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LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) Designer Video Released

It’s been something of a fashion for LEGO that, whenever one of their new sets of a certain size and complexity comes out, that they would produce a designer video with the set’s creative minds talking about its original and development. We’ve made sure to cover these whenever they pop up, like the designer video that was released for the LEGO Ideas Voltron (21311) from last month.

Well now it’s time for a new vid detailing one of LEGO’s new major set release. And thanks to this LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) designer video, we now have a pretty good grasp on what to expect from this humongous set before its scheduled release next month.

Our hosts for this new video are LEGO Designer Justin Ramsden and Graphic Designer Crystal Fontan, part of the team that conceptualized the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) and made it into a masterfully crafted reality, rendered in micro-scale. According to Ramsden, the features of the structure reflect everything that happened there in all seven years of Harry’s adventures. Check these out, and other details through their LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) designer video which you can find below.

In addition to his appearance in the video above, Ramsden himself will be present at the special launch event for the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) this Wednesday, August 15, at the Leicester Square LEGO Store. This is a prime opportunity for Londoners to get their hands on the set early, and have them signed by Justin Ramsden too.

The LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) is currently up for preorder at LEGO Shop@Home, and will be officially released to the general public starting September 1.

UK LEGO Store Offering Chance to Make a Custom LEGO Harry Potter Wand

We’ve been noticing quite a number of LEGO Harry Potter events going on early this month and last, but they’ve been notably happening in other branded retailers carrying LEGO products, from Target to Barnes & Noble. What about LEGO itself? Wonder no more now that LEGO Stores – at least in the UK – are cooking up just that. Much like the Barnes & Noble thing that went on during the first weekend of August, this is a Build & Take event, only it’s lasting from the about middle of the month to early September. The subject for building is one of Harry Potter’s most iconic and ubiquitous items: your very own custom LEGO Harry Potter wand.

Thus far, the only LEGO Store to have set a date for holding this wand-building event is the one in Watford, Herefordshire, UK. During Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, from 2 to 4 PM, the store will invite children ages 6 to 14 to participate in making a Harry Potter wand they can later take home.

For the LEGO Store Watford, they’ll be running the event starting next on August 13 up until the first Sunday next month (September 2). Other LEGO Stores in the UK and the world are following suit, like with London’s Leicester Square store.

While we wait for further news, remember that there are a lot of new Wizarding World LEGO Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts sets already released or just about to. In addition, the film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is coming this November.

Imperial Probe Droid and More Included in LEGO Star Wars UK Mag Issue 38

A few times before we covered issues of the official LEGO Star Wars Magazine published in the UK, and the nifty special minifigures or polybags that came with them. Well now, LEGO Star Wars UK edition has brought out its issue 38 featuring two limited-edition polybags; one fixed and the other randomly chosen and added. The latest giveaways for LEGO Star Wars UK mag are an Imperial probe droid as seen in Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, accompanied in the packaging by a random polybag featured from previous issues. Apparently they still have a few pieces left to distribute.

From a certain point of view, the Imperial probe isn’t entirely new itself. Such a probe droid was already included in a past issue of LEGO Star Wars UK mag from two years ago. This time though, it comes with extra bricks to build a stand.

Now as always, you can expect articles, LEGO Star Wars comics, posters, puzzles and games, plus build instructions to make more models and fixtures from the Galaxy Far, Far Away. This LEGO Star Wars UK mag is now available in the UK at £5.99 a copy.

For those who are curious, LEGO Star Wars magazine UK edition has already spoiled what comes next in their issue 39 for September, a minifigure of prequel-era Obi-Wan Kenobi in pilot gear with a lightsaber. It’s up to you if you’ll get the Imperial probe plus extra old set now, or save for next month.

LEGO Incredibles Video Game Gets Summer-Themed DLC: Parr Family Vacation Pack

It’s now close on to a couple of months since the official release of LEGO Incredibles, the WB Interactive-Traveller’s Tales videogame adaptation of the Disney-Pixar 3D-animated franchise. That title blends together elements from the original 2014 movie and some from its sequel, which had premiered simultaneously with the release date. With LEGO Incredibles now likely available with many of its target fandom, it’s a great time for WBI-TT to start dropping their downloadable content, similar to the title’s plethora of sibling games. And the developers have been only too eager to oblige at last because we now have the LEGO Incredibles Parr Family Vacation Pack DLC to celebrate summer.

The Parr Family Vacation Pack provides the Incredibles and their steadfast ally Frozone with the appropriate duds for a great day out in the beach. No masks to keep their secret identities with though, but who cares? It’s all good fun.

About the only shortcoming to this LEGO Incredibles DLC is the lack of a new playable stage to go along with the new duds. Oh well, it’s still plenty cool considering summer is still on. The Parr Family Vacation Pack retails for £1.59 or $2, available on PC/Xbox starting today.

