TolkienBricks

Mines of Moria MOCs

2012-03-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

Alright, we've seen LEGO's take on the Mines of Moria, let's see what AFOLs have done. Here I'll focus on MOCs of the Chamber of Mazarbul. As I noted before, LEGO could have easily gotten additional set designs based on the Doors of Durin and on the Bridge of Khazad Dum. There are great MOCs out there based on both of those scenes and I'll come to those at another time. Anyway, let's start off with Lee Jones' amazing Moria built for BrickWorld 2011.

I like how Brian Graham's version starts out with Gandalf reading. "We cannot get out ... drums, drums in the deep ... they are coming ...", but he also has some great action scenes.

I really like the statues in Marcin Kitala's version.

If we simply must go with Peter Jackson's misinterpretation of the text (grumble grumble grumble), YU built an amazing cave troll.

I like the low light in Brickman101's scene.

Brickaholic Productions has a huge gallery.

BirdBoyJohan has a series of Tolkien MOCs that I'll have to dig into, including his Chamber of Mazarbul.

There are lots of others, but I'll just finish out with my own effort. I was quite happy with the lighting effect here. Note that Boromir is watching in the hall, which has a blue lighting, but there's a shaft of sunlight from above falling on Balin's tomb.

Black and gold

2012-03-01T07:46:00.000-05:00

The LEGO dragons contest over on Flickr has inspired a ton of great builds. Let's take a look at a couple of Tolkien entries. Glory Forever built Smaug.

And Blego7 (Blake's Baericks) built a fell beast.

9473 The Mines of Moria

2012-02-29T04:33:00.000-05:00

Moving on after a delay with my examination of the upcoming sets. Next up is 9473 The Mines of Moria. The folks over at the Brick Time posted a cleaned up photo of the box art:

My first impression is that this really should have been called the Chamber of Mazarbul, but I suppose that would have left a huge portion of the buying public scratching their heads. I do see a bit of a missed opportunity here, since they could have easily gotten three sets out of Moria: this scene, a scene at the west door that would include the pool and the Watcher in the Water, and of course the Bridge of Khazad Dum with Gandalf and a Balrog. After I get through reviewing all of the sets I'll do a few posts on what might have been and may speculate more on this. Of course, they could always come back in a future round of sets to give us those other two scenes. Anyway, back to the set we actually have. At US$80 this is a pretty expensive set, but it seems worth it. We get a good rendition of pieces of Moria, lots of figs (about half of the company, plus enemies), plus good accessories and printed pieces (I do hope those are printed - in some photos they look like stickers, but that may be because this is a prototype).

A video shows some of the 'action' features: the sections are modular so they can be taken apart, pillars fall down in the battle, a treasure slides out, etc. Here, for instance, we see the skeleton that Pippin knocks down the well (grr, I'm holding back an anti-Peter Jackson rant right now).

Perhaps most disturbing, we get a pop-up Balin's corpse. Nice attention to detail that they got the runes right (I checked versus the runes recreated in the book).

On principle I object to the cave troll. Yes, I know, Gandalf does say "A great cave-troll, I think, or more than one," but the impression in the book is that he is wrong at that point. It's when he looks out and sees a hoard of orcs and 'something else' that is making them hang back. Later, after they escape from the room, Gandalf tries to hold the door, but he 'met my match'. This 'something dark as a cloud' that he 'felt it through the door' was more powerful than Gandalf had ever encountered. Then at the bridge he finally understands, it was a Balrog all along. So Peter Jackson was just plain wrong. Did this guy even read the book? More likely he just saw a hook to bring in a big CGI monster for an extended action sequence. Okay, that out of my system, I do think that LEGO did a great job of interpreting Peter Jackson's total fabrication.

Let me pause here for a moment to praise the orc design. I want an army of these guys.

As with Legolas (and the Collectible Elf before him), orc ears are built into the hairpiece.

There are a ton of weapons in this set, including the Heroica weapons (also found in Blacksmith Attack), the Collectible Highlander sword, the Collectible Elf bow, the Collectible Roman gladius, the flail, axe heads, old spear, new shields for the orcs. This is just impressive, as it draws weapons from all different castle lines.

Let's check out the hero figs. Boromir:

Pippin

Legolas (and foes)

Legolas is printed on both sides. Not sure about the other figs. Note that the book is printed on one side.

Gimli (hmm, I'm not sure if I've seen a photo of Gimil's torso print when you take away his beard)

Another Gandalf Arrives MOC

2012-02-20T07:58:00.000-05:00

I just ran across another variation on Gandalf arrives by CaptainFlint.

Attack on Weathertop MOCs

2012-02-19T08:34:00.003-05:00

As with Gandalf Arrives, the Attack on Weathertop has been depicted by several builders in recent years. Here are a few selections:

Here by Leaz

I like how Nathan included Gandalf's battle on Weathertop before Strider and the hobbits arrived.

Lord Amras includes a great detail - views of the Witch King both with the Ring off and the Ring on.

