A tower.

This Incredible Full Scale Lego X-Wing Is the Largest Model In History

This is truly unbelievable: Lego has built a 1:1 scale model of the X-Wing fighter using an astounding 5,335,200 bricks! It's as big as the real thing, capable of fitting the real Luke Skywalker—and Porkins.
As you can see in these exclusive Gizmodo images and video, it reproduces the official $60 Lego 9493 X-Wing Fighter. But instead of being 560-pieces and a few inches long, this model uses more than five million pieces and it's 11-feet tall and 43 feet long, with a 44-foot wingspan. Just like the real X-Wing—and 42 times the size of the commercial Lego set.
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The unbelievable facts
Here are all details about the model:

• Contains 5,335,200 LEGO bricks
• Weighs 45,979.61 pounds (including bricks and steel infrastructure)
• Height: 11 feet / 3.35 meters
• Length: 43 feet / 13.1 meters
• Wingspan: 44 feet / 13.44 meters
• 32 builders spent 17,336 hours (about 4 months) to construct

Engines that light up and roar
There's only one thing different from the original model: the engines glow and roar like the X-Wing in the movies. Check it out:
 
Where to see it
To capture these photos and videos, Gizmodo had to travel to an airplane hangar near New York City, where the model had arrived by ship from the Lego Model Shop in Kladno, Czech Republic. But you can see it for yourself now if you are in Manhattan, since it's on display in the middle of Times Square. According to Lego:
[INDENT]The model was heavily engineered to withstand all the transportation, setup/break down and to ensure it was safe for Times Square given the subway system below and California’s seismic requirements for the Legoland California Resort installation.[/INDENT]
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ExpandThe X-Wing being unveiled today in New York City's Time Square. Bottom image by Gizmodo reader Ludlow Smith. You can see official Lego images of the unveiling here.
Not in New York? Don't worry. After three days in the city, the X-Wing will be transported to the West Coast, where it will stay until the end of the year. And, by the way, you will be able to sit inside:
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Exclusive Gizmodo images
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The thing is so huge and heavy that it requires an internal metal structure to support it:
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Here's one of the crates used for shipping:
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The model was created to promote the original Lego Star Wars animation TV series The Yoda Chronicles, which will premiere on Cartoon Network on Wednesday, May 29 at 8:00PM.
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Jesus Diaz   Today 11:00am
Images and video by Gizmodo's Nick Stango.

LEGO® railway awarded Guinness World Record

93,307 LEGO elements. That’s what it took to build a LEGO railway long enough to be awarded a Guinness World Record for the longest plastic toy train track – precisely 4000.25 meters long.

More than 80 LEGO enthusiasts gathered in Denmark on the 10th and 11th of May 2013 to put the nearly 100.000 elements bricks and rails together. It took about six hours before the electric LEGO train was set in motion. After almost four hours of travel time the train reached the end of the line and received the world record award.
 
The man behind the world record attempt is adult LEGO fan Henrik Ludvigsen, who got the idea after noticing the large number of rails he had in his personal LEGO storage. With the help of advertisements in newspapers and on the internet he received blue LEGO rails from all over the world – enough to set the world record.
 

Today, LEGO announced on their Facebook Page there will be Level 4 of the Master Builder Academy.
THIS JULY- LEGO Master Builders merge the futuristic idea of time travel with clockwork gears and puffing steam engines- Steampunk!


The LEGO Club Magazine picture shows an awesome steampunk-ish city with high-rise buildings, steam-engine cars and elevated trains, and of course airships of all sizes and shapes. There are also lots of gears and steam everywhere!

The LEGO Master Builder Academy Level 4 is called Invention Designer and includes 3 kits (LEGO MBA kits 10-12) as usual with 13 different designs. Below are the descriptions of each set.

 TRAVEL TO THE PAST… AND DESIGN THE FUTURE! – Launch your Invention Designer adventure! LEGO Master Builders merge the futuristic idea of time-travel with the clockwork gears and puffing steam-engines of the Victorian 1800′s – Steampunk! Steampunk is a science-fiction art-form that imagines the future as people might have in the past. Let it inspire all kinds of new ideas, and pick up some tips from professional LEGO designers on how to make your creations look futuristic, industrial or just plain cool!


 MASTER HISTORICAL DESIGNS… TO BUILD MODELS FOR ANY PLACE OR TIME! - Designing & building realistic architecture! – LEGO Master Builders are influenced by real-world architecture when they design new LEGO sets. Learn how they use different styles from different eras or cultures to create all-new models! Whether it’s Roman windows, Asian temples or medieval houses, mastering these styles expands your building skills and helps you see new uses for all your LEGO pieces!

