Custom vector art shirt/sticker design of my LEGO minifigures inspired by the Epic Rap Battles of History series, starring Nice Peter & Epic Lloyd! Drawn in Flash 8 and finished in Photoshop, this bad boy contains Lincoln vs. Norris as seen in episode 3! Fun fact: I saw a live version of this battle at the New York City stop for the DigiTour a few months back; it made me feel like a big man. I cried manly tears. And spoke in sentence fragments.
EDIT - Derp, I meant episode 3.
In addition to my previous t-shirt design, here it is — Plasmashock à la t-shirt graphic! Plasmashock was my first Nintendoformer, who was intended to resemble Megatron/Shockwave but ended up looking like a Decepticon Seeker jet such as Starscream. Regardless, this graphic will be mainly neon orange ink on a black shirt, and unfortunately without any glow-in-the-dark ink — unlike Domaster, who’ll glow his proverbial ass off!
First phase of my forthcoming Game Boy Transformer t-shirt design! I’m going to splurge the money and get all sorts of extra colors and materials used in this design — notably the glow-in-the-dark and fluorescent ink! Everything you see that appears to be lime green shall have a layer of glowing ink over top of it, and everything gray shall possibly have metallic glitter or silver on it.
I can’t name a definite date as to when these will be for sale, but probably within the next months or so, and the unit cost will be between $15-25, assuming the production costs aren’t too high. Remember, I’m not out to get rich, I’m out to slap my artwork on the chest of every decent geek in the nation! And yes, I’ll probably create a Plasmashock NES Zapper shirt, too!
By the way, please help support this original LEGO creation on CUUSOO — if we can get 10,000 supporters, LEGO Group will personally discuss having this sold as a real toy! Supporting doesn’t mean paying any money; simply login to CUUSOO, click “support” and leave some quick feedback!
-Baron von Brunk
EpicLLOYD, the impish star of the ever popular Epic Rap Battles of History series — along with some of his incarnations, such as Gandalf the Grey, Napoleon Bonaparte, Elvis Presley, Things 1 & 2, Senator John McCain, and Chuck Fuckin’ Norris! The epic videos that inspired these are all over YouTube, so they’re hard to miss!
All minifigure photos taken by me, and used with my own personal collection. The final photo collage was retouched by me in Photoshop CS3.
Coming soon: a similar picture of Lloyd’s hairy-armed sunglasses-wearing partner in crime… Nice Peter! Stay tuned!
Who will survive!?
-Baron von Brunk
Tell the world the universe belongs to us today!
May 2012 Nintendo Power, pages 94 & 95 — my ground-breaking interview and photo spread! Buy five copies for your mothers, as instructed by Dr. Hook in the hit song “Cover of Rolling Stone!” By the way, I picked up three copies of this issue at Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, and yes, I showed it off to a bunch of the employees!
-Baron von Brunk
(photo by Tim Sypasong)
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You wanted the ultimate fan tribute to video games, Transformers & LEGO united as one, so I created The Nintendoformers! Next you wanted to potentially take a stab at building your own clone versions, so I provided you with instructions! And now, Brunkamaniacs, we can possibly have these bad boys mass marketed de facto and de jure — if we can get 10,000 supporters on LEGO Cuusoo, the fine folks at the research & development team of LEGO Group will personally review and make arrangements to have this sold as a real set — with an actual license from Nintendo and/or Hasbro!
http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/14089 - simply join, click “support”, leave feedback and share! No money nor donations of any kind required, folks!
Brunkamania lives forever!
-Baron von Brunk
P.S. - Check out May 2012’s issue of Nintendo Power… I’ll be interviewed in a 2-page spread in regards to these projects and my airship!
At last, the long-anticipated 3-D instructional guide of the ever so popular LEGO / Game Boy / Transformers mashup! In the link below, you’ll see step-by-step building instructions, in addition to a complete list of parts, resources where to download the custom labels, and further reading — like making your own multicolored clones and design variations…
http://www.instructables.com/id/LEGO-Game-Boy-Transformer-Official-Parts-List-/
Some of the 3-D CAD renders which you’ll see in the guide:
-Baron von Brunk
A sneak peek of my forthcoming instructional guide and parts list for Domaster: the battery instructions! Please note: the “light gray” 1x1 stud plate is supposed to be the metallic silver color (or flat silver), however the 3-D CAD tools only have basic traditional colors in its library.