Caleb Cutlass

NightHawk

My own feeble effort (one of my first post-dark-ages MOCs).

I did include a view by Frodo while wearing the Ring. I was happy with this effect.

9472 Attack on Weathertop

2012-02-18T08:46:00.004-05:00

Next up for examination is set 9472 Attack on Weathertop. This is a pretty good choice for a scene to make a set of, as a very important moment in the first Volume of the Lord of the Rings. Along with the confrontation at the Ford of Bruinen, this is probably the key confrontation during the trip to Rivendell. This passage in the book has all of the key characters who are introduced before the Council of Elrond except for Gandalf (and Bilbo, though he isn't really key to any of the action of the book) (okay, and Tom, but he's so self contained both geographically and in the action of the book that it's hard to call him 'key').

The set leaves out Sam, Pippin, and three Nazgul, but at US$60 it's already a little pricey. As it is, though, you get Frodo, Merry, Strider, two Nazgul and two of the new horses.

As someone pointed out on Classic-Castle, the horses have red eyes. This is a little disappointing, as they will be less universally useful. Here in this image you can see the horse in both poses.

The ruin is pretty nice. It includes a good selection of bricks and slopes in light and dark gray, dark green and a little dark tan (including a smattering of the new brick bricks).

It was a nice surprise to see that the ruin opens up so you can access the interior.

Those microfigs from the games make a nice little architectural detail.

I was a little confused as to the purpose of this structure, but a couple of Flickr comments noted that this is presumably a pedestal for the Palantir that once resided on Amon Sul (and is now at the bottom of the Bay of Forochel). That's a pretty cool little obscure detail to give to Tolkien fans. I'm glad someone in Denmark actually reads.

I can't find any Toy Fair photos that specifically focus on the figs from this set. All of the ones I've seen include them in this action pose. Maybe the displayers were unwilling to allow people to handle the figs since they wanted to keep it in this action scene? Anyway, here we see Frodo, Strider and a Nazgul. Note that this set includes the Ring. We can also see the new tattered cape the Nazgul are wearing. Nothing seems to distinguish the Witch King from the other Nazgul.

Ah, Merry, why are you so obsessed with carrots? And what does Peter Jackson have against mushrooms?/

Siege of Osgiliath

2012-02-17T13:29:00.002-05:00

I'll come back to the new sets tomorrow, but I just ran across DTmmD's Siege of Osgiliath.

Gandalf Arrives MOCs

2012-02-16T08:36:00.001-05:00

Let's compare official set 9469 with MOCs that have been built over the years with the same theme. Here are just a few variants of Gandalf's cart (click each to find the original source). I like how Nathan Wells did the fireworks. If you look close you'll see that one of them is topped with a dragon plume. He also made Frodo look shorter in the seat, which was a neat trick.

Cyin's variant is also nice. He includes the fact that (from "A Long-Expected Party") "When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, finished unloading..."

I found several other variants that were all quite similar. Wookie Bounty Hunter uses door elements to get a nice shape to the cart.

Both Skalldyr and Gandalf the Grey (Wow! I didn't know he was an AFOL!) put the cart in a large context, including details like a hobbit hole (Bag End?), children chasing after the cart, and fireworks going off (which, btw, is the opposite of the book, but oh well, it made a nice note in the movie).

9469 Gandalf Arrives

2012-02-14T15:19:00.001-05:00

Let's start our look at the Toy Fair presentation with set 9469 Gandalf Arrives. BTW, I'll draw these images mostly from FBTB's coverage, but also from various different sources, so click on them to go to the original outlet. Anyway, at US$12.99 this will be the cheap set of the line, so I'm sure that most fans of LEGO and Tolkien will at least get this set. After all, you get two of the main characters, and you also get that new cool horse. More on that in a moment. Anyway, this faithfully reflects the moment right at the start of the Peter Jackson film where, well, Gandalf arrives, to be greeted by Frodo. It is even a fairly good representation of the book, allowing for some artistic license on PJ's part (Frodo isn't really in this scene, and there are some color variations:

At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of the Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight. An old man was driving it all alone. He wore a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver scarf. He had a long white beard and bushy eyebrows that stuck out beyond the brim of his hat....It had a cargo of fireworks...and the old man was Gandalf the Wizard.

So, start with the box art, that gives a good overall view of the set:

First let's go with the negative. The cart itself looks like a pretty flimsy construction, though I'll be happy to be proven wrong when I get the actual set in my hands. It rides pretty high on the giant wagon wheels and with the horse hitching going to the top of the horse rather than its midsection as is more common.

The contents are nice enough. We get a barrel with three fireworks, a backpack, a letter (hmm, is this the envelope that will hold the Ring later?), a book and a carrot (huh? I guess Gandalf needs a snack on the road, or maybe this is for Merry and Pippin later on in Farmer Maggot's fields). For those unfamiliar with the part, the red firework is the snake staff element found in several Ninjago sets.

