The Ghosts Give Chase in this LEGO Pac-Man Automaton

Wakka Wakka Wakka, Everything is Awesome! It’s LEGO Pac-Man time! Do you love retro arcade games and LEGO bricks? Well, then, you’ll love this LEGO Pac-Man display that moves when you turn its crank.

The 1603-piece set was designed by LiteBricks and submitted to LEGO Ideas. Its modular design lets you rearrange its pieces so Pac-Man can be chased by ghosts, gobble dots, chase blue ghosts, or make a hasty escape as their eyeballs scurry home to regenerate. Or any combination thereof. The set features a mini Pac-Maze on its side, made up of 1×1 round LEGO bricks.

If you’d like to see this set go into production, you can show your support by casting a vote on LEGO Ideas. If it gets at least 10,000 votes, it’ll go to the LEGO Ideas internal committee for consideration. I’d love to see more LEGO sets inspired by classic arcade games. The plastic bricks gave us pixel art before pixel art was a thing, so it’s a natural fit.

We All Live in a Wooden Submarine

Because one can never have too much whimsy, Taiwanese carpenter and automata maker Chi-Chun Yin constructed the ‘Ark III’, a wooden submarine automata crewed by a bunch of different animals. With a turn of a crank (cleverly doubling as the sub’s propeller), the entire crew is brought to life. It’s absolutely bursting at the seams with whimsy!

Yin says it took about six months to complete the project from conception to completion, which is impressive considering the wooden birdhouse I started constructing six months ago is still in pieces, one of which is glued to my arm.

I’ve always wished I was better at carpentry and woodworking, but I’ve come to realize they require some amount of skill and patience, two things I have in very short supply. I did make a ship in a bottle once though. Okay, I bought a ship in a bottle once.


[via Laughing Squid]

This steampunk 1700s gadget signs your checks for you

This complex smartphone-sized device is a miniaturized iteration of a product first created in 1738, by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. Using a complex series of mechanisms and gears, his entirely mechanical automata could write complete sentences by moving a pen/quill across paper… much to the amazement of European royalty, in whose courts Pierre showed off his mechanical miracles.

Near 300 years later, his company, devoted to creating magical mechanical marvels (primarily watches), decided to recreate “The Writer” as it was called back then. Jaquet-Droz’s Signature Machine is now available for sale, replicating its owner’s signature by using historic cam technology and a complex series of 585 parts, assembled and finished by hand. With a window that lets you look at the complex workings of the machine inside, and an arm that works on X, Y and even Z axes (it has to lift the pen off the paper when it’s done), the Signing Machine is custom made to the signature of its owner and even comes with an engraved plate featuring your signature. Additionally, so that your signature isn’t misused, the Signing Machine even includes a 4-digit security code.

Absolutely exquisite, and limited edition, the Signing Machine is undoubtedly a luxury item with its $367,500 price tag. Why yes, the pen is included.

Designer: Jaquet Droz

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