Dawn Rock Castle

I'm a sucker for castles, and LEGO provides the perfect medium for building castle models. Modeler LegoLord (a fellow Tennessean) offers this incredible piece titled Dawn Rock Castle. What's not to like about this piece? The castle has a large contained courtyard, and the back walls contain enclosed buildings. He also makes use of a lot of vegetation legos to create a nice front yard, as well as some dark grey slopes to the side for a natural looking rock formation.

Build with Chrome

Browsing the plots others have created

I have been hearing about a Google Chrome extension that lets you build with virtual Lego blocks and finally got around to trying it out. This new approach to Lego building is called Build with Chrome. Build with Chrome is a team effort between Google and LEGO Australia to show off Chrome's new 3D web abilities. How it works is you start off on a Google map of Australia and New Zealand. The maps are divided into little plots that you can claim and build a model on. Once you're done building, you can publish the model and it will show up on the map when others browse.

The actual build environment.

When you pick a spot to build, you're put into the build environment. You're limited to building on a fixed size plate and a small palette of bricks with a door and window piece. So this is more of an environment for Lego "sculptors" as opposed to "modelers" since you are limited mostly to bricks and no specialized pieces. It's also currently impossible to use SNOT methods of building since you aren't allowed to rotate underneath the drawing or rotate bricks on their side. The way the model moves around when rotating and placing bricks has the usual, smooth polish that Google has shown in their programs over the years (like Sketchup, one of my favorites). It's a very cool concept and shows a lot of promise. Hopefully Google will extend this to include other areas of the world and maybe even develop Build with more options. It's a very promising start.

King Leo's Summer Palace

This incredible structure is brought to you courtesy of David Lines. King Leo's Summer Palace is very pleasing to the eyes. The reds and greens fit in very nicely with the grays and tans on this piece. The center spire is full of some nice detail (check out the use of dinosaur heads near the top). The best feature, in my opinion, is the little fountain in front of the palace framed on both sides by a curved staircase. What a great piece!

MOC Monday: Don't Look Behind Now!

This mini scene actually made me chuckle out loud a bit because of the pirate rowing in the tiny wooden tub seemingly unaware of the giant black octopus emerging behind him. The scene (created by Antonio Silva) reminds me of the memorable scene in the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when the Nautilus is attacked by a giant squid. I like the use of different colored and jumbled tiles for the ocean, and the red eyes on the octopus are a great touch.