Okay, on to the most important aspects.

The new horse may be one of the most exciting new elements introduced in this line. As you can see, the head is a little less blocky and one of the front legs is lifted, to make it seem less static than the old horse.

But, of course, the thing that has people excited is that the back legs swivel, so you can show the horse rearing (this black horse is from the Weathertop set). Some people were wondering if this new horse mold would fit the barding element. I think it probably will, since the old style horse hitching also fits this new horse, as does the old saddle.

Saving the most important for last, the figs! As you can see, they both look great. Frodo's head is double sided, with one sort of half-smile and the other upset. New beard and hair molds are always good and generally useful. I can't find a good picture of Gandalf's torso without the beard, which is sort of frustrating, but it also looks fairly useful. It's sort of frustrating that Frodo's torso has a little patch of flesh at the neckline, which will make it less interchangeable with yellow LEGO heads. There's also been some complaints about the lack of a new mold for Gandalf's staff. I'm of two minds on that one. On the one hand, the Ninjago snake staff piece is proof that LEGO isn't averse to making new detailed pieces similar to this. On the other, the more we go away from traditional LEGO shapes to molded parts, the more these seem like action figures and less like the toy I love. One last complaint is that I was hoping the Tolkien line would give LEGO an excuse to develop articulated short legs, since those would be useful for both Hobbits and Dwarves, but alas we get the static stubbies. Aside from those relatively minor complaints, I'm quite happy with these figs. They are both good representations of the movie characters and reasonable interpretations of the book descriptions.

Official Hobbit sets timeline

2012-02-12T22:09:00.002-05:00

Images are starting to appear from Toy Fair New York. If you read this blog, you've probably already seen these. So rather than just quickly repost them now I'll try to do something a little more in depth spread over the next few days. If you haven't seen the new sets, check them out at Lord of the Brick, FBTB or Brickset. For now, though, I'll start with something quite simple, that may be overlooked in the excitement over seeing the new sets clearly at last:

It's not that this is a surprise, since we would expect Hobbit sets to come out at the same time as the movie, but this is a good confirmation of that. Anyway, tomorrow we'll take a look at Gandalf's Arrival.

Nuremberg Toy Fair

2012-02-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

Now it's Germany's turn. The Nuremberg Toy Fair is underway now and through the weekend. Perhaps we'll see official pictures of the sets soon (crosses fingers). In the meantime, check out these great sculptures that are part of the LEGO display. There's also a glimpse of what I assume is the official Shelob design behind them.

Journey of the Fellowship

2012-01-28T18:45:00.000-05:00

Let's just wrap up our look at the Journey of the Fellowship by sharing some additional links. First up, let's note that this won the 'best group display', and Leda Kat's Bree won 'best small building', and Kevin's Barad-dur won 'judges' choice' - all greatly deserved. Here are the collaborators:

Leda Kat peeks behind the scenes.

Leda also shows the finished display.

Here's Leda's Bree page.

Kevin had a bottle of whiskey visit the display.

Here are Dave Kaleta's pics.

Mark Kelso shows the building of Minas Tirith.

Dave Sterling's Minas Morgul (or on Flickr).

Tyler Halliwell has photos here.

Barad-dûr

2012-01-27T18:45:00.000-05:00

Another scene never visited in the book, but first glimpsed from Amon Hen and then again at its downfall, is Kevin Walter's breathtaking Barad-dûr, our last stop in the Journey of the Fellowship collaboration. BTW, here's a great article on Kevin's MOC.

Mount Doom

2012-01-26T18:38:00.000-05:00

Back on track in the Journey of the Fellowship, Anthony Dunne brings us to the story's climax at Mount Doom.

The Black Gate is Closed, or is it Open?

2012-01-25T18:34:00.000-05:00

Hmm, I'm out of order. Oh well. In the Journey of the Fellowship, Heath Flor made this great Black Gate. Ah, yes, this is from the Black Gate is Closed, as Frodo and Sam are hiding in the corner of the scene.

Tolkien set descriptions

2012-01-25T11:40:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I posted Huw Millington's descriptions of the Tolkien sets, but FBTB correspondent Bigospedros was also at the London Toy Fair, and here is his report. One interesting aspect of this is that Bigospedros has apparently neither read the book, listened to the BBC radio play nor even seen any of the films. I'm including the '80s animated films here. Peter Jackson is NOT synonymous with the Lord of the Rings. He's not even the first movie adapter, for pete's sake. Okay, enough ranting. Needles to say, Bigospedros is here responding to the sets simply as LEGO sets, and not so much as to how well they fit the characters or scenes.

Now, before I try to write this up, I’m going to qualify this post by saying I’ve only seen the first hour of the first LOTR film! I got bored, so stopped watching the rest. Yes yes … I am a heathen … get over it. With that in mind, forgive me if I miss any important bits out.

