Category: LEGO Books (Page 31 of 36)

Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark Book Review

October 17, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

Coming off his very successful book, Beautiful LEGO, Mike Doyle is back with a sequel, Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark. Mike Doyle is an internationally acclaimed artist and his work has been shown in many exhibits like Gallery1988 and the Columbus Museum of Art.

Published by No Starch Press, Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark is a fully-colored 340 page hardback and it retails for $39.95.

The image of the dust jacket is from Mike Doyle’s Sickening Sweet and the back has images of builds from various builders. The inside flap gives a description of what the book is about.

Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark showcases dark LEGO masterpieces from artists around the world. From realistic sculptures of creepy crawlers to impressionist works of shadowy nightmares, this collection will leave you marveling at every turn. But dark has its lighter side, too with sculptures of dark chocolate as well as plenty of black humor on display.

Gothic fantasies and sci-fi horrors come to life in scenes created entirely with the simple LEGO brick. Step into a world of pure imagination in Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark.

The book is separated into 37 short chapters in addition to the preface and the contributors section (index). The index gives you information about each builders’ usernames online for Flickr/MOCPages as well as a link to their profile so you can follow more of their work there. Four of the chapters are actually short interviews of some LEGO builders including Bart De Dobbelaer, Tim Goddard, Brian Kescenovitz, and Mihai Marius Mihu and they … Continue

Steampunk LEGO Book Review

October 16, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

A new batch of books have come in from No Starch Press and I’ve been excited for these when I first heard about them. The first book that I’ll be reviewing is Steampunk LEGO by Guy Himber. If that name sounds familiar, may have heard of it before in the LEGO community.

Guy’s LEGO creations are very well known in the community and he even has a couple of successful Kickstarter projects like Pigs vs Cows, SKULLS!, and Munchkin Bricks. Guy also has an extensive background with special makeup effects and animatronics in many feature films such as Independence Day, Alien 3, and the Underworld trilogy.

Steampunk LEGO is a hardback book filled with 200 fully-colored pages and it retails for $29.95.

The first thing that you admire is the very nice cover of The Golden Empress by V&A Steamworks (Guy Himber). The cover is actually a jacket that is designed by Sylvain Amacher (https://www.facebook.com/captainsmog). The back of the jacket shows an image of Guy’s HMS Moondreams’s Voyage to the Moon. The book itself is a blue hardback with “Steampunk LEGO” embossed on the front and on the spine. With or without the book jacket, it’s great to show off either way. The pages of the book itself has this old-school feel to it. It’s hard to say how it feels like but it’s glossy but has a certain texture to it that makes it feel old. I’m not sure if all the books are like that or just mine, not … Continue

Brick Flicks: 60 Iconic Movie Scenes and Posters to Make From LEGO Book Review

September 26, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

This morning, I found an interesting package on my porch. I don’t remember ordering anything so I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. I opened the box and was surprised it came from Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. which is the same publisher for a few books that I’ve recently reviewed, Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO and Brick Wonders: Ancient, Modern, and Natural Wonders Made from LEGO. The latest book from LEGO artist Warren Elsmore is called Brick Flicks: 60 Iconic Movie Scenes and Posters to Make From LEGO. The book has 160 fully-illustrated pages and retails for $18.99. Like with Warren’s previous books, the cover is a nice mix of hard and softback and it shows a film roll with a couple of iconic scenes from E.T. and The Shining in LEGO form.

Brick Flicks: 60 Iconic Movie Scenes and Posters to Make From LEGO

The book is separated into four chapters and are categorized in different movie themes: Sci-Fi and Horror, Drama and Classics, Action and Adventure, and Comedy and Musicals. The introduction talks about why Warren took on this project and how he captured the scenes.

To get the LEGO scene as close to their real-life counterpart, Warren has hired Minifigs.me to create custom minifigures for the scenes in the book. By using custom minifigures, it allows him to capture the details and expressions of the minifigures as they are portrayed in the movies.

Brick Flicks continues to show movie scenes that you can easily recognize from just by looking at it. Each movie gets a two-page spread which includes a … Continue

Brick Wonders: Ancient, Modern, and Natural Wonders Made from LEGO Book Review

September 25, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

Continuing with another book review from Warren Elsore, we have Brick Wonders: Ancient, Modern, and Natural Wonders Made from LEGO. The book is a sequel to the best-seller Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO which we have also reviewed. Like the previous book, it contains 256 fully illustrated pages and it retails for $19.99. Also, the cover is a mix of a hard and softback in a sense that it is not a full hardback but soft enough to bend a little.