Anonymous asked: Do you sell any of the models you build or instructions to built them? Specifically, I'm interested in pricing your two Nintendo Transformer creations. Thank you.
Almost all of my custom models were made without any real direction or written guidance — meaning, I select a large pile of relevant and useful pieces from my collection, then after hours of trial-and-error, I soon come up with a working creation! That being said, I don’t have steps nor tutorials of my popular creations, apart from some work in progress photos (notably the airship, which I’ve been keeping track of since it started out as a pile of reddish-brown LEGO pieces).
But as mentioned previously, due to popular demand, I will in fact be compiling a custom instructional guide and parts list for the Game Boy and Zapper Transformers — in addition to a YouTube video. When those are ready, you can simply head over to Bricklink.com and order any parts you need in specific quantities. You can also follow the guidelines and make color substitutions — and end up making your own blue or yellow Game Boy Transformers, much akin to Nintendo’s “Play it Loud!” era!
Check out my Facebook fan page or Twitter for updates and news on those videos and guide books.
-Baron von Brunk
Anonymous asked: If you arent going to sell that lego gameboy decepticon, please post instructions to make it, id even pay to get the instructions!
I’m actually going to record a video next week to show its transformation cycles, and when that’s done, I’ll make step-by-step instructions for anyone to download! Also, I’ll be sure to include the vector files for printing the decals.
-Baron von Brunk
[video]
(click on the above picture to see a full panoramic view!)
Here it is at last, the finalized version of the massive Super Mario 3 airship project that I’ve been gradually working on since November 2011! Initially planned to be much smaller and streamlined, this titanic brute ballooned up to a larger scale, and used over 8,000 LEGO pieces in its completed form — as well as electronic components, such as lights and audio. The bulk of the ship is built entirely from reddish-brown pieces that resemble wooden planks, to create the effect of a rickety, wood ship made from logs, such as in its respective video game. Rather than have this ship docked on the ground, I used the magic of transparent-clear LEGO pieces for stanchions and columns, to keep it suspended several inches off the ground (as well as its small fleet of miniships flying)!
This ship has been gradually worked on throughout the winter season, with lots of downtime due to parts shortages. Constructing the ship itself wasn’t a challenge or time consuming, but waiting weeks on end for packages to arrive from Bricklink.com would often cause major delays. For example, the 2x2 round brown bricks constantly ran in short numbers, yet were vital for making the roofs and bodies of the ship’s sections, and I’d generally buy large packs of 300 pieces just to make one side panel. You’ll also see something odd about the arrangement of the bricks: the side “logs” face sideways (studs to the left), yet somehow have studs embedded in them to face upwards. This engineering strategy came to me while I was drunk one night a few months back, where I managed to come up with a method of building a traditional flatbed boat hull, with sideways-facing “wooden” panels attached to the sides using Technic pins — almost like rivets on a boat.
These photos were taken just recently by my friend Roz, who was more than eager to grab her Canon Rebel SLR and come to my house in Queens for a grand photo session in order to help out her burgeoning portfolio. The ship is currently set up in my spare room in my attic apartment, and for lighting, we used two bright white daylight CFL bulbs. These photos are essentially shown here in chronological order, starting with the large panoramic view shot — that was taken first, when we were still calibrating light arrangements and debating to use the flash or combine the CFLs with the default incandescent bulbs — hence the strange mismatched cloudy light balance for the first two full-ship images. Eventually down the line, we found out which light settings worked best, and thus took better photos:
Hovering over a 6-foot folding table!
The bow (front) of the ship was the first part to be constructed. It’s an elongated traditional-looking ship front, with a pointy blade for a figurehead, a subtle nod to the Super Mario 3 cartoon series “Doomship.”
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The Bullet Bills being fired in mid-cannon blast!
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Why, it’s those pesky Mario brothers, up to no good!