However, despite this lack of knowledge, I was bowled over by these sets. Fans of this licence are going to LOVE these sets. It’s another line where the minifigs are the star, but even so, I found some of the supporting buildings to be very cool too, the Helm’s Deep castle being a particular stand out. They’re well constructed and detailed.

You’ll need to buy all 7 sets if you want to get the complete Fellowship and the prices start at 11.99 to 99.99.

9469 Gandalf Arrives … a scene I recognised!! ;-) You get Frodo and Gandalf with cart and fireworks. A pretty cool opener of a set and a way to get the two most obvious (at least to a noob like me) from this range, all for a measly £11.99.

9470 Shelob Attacks … Gollum! Now, even with watching only a hour of the first film, I know what Gollum looks like … the fig is a custom mould, with Gollum in crouched position with articulated arms, smilar in connection to the main body as skeleton / battle droid arms. Printed face and “clothes” (i.e. bit of cloth round his nether regions!!). The big spider (Shelob) is also pretty cool, with a winch being used for her spider silk, meaning she can be hung up if you want. You also get Frodo, with ring (which is a gold chromed ring, sized perfectly to fit on a minifig hand) and Samwise Gamgee. Priced at £19.99

9471 Uruk-Hai Army … Comes with Eomer, Rohan soldier and 4 Urak-Hai and a small section of wall, siege machine and one of the new horses, which features articulated back legs (which is an excellent new feature for the horses). It’s designed to be joined to the Helm’s Deep castle, via technic pins. The minifig printing was beautifully detailed, especially on Eomer. Priced at £29.99

9472 Attack on Weathertop … Most of my time looking at this was marvelling over the new horses and moving them from stood normally to being on their hind legs only. Even in that position, they were very sturdy. This is a great inovation. You get Frodo, Merry, Aragorn and two Ringwaiths on horseback. There’s a small section of Weathertop, which includes a spiral staircase and ruins at the top. Priced at 49.99.

9473 The Mines of Moria … Comes with a great selection of minifigs, such as Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, Boromir, a cave troll and two Moria orcs. The troll is pretty awesome and detailed … great printing on the rest of the figs. Priced at £69.99.

9474 The Battle of Helm’s Deep … The castle here was really cool … pretty large and well constructed with curved walls. There were new modified 2 x 2 bricks to simulate bricks, mixed in with the walls, which was pretty cool to see. I can see people wanting these bricks on their own for added detail in building MOCs. The castle comes with the “side door” feature, which I was reliable told is important to the story?! ;-) It comes with 8 minifigs – Gimli, King Theoden, Haldir, Aragorn and 4 Urak-Hai warriors. Priced at £99.99

9476 The Orc Forge … reminded me a little of the Dwarf Mine set from a few years back … comes with 5 orcs and a various forge related stuff and has a light brick, which was a nice feature. Priced at £39.99.

All sets are due to be released in August. There was mention of Hobbit sets coming later in the year, perhaps January although that might be a little late with the films release in December … who knows, they might land early.

Anyone want to lend me the films? ;-)

Stairs of Cirith Ungol

2012-01-24T18:25:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile in the Journey of the Fellowship, where is the Ringbearer? Frodo and Sam are following Gollum into Mordor, past Dave Sterling's Minas Morgul.

Toy Fair report

2012-01-24T15:13:00.001-05:00

Huw Millington of Brickset was at Toy Fair and, while he was not allowed to take photos of the actual sets, he has a full report:

I'm back! It was excellent!

Although photography was not allowed on the stand, there was nothing stopping photos being taken of the stand: the sides and, for that matter, from the balcony above. This picture was decorating the side of the stand and as you can see it shows the whole Fellowship of the Ring.

So, what was on display inside the stand? Everything. Or at least everything that LEGO will let normal retailers sell. Of particular interest to us was the Marvel Super Heroes; LOTR; Summer Star Wars, Technic, and Ningago; Monster Fighters and Friends.

In this article I'll tell you about LOTR and will discuss other themes in later articles.

First, to answer a quesion I can see has been asked in the comments of the article below, the ring IS a real gold-chromed ring with a hole big enough for Frodo to grip it in his hand. All seven sets were on display and I'll tell you what I remember of them. Actually, before I do that THERE IS A NEW HORSE! Yes, the minifig horse has been redesigned and its hind legs now swivel so it can be made to rear! I'm not sure if all the horses in all the LOTR sets were like this but the ones in Attack on Weathertop certainly were.

9469, Gandalf Arrives: 2 minifigs: Gandalf and Frodo, Gandalf on horse and cart with fireworks and snake in the back. I think the price was £9.99.

9470, Shelob Attacks: 3 minifigs: Frodo, Samwise and Gollom! Gollum looked great, hunched over with movable arms, a bit like skeleton arms but different. Shelob the spider looks fantastic and scary!

9471, Uruk-Hai Army: 6 minifigs: Eomer, Rohan soldier and 4 Urak-Hai. The set consists of a small section of wall, a horse with moving legs and a small siege machine. The wall can be joined to the Helms Deep castle, apparently, so this will make a great battle pack to extend the castle and build your armies.

