Back in 2004 Garrett Barati had beat out 500 contestants for a shot at his dream job as a professional Lego builder. He didn’t get the job, but he kept on working at it. Sometimes spending up to 12 hours a day hunched over a mound of Lego blocks.

Then, in 2008 he won the “Built By Me” Movie Contest sponsored by LEGO and Nickelodeon. He received $25,000 to create a brand-new original animated short for Nicktoons Network using LEGO bricks and minifigures. The animation was showcased at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, on-air and can be seen on Barati’s YouTube channel here.

It wasn’t this accomplishment that brought him to my attention. It was his fantastic 2:00 minute retelling of the Star Wars Original Trilogy. Barati states that he created all the sets and animation for this while Lego provided the script, cg, and audio. I haven’t been able to find out much more information about Barati, but I’m super happy that he seems to have found a way to do what he loves.

It’s only about 46 degrees here in Arizona, so it’s really not THAT frightful.  I did however have to put on a long sleeve shirt with my shorts.  To help get me in that wintery holiday spirit my friend Jeff pointed me to Gizmodo for some wonderful photographs taken by a guy from Helsinki, Finland who goes by Avanaut over on Flickr.  He has combined Lego, Star Wars, Hoth, and some wonderful photographic techniques to make this photo simply irresistible.

I believe that this image is created all in camera. No fixing it later, no adding the snow in photoshop, just point and click. Well, it’s not really that easy. From the explanation on the Flixr page, the photographer has taken an old transparent CD storage box, filled it with some water and added a lightbox for lighting. He then put a gray Lego baseplate in the bottom and glued it down so the Legos wouldn’t float.  With the Lego in the water, he used reacted plaster of Paris to simulate the snow falling. Check out this behind the scenes photo. Simply brilliant!

I love it when a plan comes together!  When I was working in the online training field I helped to create a course on entrepreneurism.  In this course, the key to success was to find that thing that you love to do and find a way to get paid for it.  If you love Legos, and you love making ships and having battles with them, but you’re frustrated with their lack of proper weaponry MAKE YOUR OWN!  That’s the key to Brickarms.  Go over to their site and check out some of the wonder weapons and accessories for you Lego adventures.  Here’s a few of my favorites.

prototype “sci-fi” guns.  ;]

spy brief case

This same principle was applied by my friend Mark with his company making accessories for action figures and dioramas.  You can see his work at Build-A-Rama.

I wrote before about the Lego Animated comics over in their Fun Zone.  I guess I didn’t keep up on them very well because now they’re on chapter 14!  Head on over to watch all the Star Wars:Clone Wars Lego goodness.  LINK!

Here are a few everyday items that are absolute necessities for any lego fan.  Click on the images to go to the Lego shop and buy them.

Cookie Cutter

Salt and Pepper shaker

Ice Tray

Tupperware

and of course, dinnerware

Lego Universe is a massive multiplayer online game where you can use bricks to collaboratively build your world. The adventures go through all the Lego themes like Space and City themes, as well as Pirates and Ninjas.  Here’s a trailer for the game.

Here is a video by Lego Universe developer NetDevil. After creating the game tools, the game is now in the world design stage, where advanced Lego users are helping NetDevil to create the actual worlds.

I have found some interesting Lego information recently and I thought I would dedicate the day to all things Lego.  We’ll start out with a Lego Stop-motion Video. As a tribute to the Commodore 64 and NES games like International Karate, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man and Pong, Thomas Redigh and Daniel Larsson spent 1,500 hours making this Lego pixel animation.

Not too much to post about today.  I just wanted to point you to an AWESOME Lego creation.  I found this over at SuperPunch and there’s more images to see on flickr.  I love Legos, and toys, OH! and Star Wars.  :D

Here’s some of the awesome items over at the Brothers Brick.

My 2 year old son loves to take a little bag of Legos to Church.  My older son made a ship for him to play with but the canopy kept coming off, so I decided that I would try and build something a bit sturdier.  I think that I did a pretty good job, and I stretched my imagination a bit, but there’s no way I can compete with the mastery on display at the Brothers Brick website.