Filipino AFOL AC Pinlac Awarded for Custom LEGO Flower Designs in July’s Bricks by the Bay CA Event

It’s very amazing sometimes how inspiration for the most unexpected things can strike the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time. Such was the situation for Amado Canlas “AC” Pinlac, a Filipino engineer based in New Jersey, when a few years ago he was tidying up his home and found some stray LEGO bricks belonging to his high school-age sons. On a whim, AC Pinlac began assembling those LEGO pieces, aided by his engineering background and spurred by his Star Wars fandom. That led him to design some alien-inspired LEGO-built flowers, and his work was commended in several past events.

From NJ, Pinlac found himself in no less than Billund, Denmark last year, where he became the only Filipino out of 34 exhibitors to get his brick-built flowers displayed at the LEGO House itself. Much attention was paid to his LEGO plants’ extraterrestrial styling, though Pinlac says they were rooted in real exotic flora like the famous insect-trapping pitcher plants.

And then, just this past July during the Bricks by the Bay LEGO event in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Amado Pinlac showcased five of his brick flowers, where they received an award citation for “innovative use of LEGO parts”.

Pinlac’s flowers were described as “very artistic” by Bricks by the Bay president Eric Wilson, who might have something in common with the “accidental” designer by the serious nature of their non-LEGO profession (he’s a biochemist). As for Pinlac, he hasn’t forgotten his land of birth and has donated more plants to the Philippines, where they are on roving tour moving between LEGO Stores in the Metro Manila capital area.

source: Inquirer.net

Build the Future Event Featured at the Annual LEGO Park Holon in Israel

Ever since early July, Peres Park on the city of Holon in Israel has been host to an annual summer event brought to them courtesy of The LEGO Group, transforming the humble public garden into the lively LEGO Park. Filled with LEGO-themed amusement rides, attractions and interactive activities, it comes off as a seasonal taste of the permanent LEGOLAND theme parks to a country that doesn’t have one yet.

On its final month, LEGO Park Holon, held at the Toto Arena in Peres Park, is now focusing its promotion on an interactive attraction called The Dream Tower, a skyscraper under construction where children are given free rein to build it up using building cranes and conveyor belts bringing near-countless LEGO bricks to use. Participants are even given hard hats and yellow work vests to wear.

Putting the spotlight on an exhibit that’s built by children is brilliant considering the current theme of LEGO Park Holon, which is being held there for the sixth year in a row this 2018. The theme is “Building the city of the future”, and it somehow coincides with a recent advertising campaign developed for LEGO that goes “Build the Future”.

Other attractions at LEGO Park Holon are a LEGO Ferris wheel, a castle themed after LEGO Friends, a LEGO Marvel bungee jump platform (with LEGO Spider-Man prominent on the imagery), a kiddie electric train and big plasma screens featuring the latest LEGO videogames from WB Interactive and Traveller’s Tales. Security and safety personnel at the park are dressed like Minifigures from LEGO police station sets.

LEGO Park Holon is still ongoing and will wind down on August 31. Holon city is only due south along the coast from Tel Aviv where a recent LEGO exhibit was also held last July.

Source: Holland Review

Autodesk’s Brickbot Project is Able to Sort and Actually Build Using LEGO Bricks

LEGO as an invaluable tool for learning not only applies to people, especially children, but also to machines. It has been proven, if only little by little, with research undertaken by various groups such as Autodesk. This team has been working on developing machine learning capabilities to improve industrial robots. Such industrial robots, like the ones found in car assembly lines, are usually seen as effective in putting things together. But it’s an open secret with tech researchers that most industrial robots, when encountering something not part of its programmed routine, will mess up their work. That’s what Autodesk’s “Brickbot” project is hoping to address.

The San Francisco-based research group assembled their Brickbot, consisting of two manipulator arms and a camera-sensor suite, to do something that would be effortless for a child but complex for a “smart” machine: sorting through components in a container then assembling them into a whole. Guess what the pieces used are. Well, that’s right – it’s LEGO. Click the thumbnail below to see the Brickbot in action.

Autodesk’s co-head researcher Yotto Koga explains the use of LEGO pieces for their machine learning development with Brickbot, saying, “By starting with plastic bricks, we’ve been able to keep the project manageable while still having the freedom to experiment from the design stage all the way to a finished product.”

With the promise being shown by the performance of Brickbot in discerning and putting together LEGO pieces, Autodesk is ready to see how this machine learning potential can be used in actual industrial robots, with future collaborations planned with a manufacturer and a construction outfit.