9472, Attack on Weathertop: 5 minifigs: Frodo, Merry, Aragorn and two Ringwaiths on horseback. The set builds a small section of Weathertop with spiral staircase and ruins at the top.

9473, The Mines of Moria: 7 minifigs: Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, Boromir, a cave troll and two Moria orcs. The set builds a selection of sub-assemblies for mine walls, doors, pedestals etc.

9474, The Battle of Helm's Deep: 8 minifigs: Gimli, King Theoden, Haldir, Aragorn and 4 Urak-Hai warriors. The castle itself is fairly substantial, complete with the 'side door' used to gain entry

9476, The Orc Forge: 5 orcs with a forge, various metalworking tools and weapons.

Overall I was VERY impressed with these sets. Legolas' ears were attached to his head like the elf in the collectable minifigs but looked to be slightly bigger and better quality. The sets were well designed and highly desirable. As was pointed out to me by the stand guide dressed as Gandalf, you need to buy every set to get the whole Fellowship but I suspect many of us can't wait for the day when we can! They are to be released in August.

Toy Fair London

2012-01-24T10:50:00.001-05:00

It's Toy Fair time! Over the next few weeks different toy manufacturers, including LEGO, will display their products for the coming year at events in a few different cities. It seems that London is first up. Unfortunately, attendees are not allowed to take photos in the LEGO booth, so we can not yet see the actual sets, but the blogger at Blogomatic3000 took photos of the publicly available artwork on the outside of the booth.

Here were my quick initial thoughts that I posted in the discussion on Classic-Castle: a new hairpiece mold that is used for all four hobbits, little bits of fleshy color show up on all of the hobbit torsos and also Aragorn (darn), Elf ears the same as the collectible fig, but fleshy, is the Ring a Clickit ring or a new mold?, new dwarf beard I think, same hair mold for Aragorn and Boromir (was that one in a collectible fig?). Also, credit should go to Classic-Castle member Dyntar for finding this blog post.

I should also note that prolific blogger Brick Will of Lord of the Brick has been threatened by LEGO legal for posting previously leaked images. I choose to not post leaked images (though I've seen them and they're awesome!), but I want to stand with my fellow AFOL here. If LEGO can't control their own internal content, that is not the fault of those of us who simply love, purchase, and, very importantly, promote their product for them (Free of charge! I think we should start charging them for the free advertisement they get from all of us AFOLs who are simply excited to talk about their product.). If someone who signed a confidentiality agreement broke that, well, go after that person. It is not my job to police the internet for LEGO's lawyers.

BTW, dang he's fast. In the time it took me to write this post, Brick Will posted these images to his blog already.

Osgiliath

2012-01-23T18:24:00.000-05:00

Another area more referred to than visited (in the book, that is) is Osgiliath, our next stop in the Journey of the Fellowship as we begin to look East.

Battle of the Pelannor Fields

2012-01-22T18:09:00.000-05:00

A 'collaboration within a collaboration', as part of the Journey of the Fellowship, Mark Kelso and Chris Phipson joined up to make a massive Minas Tirith, along with Tyler, Shannon Ocean and George Kemper who helped assemble and rebuild portions at the convention, and Lee Jones who brought much of the army. Be sure to go to Mark's page to see lots of WIP pictures as well.

War beacons

2012-01-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

More from the Journey of the Fellowship. We never actually see these up close in the book, aside from Gandalf's statement that the beacons of Gondor are alight, calling for aid. War is kindled., but Tyler Halliwell (Wow! Have you been keeping count of his contributions to this group build?) shows us some. Okay, quick movie rant - I hated hated hated the scene of Pippin climbing up to light the beacons. Peter Jackson totally screwed up Denethor's character. He may not have had much hope, but he was trying to defend Gondor, up until mistakenly thought he saw the fleet from Umbar in the palantir as Faramir lay stricken. Grr. That scene in the movie showing the beacons lighting from mountaintop to mountaintop is certainly stunning, though. I suppose that pretty much sums up my thoughts on Peter Jackson - pretty much everything was visually spot on, but he screwed up the script in pretty important ways.

The Road to Isengard

2012-01-20T17:36:00.000-05:00

Further along the Journey of the Fellowship, we find ourselves at Chris Phipson's Isengard.

Next poster revealed

2012-01-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

It's LEGO Legolas.

Helm's Deep

2012-01-19T17:32:00.000-05:00

Continuing the Journey of the Fellowship, Tyler Halliwell (again!) made a great battle of Helm's Deep.

The King of the Golden Hall

2012-01-18T17:31:00.000-05:00

Next up in the Journey of the Fellowship collaboration, after the company is broken, the three hunters meet up with Gandalf and go to Meduseld, here by Dennis Price.

A Journey in the Dark

2012-01-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

More of the Journey of the Fellowship, I previously blogged Dave Kaleta's great Rivendell, so let's follow the nine walkers to Lee Jones' amazing Moria.