The first chapter of the book follows its predecessor where it talks about the history of LEGO, where to buy bricks, building tips, LEGO design software, so on and so forth. There is some information about sorting and storing of your LEGO bricks and online resources you can use to help you build.

In a little different format than the previous book, Brick Wonders has the chapters that are categorized into types of wonders in the world including the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Historic Wonders, Modern Wonders, and Natural Wonders.

Like his previous book, there are lots of photos of Warren’s highly detailed builds along with an informative description of the what the subject is about. Included in the chapters are some builds that you can build using the instructions that he has provided like a Mini Sphinx, Trojan Horse, and Chinese Pagoda just to name a few. The instructions again are condensed into one page and are somewhat small. This may give novice builders some trouble when … Continue

Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO Book Review

September 23, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 2 Comments

Recently, we received a couple of LEGO books from Barron’s Educational Books to review. The first of these books is Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO by Warren Elsmore. It contains 256 pages and retails for $19.99.

Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO

Warren Elsmore isn’t as well-known here in the States as he is in the UK as the organizer of AFOLCON and as a former chairman of the Brickish Association. He is also known for some very elaborate builds such as London’s St. Pancras Railway Station and the London Olympic Park.

The first part of the book takes a look at the history of LEGO which every book seems to do. It continues to talk about the most useful bricks in LEGO building, where to get the bricks, design software, and different building techniques.

The rest of the book which is about 90% is devoted to real-world objects that were built by Warren as well as from other LEGO builders around the world. There are over 100 recognizable global landmarks in 39 different cities that are shown in the book with many of the builds having instructions on create them yourselves. Each build also has a little information block about the object.

Although there are instructions for the builds, they are are fairly small to look at. For novice builders, it may be difficult to follow since the steps can go by pretty fast.

Finally, Brick City contains two large fold-out posters that are suitable for framing. The posters include Warren’s St. Pancras Railway Station and Spencer … Continue

Upcoming LEGO Books from No Starch Press

September 19, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

There are a couple of new LEGO books coming out from No Starch Press in the next few months which I look forward to reviewing.

Art of the Brick is a book that showcases the work of Nathan Sawaya including going behind-the-scenes to see how he has made the creations. Nathan is a world-renowned artist and The Art of the Brick takes us into how he uses LEGO bricks as an art form.

Steampunk LEGO by Guy Himber is a book that I am very interested in reading. This book will showcase a number LEGO artists who has created Steampunk-type builds from cities to pirate ships to robots.

The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Idea Book takes a look a many different ways to build mechanisms with LEGO MINDSTORMES EV3 (31313). Each build will have a list of parts needed and colorful photos so you can easily build it yourself.

Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark by Mike Doyle continues off where the first Beautiful LEGO left off. Dark takes a look at LEGO builds that are categoried as “dark” which includes sci-fi to scary builds. There are also dark humor builds in the book as well.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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The LEGO Neighborhood Book Review

September 17, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran / 0 Comments

We’ve recently received a new book to review from No Starch Press called The LEGO Neighborhood Book: Build Your Own Town! by Brian and Jason Lyles. Brian runs Brick City Depot where he publishes instructions for LEGO modular buildings and if it sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen an ad to their site on our right sidebar beneath the categories.

No Starch Press is known for their AFOL-centric books such as LEGO Space: Building the Future and The Art of LEGO Design which we’ve also reviewed before. The LEGO Neighborhood Book is geared towards people who build LEGO cities with modular buildings. It contains 204 pages and retails for $19.95 but you can get it cheaper at various retailers like Amazon. The book has a high quality softback cover and the images in the book are very nice which is what we’ve come to expect from No Starch.

Since the highly popular LEGO Modular buildings were released back in 2007 with the Cafe Corner (10182) which have continued with eight more Modular sets, LEGO fans have been creating their own MOCs of the buildings to grow their city The LEGO Neighborhood Book is basically split into two halves. The first half of the book contains six chapters and it takes a look at some of the foundations of what a modular building consists of.

The first chapter gives you an introduction to the standards of a modular building like the base size and the depth and height. This is what the authors call the “Cafe Corner” … Continue