YOU ARE THE INVENTOR… ADD MOVEMENT AND FUNCTIONALITY TO YOUR CREATIONS! – Follow in the footsteps of the great inventor Leonardo da Vinci! Build a model of one of his most famous inventions, a boat with two large paddle-wheels on its side! As you build it and more designs in this set, learn how to add gears and other mechanisms to your models to create real movement and functions! Be inspired by the LEGO Master Builders – and Leonardo – to imagine your own inventions!

LEGO fans have been long making steampunk creations – usually characterized by above mentioned fantastic machines and vehicles with dominant colors of brown and gold. In addition the LEGO Monster Fighters theme had somewhat of a steampunk-ish feel. And now it seems like LEGO is going full steampunk with the LEGO Master Builder Academy Level 4 sets

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

Disney has laid off the staff of LucasArts and cancelled all current projects.

Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more.

Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that's unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for "one or both games," but nothing happened. "With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever," our source said.

A second source also told Kotaku this afternoon that the chances of Lucas licensing out 1313 are very slim. The odds are "effectively zero," the source said.

“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games," LucasArts parent company LucasFilm said in a statement. "As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.”

This comes after weeks and months of rumors involving the studio, which was acquired by Disney last fall. In September, LucasArts put a freeze on all hiring and product announcements, which many staff saw as the beginning of the end. In February, we started hearing rumors that the studio might be shuttered. Today, it's official: the iconic development house is gone.

The company was acquired as part of a mega-merger last year where Disney acquired LucasFilm and its sibling company from Lucas. Maniac Mansion, one of LucasArts' first self-published titles, introduced the "SCUMM" game engine driving several well known point-and-click adventure titles the company published throughout the 1990s. The Secret of Monkey Island, created by Ron Gilbert and co-written by Double Fine's Tim Schafer, is one of the publisher's best-known graphical adventures using the engine.

The publisher's apogee was certainly in the 1990s, when a wave of Star Wars-themed titles for the PC—such as Dark Forces, X-Wing and Rebel Assault—were supplemented by games like the strategy title Afterlife, the Sam & Max series, and Schafer's Full Throttle.

In the 2000s, the company became more reliant on its Star Wars products and licenses sold to other developers as new efforts like Fracture failed to take hold. The decade's most notable successes—Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Battlefront—were both externally developed, by BioWare and Pandemic Studios, respectively. LucasArts' last title to see mainstream success was 2008's Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. A 2010 sequel didn't live up to expectations. The last game published by LucasArts was Kinect Star Wars for the Xbox 360 last year, a game widely panned by critics.

http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749

In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company's core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. The BioWare developed MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (which was co-published with EA) won strong reviews but failed to maintain subscribers, and was eventually forced into instituting a free-to-play business model.

LucasArt's other big franchise, Indiana Jones, has failed to make much of a dent in games in recent years, with the exception of Traveller's Tales LEGO Indiana Jones series that, once again, was not developed by LucasArts. Meanwhile, series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which are both heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones films, have thrived.

More recently, LucasArts caused a stir at E3 2012 with an impressive looking demo for a new Star Wars project entitled Star Wars 1313. However, in the months that followed, the project seemed to lose steam, and rumors circulated that the game had ceased production. [Update: Today, a LucasArts representative spoke to us about the future of Star Wars 1313]

The company seemed to have a revolving door of management. In 2004, LucasArts president Jim Ward led a massive restructuring of the company, laying off many development staffers in the process. Ward left in 2008, to be replaced by EA's Darrell Rodriguez, who lasted only two years at the head of the company. Rodriguez's position was ultimately filled by Epic Games' Paul Meegan, who then stepped down in 2012. The company was co-led by Kevin Parker and Gio Corsi until it was acquired by Disney.

During that time, LucasArts attempted to inject new life into its in-house development by bringing in respected industry vet Clint Hocking (who helped lead the Far Cry and Splinter Cell franchises at Ubisoft) in as its new creative director. Sadly, Hocking lasted only two years in the position and left without completing the game he had been working on.

The last game published by LucasArts as a company is the sub-par Kinect Star Wars.

Ironically, many of the games for which LucasArts is best remembered for are not Star Wars games. Its genre-defining '90s adventure games created by Ron Gilbert and DoubleFine's Tim Schafer like The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango are all still celebrated by fans to this day.

Our sympathies go out to those who have lost their jobs today.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/04/03/disney-closes-game-publisher-lucasarts.aspx

LEGO Ambassador Mike Crowley aka Count Blockula passed away after a long fight.
He was funny, humble and undeniably brilliant.

I admired him as a builder and an artist. My heartfelt sympathy for his family and the whole community.

Mike was only in his 30′s maybe 36 or so. Way too young.
He was an amazing guy.. I met him back in 06 or 07 with John Langrish, and Andrew Becraft.
How do you say goodbye to a legend?



Check out Mike’s work:

http://www.countblockula.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/countblockula/