Flight to the Ford

2012-01-16T16:14:00.000-05:00

Continuing along the Journey of the Fellowship, Tyler Halliwell also made the Flight to the Ford.

At the sign of the Prancing Pony

2012-01-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

Continuing on with the Journey of the Fellowship group build, Frodo and friends come to Leda Kat's Bree.

BrickWorld 2011

2012-01-14T16:07:00.001-05:00

Last summer in Chicago, a group of builders got together to make a huge Journey of the Fellowship display. The journey begins with Tyler Halliwell's Bag End (hmm, it doesn't seem to be on his personal MOCpage.

What will be the next poster?

2012-01-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

We've seen a couple of teaser images for the upcoming Tolkien theme, and as others have pointed out, these are basically LEGO versions of some of the Peter Jackson movie posters:

This, of course, raises the question of what will be the next poster. These seem pretty obvious candidates. BTW, was there a movie poster for any of the three movies that focused just on Sam? I can't find any, which is, IMO, a pretty good indicator that Jackson largely missed Tolkien's point. Okay, I'll save a movie rant for another day.

If they break away from the pattern of character close-ups, these are some others that I'd love to see in LEGO. Of course the third one would answer the question I asked before about how they will do the Ring.

I've shared this image before, but this is a good time to describe it in detail. Back in 2004 there was a movie poster contest on Lugnet. Here was my entry. There were several movie posters that were collages of images, and LEGO could do something like I did here. BTW, in case you're wondering, the faint image of the Ring in my poster is the top of a LEGO key, faded out in Photoshop.

One last, that would be fun and old school:

Aragorn

2012-01-10T13:35:00.003-05:00

It looks like LEGO is going to be periodically releasing these movie posters to build excitement about the upcoming line.

How will they make the Ring?

2012-01-07T12:12:00.000-05:00

In this thread on Classic-Castle we've been speculating a bit on this. Athos noted that the announcement poster looked "more like Lord of the Bracelets." There are various possibilities for existing LEGO elements that could stand in for the ring, like a gold 1x1 round plate, the new version with a hole, the new 1x1 round tile (perhaps printed), or the Clickets ring. These could all be clipped onto a minifig hand, or even (somewhat) grasped.

As noted above, though, those are huge. On the other hand, a truly fig-scaled Ring would be unmanageably small. Of course, the Ring spends most of the Lord of the Rings on a chain around Frodo's neck, so perhaps it might simply be a printed detail on Frodo's torso, like these examples of the amulet worn by the KK2 Guardian, or Yoda's little flute. There's also an existing 1x2 printed tile that would work perfectly as the Ring on a chain.

Anyway, that's all just speculation. What are your thoughts?

Edit- Some additional thoughts that came up in that discussion thread. There is a Harry Potter torso where Hermione is wearing the time turner. Also, Captain Jack's compass was suggested as a comparison of a small important object for minifigs to handle, and there LEGO used a printed 1x1 tile. Two-face's coin is another great comparison.

Rivendell

2012-01-06T11:45:00.002-05:00

Last year people came together at BrickWorld to make a "Journey of the Fellowship" display. I'll try and get all of those posted, here. Let's start with a look at Dave Kaleta's great Rivendell.

Quick note - I'm using the tag for Fellowship here rather than Hobbit. Yes, this location first shows up in the Hobbit, but the description there is really sparse. Plus this particular setup does have figures there from Fellowship, though I've focused more on the location shots than the figs in them.

Figures

2012-01-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

Here's another blast from the past. Several years ago, Saber Scorpion (aka Justin Stebbins) made a number of Lord of the Rings creations, primarily custom minifigs. I think my favorite of the bunch is his clever Gollum (I took the easy route and just used Dobby). He's got a ton, but I'll show his Gandalf and Frodo, his Gimli, and his interesting take on Sauron.

Speak, friend, and enter

2012-01-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

Last June Julien Andries made this great rendition of the Doors of Durin. I love how the interplay between gaps in the bricks and transparent elements implies the inscription.

Brick Tales

2011-12-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

In my last post I alluded to my LEGO illustrated Lord of the Rings, so let's go into that a little more. When I emerged from my Dark Age my first thing was telling stories in LEGO form. After a Robin Hood story and another short castle story, my roommate suggested I take a stab at my favorite book, the Lord of the Rings. Over time I did about 30 chapters worth. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish this, but I've got other things on my plate now. Anyway, I'll try and do one of these a week here, so that will take most of a year.

The first chapter I did was At the Sign of the Prancing Pony. I want to emphasize how much I am not proud of the LEGO building here, so don't take this as a sign of things to come, hopefully. If I ever were to complete the whole book, I'd probably go back and redo some of my earliest stuff. So, with all that caveat, here is the Prancing Pony (exterior and interior):

BTW, note how I started this project before we had "stubbies", or short legs, so I used headlight bricks for my hobbits.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to all. On December 25, of Third Age 3018, the company of the Ring set out from Rivendell at dusk. Here's how I illustrated this scene.