To escort the ship are several “miniships”, based off the ones first encountered in Bowser’s Dark World of Super Mario 3. These little buggers constantly kept breaking and falling down, as their narrow clear stanchions were very rickety and vulnerable. To create the illusion of the ships flying chaotically out of formation, I would stack smaller ships (hovering) on top of larger ones, to avoid having them all bunched together in a large swarm — as the ships in the game were spread out and came towards the screen one at a time.
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The very back of the ship — the stern, and its main cabin — have a large warp pipe to transport people inside, just like the end of each airship level in the game. And unlike other LEGO warp pipes that I’ve seen online, mine is virtually round (not square), and totally hollow — meaning, you can in fact drop stuff down the pipe and make it end up inside!
As mentioned previously, this ship is named “The Fireflower”, and to flaunt its name, the command bridge of the stern has a giant 16 cm stained-glass window — with a 6 watt lightbulb rigged up to a 9V battery for illumination like a Tiffany Lamp!
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Please note: this isn’t the full, completed circuit as originally planned. Long story short, the electrical infrastructre was made before the circuitry was complete, and at the last minute (before the pictures were taken) my wires came loose and wouldn’t work — which were hooked up to a small silver on/off switch (not shown) — therefore, for the sake of the photo, I tore out the switch and simply directly connected the two battery wires to the lightbulb base itself.
Inside the cabin (the stern’s 2nd floor) you’ll see mosaic tilework of classical artwork…
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Although, since this ship is set up in my tiny, cramped attic with a triangular roof, the back of the ship was difficult to photograph, hence the lack of appearance of the Mario tile, as well as the incomplete images of the Pihrana plant’s body (which was elongated).
The ship’s stern was quite heavy, and the most difficult to attach the clear stanchions to the bottom, unlike the bow and middle sections, in which I could easily lift with one hand. The stern is so big and heavy, that in order to place the columns on the bottom, I had to basically “jack it up” like changing the tires on a car, by placing it on top of a square box, putting stanchions in each corner then sliding the box out of place. Despite its great weight, the ship’s stern holds up pretty well and sturdy. The stern has three hinged doors: one on the bridge’s deck — a.k.a. the computer room (first picture), a barn door in the very bottom rear (middle picture) was intended to be an aircraft launching deck, and of course a hinged door where the warp pipe and inner lights/battery attached to (above photos). The third photo below is the top hinged door of the ship’s bow.
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Once we wrapped up shooting the pictures, something awful happened: the support kicker to keep the top-most door open came loose, thus violently swinging the stern’s high trapdoor shut — in the complete opposite direction, which forcefully tore the whole right side of the stern off! The roof and warp pipe fell to the ground and completely crumbled to pieces, and are now awaiting repairs. Below is a shot of the back end of the ship, with its bridge’s trapdoor open, as well as the top door (where the pipe, lightbulb and 9V battery stood) missing! Fortunately, the strong structure of the ship stood virtually unharmed following the accident, and the entire stained-glass fireflower window was untouched.
“2nd floor: hardware, children’s wear, lady’s lingerie… Oh, good morning Mr. Koopa! Going dooowwn?”
-Baron von Brunk
[video]
Here it is, the final version and high-res display of my newest creation: Plasmashock, the NES Zapper pistol / Transformers ultimate geeky crossover!
For its transformation mechanism, I built it more similar to Megatron rather than Shockwave; both Transformers used their gun handles as legs, only Shockwave formed his arms to make the barrel, whilst Megatron’s arms formed the stock, and his barrel was a separate attachment (which became his fusion cannon in robot mode). Henceforth, when Plasmashock transforms into robot mode, the orange Zapper barrel becomes his side gun!
Some original Transformers (notably Starscream/Skywarp/Thundercracker) would only transform as toys by removing/adding multiple pieces, such as fists and landing gear, whilst others could easily switch back and forth by folding joints — Plasmashock does both; to go from gun to robot, his trigger becomes removed and attached to his head to make face decorations, and the barrel of course separates to make the side gun. Otherwise, the legs fold from the gun handle, the arms are made from the stock, the head rotates and rests inside the chest.
-Baron von Brunk
P.S. - I plan on making a large replica of a Nintendo Entertainment System that transforms into a giant robot, much akin to Metroplex and/or Fortress Maximus! Stay tuned, loyal Brunkamaniacs.