_mp’s description of the book is mere hype, read the magazine and you’ll see just how passionate the Arvo Brothers are about their project. For instance, they wax poetic about the beauty of their model’s disproportionately large rear wheel. For better or for worse, these guys are consumed by their obsession.
I’m pretty sure that White Tiger’s huge star destroyer will be a sight to behold when it’s finished, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not as polished as this 1:2,256 scale model of the Imperial II star destroyer by model kit builder Cho Jin Hae aka Darth Maul. From what I can tell this seems to be based on a ready to assemble kit, but Cho Jin Hae did the painting and lighting.
While Cho Jin Hae’s model is nowhere near as large as White Tiger’s build, the lighting on it is really well done and makes the ship come alive.
Check out more images of the scale model on Cho Jin Hae’s blog. He also posted a couple of in-progress posts here and here.
Dave Nunez loves to make tiny 3D printed models of video game consoles and computers. His latest mini gaming machine is based on none other than Microsoft’s latest and hugest, the Xbox One. It’s so tiny I don’t think a penny can fit into its disc slot – though a dime might.
As you can see Dave also made a tiny Kinect. Fortunately Dave’s not requiring you to print both – and there’s no massive power brick either. Perhaps Microsoft will consider both of these revisions.
Doctor Whoa! Shelly Timson made this 1:3 scale TARDIS using over 4,000 LEGO bricks. As with Bill Mudron’s awesome Doctor Who historical print, Shelly made this huge model to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
Shelly used the bricks of Australian LEGO studio Inside the Brick to build the model. Inside the Brick founder Rob Deakin said that he provided the custom printing, which adds a significant amount of polish to the model.
Rob also said that the LEGO TARDIS will be on display at their studio. But in case you can’t make it there you can check out high resolution images of the model on Rob’s Flickr page.
Flickr member Nick V aka Brickthing made a scale model of a video card using LEGO. Nick calls his creation the PowerBuild CRLMRM IRON HD, poking fun at the naming scheme of video card manufacturers while at the same time referencing fellow LEGO enthusiast Carl Merriam.
As with most LEGO creations, the model really deserves a closer inspection. As someone who’s not up to date with LEGO, half of the fun with seeing projects like this is discovering pieces that I never knew existed.
LEGO enthusiast Ben Caulkins made this sweet LEGO model of the Normandy SR-2, Commander Shepard’s flying base in Mass Effect 2. The ship is almost 4 ft. long and has a 19″ wingspan. It needs a Garrus minifig to calibrate its weapons.
I don’t know why I didn’t notice it until now, but the Normandy kind of looks like it has a Volus mask on. It’s not so apparent in Caulkin’s model though.
Head to Caulkin’s Flickr page to see more pictures of his Normandy model. He will also show it off at the Brickworld exhibit in Chicago this week.
A die-hard Legend of Zelda fan saw the wisdom in using the power of 3D printing to bring the game’s items to life. He also has the courage to sell the items despite the looming threat of Nintendo’s octorok lawyers. He calls his endeavor the Hyrule Foundry. I like to call it the Nintendo 3DP.
The potions are still being finalized and the arrows are in the wrong color, but otherwise the Hyrule Foundry features all 32 items from the classic adventure game, from the Wooden Sword to the Ladder to the Book of Magic. A bonus consequence of the Hyrule Foundry is that we now have an exchange rate for Rupees. One Rupee is $12 (USD). But for some reason two Rupees are worth $18. Hmmm. Hylian math is weird.
You can read more about the Hyrule Foundry on its official blog. If you can’t go alone without these items any longer, you can buy them at the Hyrule Foundry shop on Shapeways. They’re quite expensive though – the cheapest one is $4 for two arrows; the entire set sells for $320(USD).
Dwarven Forge is known in the tabletop gaming world as a provider of high quality miniature terrain. But with high quality comes a high price tag. Until now. The company has launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for their new product called Game Tiles. They’re more affordable that Dwarven Forge’s current sets but are still durable and beautiful.
As you can see the tiles are meant to evoke a dungeon setting. Each set of Game Tiles is made of 34 pieces, which consists of straight walls, corner walls, floors and swinging doors. With the exception of the doors, all of the pieces have a 2″ x 2″ area, so you can rearrange them as you see fit and even combine multiple sets together. Game Tiles will come in two variants: one that’s been pre-painted and one with a uniform dark gray finish.
Here’s Dwarven Forge’s Kickstarter pitch:
Pledge at least $65 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a set of Game Tiles. I don’t even play tabletop RPGs anymore and I still want a set.
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