The Philadelphia Zoo has just opened a new exhibit featuring some animals … kindof. The difference is that the animals are made of Lego brand toy building blocks. Thirty Four endangered species have been built by Sean Kenney and placed in zoo enclosure habitats. The zoo has commissioned five more Lego-certified builders for future exhibits to be held this year as this one is already proving successful in drawing the crowds and raising both awareness and revenue.

[Creatures of Habitat]

You might think your art director is tough to work with. There is a tiny art director out there which might give your a run for their money though. She knows what she wants and she wants it now. Maybe she wasn’t clear enough but you, as the artist, should be able to interpret the subtext well enough. Don’t do it wrong. This serves as a lesson to not work with family, and not work with children. Combining the two could lead to a high stakes game of draw-and-erase and Bill Zeman shows us as he tries to please his daughter.

[Tiny Art Director]

The LEGO Architecture series has some new entries thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Brickstructures Incorporated. You can now get a set for Falling Water or the Guggenheim (pictured). According to the PR people, “With models developed in collaboration with architects, LEGO Architecture works to inspire future architects, engineers and designers as well as architecture fans around the world with the LEGO brick as a medium.” You read that, mom? I told you LEGO counts as a medium and that its serious business!

[PrarieMod]

The popularity of music games has been growing rapidly over the past few years. So too has the clutter. games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero now fill up your home with plastic instrument controllers. If you’re a fan of the genre you already have a closet full of this stuff which can be a pain to deal with. Disney Interactive Studios have just published a new music game with a difference – they eliminate the need for all those plastic instrument controllers and let you play much more simply with your Wii’s standard controllers.

In addition the controller differences, this game by Fall Line Studio has a much softer edge to it than your typical music game, instead targeting more towards the young teen demographic who’s name we wont inflict upon you, poor reader. They’ve attempted to broaden the appeal of the game beyond the hardcore fan of edgier music to include the general taste of families so that if you’re not so in to one particular style of music there is still something here for you and it won’t scare anybody away. continue…

Shaun White Snowboarding has just dropped in a shelf-filling seven flavors (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, PS2 and PC.) With home video game consoles the Wii is in many ways the runt of the pack, lacking the raw horsepower of the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 (both powered by the award-winning Assassin’s Creed engine). Usually with large multiplatform games like this, the Wii version ends up being a crippled and relatively neglected cousin of the other larger versions.

With this title the Canadian developers at Ubisoft Montreal rethought that typical move and instead made a custom game variant for the Wii, compensating for the shortcomings of the console by capitalizing on the unique possibilities the hardware has to offer. Shaun White Snowboarding – Road Trip is not just an attempt to cram a large power-hungry game in to a small and relatively weak console but instead a differentiated stylized experience which shows both consumers and other developers that with a little creativity you can make multiplatform games which take advantage of what each platform uniquely has to offer. continue…