LEGO Builder Makes a Giant Flying Foam Version of Helicopter from the International Jetport (6396) Set

There’s never an end to the amazing things one can do when inspired by LEGO. If you search enough, you might find a number of brilliant home tinkerers who have taken model sets of LEGO vehicles and created larger mechanized versions of them, and then posted their machines’ performances online. Adam Woodworth, known on YouTube as ajw61185, is one of those customizers who have made remotely operated drones of vehicles from a multitude of toy franchises. His latest video shows his latest work, a foam-built and enlarged replica of a helicopter that was part of a 1990 LEGO set, the International Jetport (6396).

Everything about this LEGO-inspired flying contraption was lifted from the design of the International Jetport (6396) set’s helicopter model, and was made out of lightweight foam including the pilot minifigure in the cockpit. The only details not found in the LEGO chopper were the internal motors that drive the foam-version’s main and stabilizing rotors.

If you notice, the model’s rotors don’t actually perform the lifting and flying action for this foam model. Instead, Adam Woodworth snuck in some drone mini-quad rotors on the helicopter’s landing struts. With the whole thing mostly built of foam, the drone rotors (nearly invisible against the black skids) are able to do their work well.

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Well this one is finally done, video in profile. A little less stressful to fly than the plane, now I just need to get a video of the two together 😁 I think I know what set is getting this treatment next, going to need a bigger car… #lego #helicopter #drone #legoinstagram #legominifigures #legophotography #legogram #fpv #flying #modelaviation #design #maker #designer #aviation #legos #pilot #vintage #classic #afol

A post shared by Adam Woodworth (@ajwoodpiece) on Aug 4, 2018 at 9:09pm PDT

This isn’t the only enlarged foam-constructed LEGO vehicle model that Woodworth has worked on. You can find more incredible videos of a LEGO space shuttle and light aircraft on his ajw61185 YouTube channel as well.

DK’s The LEGO Book New Edition Celebrates LEGO’s 2018 Anniversaries

LEGO and UK book publishing giant Dorling-Kindersley (DK) have been hand in hand for years and decades in the creation of official LEGO books for children and everybody else. These volumes by DK range from general books with LEGO themes, to handy references to the infinite diversity of LEGO products. Speaking of references, there is also THE reference book for all general knowledge of LEGO published by DK. This is emphasized by the title itself, The LEGO Book. It was first released in 2012 and now, some six years later, DK is reprinting it as The LEGO Book New Edition just in time with the numerous milestones that the LEGO Group is celebrating for this year.

The timing of Dorling-Kindersley’s The LEGO Book New Edition this 2018 is of course, in synergy with the ongoing milestone celebrations of the entire LEGO brand. If you recall, that’s the 60^th Anniversary of the Brick, and 40^th Anniversary of the Minifigure. What better time to reintroduce this big book?

With 280 pages between the covers, there’s enough to cover everything one needs to know about LEGO, from its beginnings to the latest developments in this year of LEGO milestones. In the same fashion as its fellow DK books, there’s also a front-cover freebie: an iconic red 2×4 LEGO brick.

DK’s The LEGO Book New Edition is due to arrive in bookstores on October 2, but you can pre-order it now on online markets like Amazon, where it’s priced at $25. It will no doubt be a welcome addition (or update to the original) on an LEGO-fan family’s library.

LEGO Overwatch Sets Coming in 2019.

Does anyone still recall last May, when came the seemingly joking news that LEGO was collaborating with PC game heavyweight Activision Blizzard to create some tie-ins for their most popular (and non-real-time strategy) game title Overwatch? If it needs repeating, yes it’s real, and this new bit of news confirms that LEGO Overwatch sets are really happening. Just as in April, when the newly-minted Wizarding World over-franchise comprising Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts was given a dedicated page all its own over at LEGO.com to display its tie-in LEGO products, so too now does Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch also receive that rare honor.

And just like with the first appearance of the LEGO Wizarding World mini-page, right now the LEGO Overwatch page is pretty bare-bones; just the Overwatch game logo and a teaser slogan reading: “Let’s get this moving!” We’re pretty sure it’ll be filled with information on upcoming LEGO tie-in sets soon enough.

As for what we might expect, the LEGO Overwatch page details might give hints. The faded background image is believed to be the Numbani stage, and the teaser line is what the game’s face character Tracer says whenever she pushes the payload cart in an Escort map. The best bet is that they’re battleground play-sets based on the mini movies such as this.

We also have an estimate on when these LEGO Overwatch sets will come out. The copyright at the bottom says 2019, so it looks like we might be waiting until early next year at the minimum. LEGO hasn’t quite failed with its franchise tie-ins yet; and I sincerely believe they won’t start with Overwatch. For now, lets appreciate how LEGO fans came up with their own version of custom LEGO Overwatch minifigs such as this one from Kaiju Dan.