Lord of the Brick

2011-12-24T09:29:00.000-05:00

If you like Tolkien and LEGO, you should also be reading Lord of the Brick. Will (who also runs Brick Heroes and HothBricks) started this blog a month or so ago in response to the growing rumors of the recently announced Tolkien theme.

Hobbit trailer

2011-12-21T19:49:00.000-05:00

I'm sure if you read this blog you've already seen this, but the Hobbit trailer came out today. I have to say I'm pretty excited to see this. Some other time I'll give my extended thoughts on the Jackson Lord of the Rings movies. The thumbnail sketch is that I loved the look almost everywhere, but was upset by the MANY places Jackson sacrificed important thematic elements from the book for the sake of adding another action sequence. Anyway, this trailer certainly looks amazing. We get a few clues as to the content of the movie. For instance, it seems that we will see the gathering of the White Council that Gandalf left Bilbo and the dwarves to go join. Probably we'll see a little bit of the attack on Dol Guldur, which is a cool little addition. Plus there are other ways they will tie this in with the Lord of the Rings movies. For instance, instead of Rivendell just being a jolly place to stop for a meal and a chat (while singing tra-la-la-lally), it will be the much deeper location we see in the later book, with an allusion to the whole story of Isildur (we see Bilbo checking out the shards of Narsil). I loved the instrumentation of the dwarves' song from the unexpected party (though why!?!? did they edit Tolkien's words?). Anyway, I can't wait for the next year to go by.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

2011-12-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

Not a dirty, nasty, wet hole, but a beautiful MOC built of LEGO. This one goes back quite a while. Jon Furman was one of the first builders to really make a mark with Tolkien themed MOCs going back about ten years. Perhaps my favorite of his work is his gorgeous Bag End.

Great Hobbit Contest

2011-12-19T10:45:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, it's too late to enter, but over on MOCpages a group is currently judging the entries for the Great Hobbit Contest. I'll announce the winner when it comes out, but my favorite is Trolls, goblins and wargs, oh my.

I like how this scene captures all the essential elements - the trolls fighting, Gandalf and Bilbo in the bushes, the lost key, the treasure cave, but most of all, the dwarves tied up in sacks:

OneLug

2011-12-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

I was going to start out looking at MOCs with some of the first Tolkien based creations I remember, but there's a problem with Brickshelf right now. So instead I'll jump to one of the most amazing MOCs of 2011. Remi Gagne, Brandon Griffith, Alyse Gagne and Bruce Lowell teamed up this year, calling themselves OneLug, and created the Last March of the Ents.

This collaborative effort deservedly won them Best in Show at this year's BrickCon gathering. As a community we are often easily won over by very large MOCs, but don't let that fool you. This is an amazing construction at every level. Each of the Ents, in particular, has strong characterization, and the flow of action is extremely well done. If you haven't done so before, be sure to look through all of the pictures in the Flickr stream.

Labels for posts (3 of 3)

2011-12-18T04:04:00.000-05:00

See previous post for explanation.

Labels for posts (2 of 3)

2011-12-18T04:03:00.000-05:00

See the previous post.

Labels for posts (1 of 3)

2011-12-18T04:01:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to help organize the labels I'll be using for posts. I'll actually have to break this up into pieces, since I can only have so many labels per post. Creations featured here will be organized in a few ways:By place: Shire, Eriador, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Wilderland, Mirkwood, Lonely Mountain, Moria, Lothlorien, Fangorn, Rohan, Gondor, Mordor, Lindon, Beleriand, Valinor. Yes, some of these are subsets of others (e.g. the Shire is in Eriador, Moria is in the Misty Mountains, a whole host of places are within Wilderland, etc.), but in those cases I will only use the smaller subset to designate a place. For instance, a Hobbiton scene would get the tag Shire, but not Eriador, while a Bree scene would be labeled Eriador.By subject type: Location (for those MOCs primarily focused on a building or an exterior location), scene (for those MOCs depicting some action, even when it is at some location), characters and creatures (when people just make custom figs or build a Balrog or whatever). There will obviously be some overlap here - for instance, Shelob fighting Sam with the Tower of Cirith Ungol in the background - but I'll try to pick just one of these (scene in this example). By creation type: I won't put minifig scale, since most creations will be at that scale, but microscale, miniland, sculpture, mosaicBy book: Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King, Silmarillion. Scene MOCs are obviously tied to specific books. Location MOCs will be attributed to the first book (in publication order) where they were fully described. So Bag End would be linked to the Hobbit, even though it shows up in Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King as well. Orthanc is mentioned in Fellowship, but is fully described in the Two Towers, so would be linked there. I'll do the same with characters, but characters in groups will be linked to where that group came up. So Gandalf by himself would go to the Hobbit, since he is first linked there, but Gandalf as part of the group of nine walkers goes to Fellowship. Allusions to characters in verse is the exception here. Beren and Luthien, Earendil and some others come up in songs in Lord of the Rings, but are fully described in the Silmarillion, and so would go there. Some characters are never really fully described, and so would go where they are first mentioned - for instance, I'd link Gil-Galad with Fellowship, since the Last Alliance is described as a matter of lore (or living memory, if you're Elrond) in Fellowship, but he's never a fully realized character anywhere else (hmm, is there anything in the HOME books? I can't think of any, but maybe in UT). Some others: metadiscussion, non-LEGO, contest, official theme news

