Chillin' After A Long Day On Tattooine

The life of a stormtrooper must be difficult. Can you imagine patrolling all day in that armor with those twin suns beating down on you? This must be a welcome part of the evening, just sitting down with a cool drink and contemplating if maybe those were the droids you were looking for. MacLane is back with another genius addition to his couch potato series.

Sandtrooper Couch

Forced Perspective FTW

This shot tickles my visual effects fancy. Not that it's not a pretty excellent build, but the shot itself is a classic VFX trick of forced perspective, carefully arranging models of varying scale to imply distance (it's Star Wars related too, double trouble). Yes, it's a bit of a spoiler to see how it was done, but that sort of thing has always revved my engine since an early age. Nice shot Brickwielder.

Star Wars the Old Republic- Naga Sadows Temple
Naga Sadows Temple Behind the Scenes

Star Wars #1

You all know what a Star Wars geek I am. So when I was invited to contribute to the Comic Bricks art show at DesignerCon 2014 there wasn't a any question what comic I'd use. It was instantaneous and unwavering, Star Wars #1. This was my favorite comic as a kid, I literally wore it out thumbing through it continually until it finally fell apart. Now I have it again in brick form (that is unless someone buys it this weekend)

Star Wars #1

UPDATE: Somebody bought it, I have mixed feeling about it. Always great to get affirmation, and someone purchasing your art is high praise indeed, but I didn't get a chance to get sick of looking at it. I never even got a chance to show it to my wife in person, she only saw pics. The good news is if I really miss it, I can build another (just as soon as I restock 1x1 orange plate!)

Bearded Overweight Glob Of Grease

I love a good mashup, especially when Star Wars in involved. Builder paddybricksplitter has taken everyone's favorite feisty astromech and mashed him with everyones favorite cantancerous pirate mech Metalbeard and created R2-D-Beard. It makes me wonder what could be done mashing up the Tantive IV with the Sea Cow, hmm...

R2-D-Beard 1
R2-D-Beard 2

Hokey Religions And Ancient Weapons Are No Match For A Good Blaster At Your Side

When Star Wars came out when I was a wee tike, there were many protracted arguments at playtime as to who would be Luke and who would be Han. Luke was the hero of course, but Han had a darker side, and he SHOT FIRST. There were of course arguments over who would end up with Leia, but later movies would reveal certain facts that made us all shudder just a bit. Anyway, Han also had the coolest blaster, and this mini version by Bruce Lowell shows us just how cool it was.

"I See You've Constructed A New Lightsaber..."

I really love a minimalist build. When you can take a very small handful of parts and make something that's not only recognizable, but totally squeeable, you've got my attention. Builder Obedient Machine thrilled us last year with his 15 piece Han Solo blaster, now he's back with this little bundle of awesome, Luke Skywalker's Lightsaber from Return of the Jedi. This is just 14 carefully selected pieces, but they are way more than the sum of their parts. 

"Tree? I Am No Tree"

When I first looked at the parts selection for LEGO Star Wars 10236 Ewok Village I thought "you could build a pretty big tree with this". But when builder JK Brickworks saw the selection he thought he could build a pretty big Ent with it, and did just that. This is an alternate model for the set, and it's pretty impressive. The face is a little goofy for my taste, but overall it's pretty awesome. There's also a video, LDD model and instructions on his website, check it out!

UCS Style Ent - 10236 Alternate Model

"There Was Nothing You Could Have Done Luke Had You Been There..."

I love a MOC picture that makes me look twice. This one by markus19840420 is so carefully reconstructed from the pivotal scene in Star Wars that it almost looks like a still from the movie as a thumbnail. I especially love the sandcrawler, which is built with a great care to look like scene in the movie. And Threepio's silver right leg, nice touch.

Thanks for the head's up Vince

Mustafar

Just last night some colleagues of mine were discussing the shared disappointment in the Star Wars prequels. Then I see this absolutely phenomenal MOC by migalart this morning and I have to question my loathing for them. I have to admit do like some of the vehicles, locations and characters from episodes 1-3, but I probably wouldn't have counted Mustafar among them. But I find myself wanting to watch Obi-Wan and Anakin's epic duel once more. The lava work on this is hands down the best I've ever seen, and the whole thing is on a scale that's hard to believe. Click through for more pics including one for scale.

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Y - Thank You

I can see that being on the receiving end of builder Steebles' gratitude is a good place to be, his boss got this phenomenal mini Y-Wing as a thank you gift. It's amazingly detailed for it's scale and the display base is a perfect compliment. Makes you want to do something nice for him huh? Like feature him on your obscure and lame blog, yeah, that's it!

BTL-A4 Y-Wing

Bounty Hunters, We Don't Need Their Scum

This MOC, inspired by one of my favorite movies of all time, The Empire Strikes Back, make me happy and confused at the same time. Of course anything Star Wars gives me a warm fuzzy, so that explains the happiness. But why Bossk has been seemingly replaced by Han Solo is totally baffling to me. Explain yourself Burglarhobbit.

IDSMO-2014-R1-Bounty Hunters
IDSMO-2014-R1-Bounty Hunters

Update: It turns out part of the contest this was submitted to dictated that you include "yourself" in the MOC. So this is Burglarhobbit, dressed as Han Solo, making a cameo (I'm sure it still confused Vader to no end).

Now This Is Podracing

There have been a great many steamy Star Wars MOCs in recent weeks, thanks to our pals at FBTB and their MOC Madness Steam Wars contest. I know I haven't featured many here, I'm not sure why really. But this one from builder Legopard just had to be featured. I really dig the giant plumes of steam bellowing out of the engines of this Podracer, and if course Watto's junk shop reimagined as a victorian "junkvilla", but I'm totally smitten with that mechanical dewback.

TatooSteam

BrickNerd LiveBuild - Research Institute & Vulture Droid Plus Live ALS Bucket Challenge

Join me with my special guests David Pagano and James Morr as we build LEGO 21110 Research Institute as well as LEGO Star Wars 75041 Vulture Droid. And as if that wasn't enough action, immediately following the build I will be doing a live ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Our good friend Josh at The Brothers Brick as called me out, and I will rise to the challenge. Building starts today at noon PST, with the dowsing happening around 2pm. Join us!

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Clumsy And Random

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side
— Han Solo

Here at BrickNerd we like to look back from time to time, sometimes a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. The Imperial blaster (Blastech E-11) is one of my all-time favorite fantasy weapons. When I was a kid I had a really cool toy one (back before they started making them wacky colors) and spent many hours vanquishing imaginary Imperials. This version by Remi Gagne is awesome, and what's even more awesomer is you can build your own with instructions here (caution, it's a big file). Blast on readers!

Imperial Blaster
Imperial Blaster

Jawas And Bricks, It Was Meant To Be

It's no secret I'm a Star Wars fan, and when you combine Star Wars and LEGO, it's like magic. It's like mac and cheese, it's like beer and pizza, it's like tea and biscuits. They just go together. Now the fine folks at Tee Fury have combined them and put them on a t-shirt. Awesome and t-shirts go together pretty well too. You've got one day to snag this, go now! Utini!