Welcome to TolkienBricks

2011-12-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my newest blog, TolkienBricks. Yes, I am completely insane. I already have a gaggle of blogs (see the tabs at the top of the page) devoted to various LEGO niches, and I am constantly bemoaning the fact that I don't have time for the blogs that I already have. Yesterday, though, when LEGO announced their upcoming Tolkien license, I just had to add one more. The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book, ever since I first read it 30-odd years ago, and my first major LEGO undertaking was a (now long-interrupted) LEGO-illustrated Lord of the Rings. That movie poster above is my work from that project, BTW. Over the years I have also appreciated the number of great Tolkien-based creations (called MOCs, for My Own Creation) that other LEGO builders (AFOLs, for Adult Fans of LEGO) have built. This new theme may provide them impetus for me to re-start my dormant project, but in the meantime I want to bring my interests in Tolkien and LEGO together in this blog.

This blog will address all aspects of the intersection of Tolkien and LEGO. I'll cover the official theme as news and eventually sets come out. I'll also cover all of the great original creations that AFOLs have been building over the years. Content will draw on all of the Tolkien opus, from the original song of the Ainur to the dawn of the Fourth Age. Things could even go broader, if I find any relevant content. Say, for instance, a LEGO rendition of Farmer Giles, or Niggle, etc. I'll also occasionally delve into some non-LEGO Tolkien thoughts, but probably not so much as I'd like to maintain the character of this blog.

So, if it's not too presumptive: Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be!

Possible set list

2011-12-17T10:39:00.000-05:00

The folks over at Eurobricks always seem to have inside information about upcoming LEGO products. They're generally right, but I cannot confirm this list, so take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, the claim is that the initial run of Tolkien sets will be:

9469 Gandalf Arrives
9470 Shelob Attacks
9471 Uruk-hai Army
9472 Attack on Weathertop
9473 The Mines of Moria
9474 The Battle of Helm's Deep
9476 The Orc Forge

Of course when we get official news, and most importantly images, you'll be sure to see it here on TolkienBricks.

Official Tolkien LEGO license!

2011-12-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

Warner Bros. Consumer Products and The LEGO Group Build on Partnership to Produce Construction Toys for THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ Trilogy and the Two Films Based on THE HOBBIT

-Building Sets Based on Epic Film Trilogy and Forthcoming Theatrical Release Slated for 2012-

BILLUND, Denmark and Burbank, CA – December 16, 2011 – Warner Bros. Consumer Products and The LEGO Group announced today a partnership that awards the world’s leading construction toy brand exclusive rights to develop build-and-play construction sets based on THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ trilogy and the two films based on THE HOBBIT™. The multi-year licensing agreement grants access to the library of characters, settings, and stories for THE LORD OF THE RINGS property, as well as films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. LEGO® THE LORD OF THE RINGS construction sets are slated for a rolling global launch beginning in June 2012 in the United States, with LEGO THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY scheduled for later in the year.

“Only LEGO, with their expertise in the construction category, is capable of doing justice to the incredibly imaginative environments depicted in the world of THE LORD OF THE RINGS and the two films based on THE HOBBIT,” said Karen McTier, executive vice president, domestic licensing and worldwide marketing, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. “These films give life to amazing worlds and characters and we are thrilled to bring fans these products that deliver an imaginative play experience befitting of these beloved properties.”

The LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS collection will translate into LEGO form the epic locations, scenes and characters of Middle-earth as depicted in all three films, including The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

In late 2012, LEGO THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY will give fans of all ages a chance to build and play out the fantastical story and new characters of the legendary Middle-earth adventures depicted in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, slated to premiere December 14, 2012.

“Our collaboration with Warner Bros. Consumer Products has delivered numerous worldwide successes in the construction toy aisle with lines like LEGO HARRY POTTER and LEGO BATMAN, introducing us to loyal audiences who love great stories, strong characters and the toys that they inspire,” said Jill Wilfert, vice president, licensing and entertainment for The LEGO Group. “It’s particularly exciting to now be able to create sets based on the fantasy worlds and characters from THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and the two films based on THE HOBBIT, not only because we know they will foster collectability and creative play, but also because these are two properties that our fans have been asking us to create for years.”

Information about the sets and collectible minifigures from both collections will be unveiled at a later date at TheLordoftheRings.LEGO.com.