Tag Archives: Dioramas

There’s nothing like a massive LEGO diorama to prove that you’ve arrived as a LEGO builder. The LEGO dioramas we feature here span everything from realistic medieval castles to scenes from World War II, and more than a few post-apocalyptic wastelands.

How the Wild West was won

I don’t know why but I seem to love the Old West. No, seriously, I can’t explain why. It’s not like I dress like a gunslinger or watch Westerns or anything like that because really I don’t. So you can imagine how (unexplainably) pleased I was to see this amazing LEGO Wild West town built by ilive. This has everything you can expect from a booming Old West town: horses, train tracks, stagecoaches, even one of those western windmill dealios. You can get lost in all the amazing details. A layout this good makes me wish LEGO would bring back the Western theme from 1996. I mean, seriously, who didn’t lose their gunslinging, horse riding, cow rustling minds when Fort Legoredo came out?

Wild West

Continue reading →

Everyone needs a hobby – even orcs

Do you think orcs ever get tired of warmongering? More often than not, they’re depicted as grumpy, aggressive beings hungry for conquest, but Versteinert posits that they might also be partial to a more peaceful life. This particular one has taken to the forest for its downtime. Which makes sense – if you’ve got all those nice heavy battleaxes, there’s no point leaving them gathering dust between pillages. Might as well put them to good use making some wood. A bit of woodworking is probably a nice way to decompress after terrorising the realms of man, in the absence of LEGO sets. Making a wardrobe or coffee table, perhaps. Rest and recuperation is important, folks! 

The Orc Lumberjack

This enormous Wild West diorama will bring out your inner cowboy

LEGO’s Western theme may have only lasted a couple of years, but the sets available in that short span could build you a pretty comprehensive Wild West. In the spirit of that, Evan Crouch has collaborated with fellow builders Matt Hudson and Donnie Greenfield to bring us this huge diorama! It’s all there, laid out down one main street in typical spaghetti-western style (among some stunning landscape, I might add). There’s a bank, a sheriff’s office, a Native American camp, settlers, a train station – pretty much the only thing missing is Fort Legoredo itself!

Ravenwood, CO

It’s more of a defensive structure than a Hutt

LEGO builder WG Productions takes us down to the surface of Teth for this elite Clone Trooper raid on a Hutt ion cannon guarded by battle droids. The clouds above a black surface give a foreboding sense of the pinnacle the defensive structure is perched upon, and the posing of the figures lets you feel the action frozen during this tense aerial combat mission.

Mission 6.2: The Slice

The trade winds blow in this desert port

TBB regular Andreas Lenander takes us to a desert port of commerce, and while it’s a lovely LEGO scene at first glance, the details bear close examination. There are obvious points of excellence like the stonework that just has the right amount of weathering or the gently curving hull of the trading vessel, but I’ve got my eye on those beautiful palm trees, which might be the best LEGO palms I’ve ever seen. And of course, let’s not leave out that beautiful blue domed roof on the tower made with tails.

Port of Mophet

A churning river of LEGO influences

Do you know what I love? LEGO builds with a real atmosphere. Builds a bit like Markus Ronge‘s here, in fact. There’s loads of action and dynamism conveyed through the bricks. The trans-clear rods used for streaks of rain combine with the curved slopes of the churning river to make it very clear we’re in the middle of a big old rainstorm. Possibly in a city like Paris in the early 20th century, if I had to guess. Stylistically it reminds me of a combination of anime and Franco-Belgian bande dessinee comics, framed in a very Wes Anderson way. The rat riding out of the sewers even reminds of Ratatouille a bit. There’s something for everyone here!

The Newspaper Stand

Travel through space and time with this diorama of Uzbekistan

The LEGO fan community spans the whole globe, and I love traveling vicariously through builds like this one from the well-traveled Lasse Vestergård. This creation allows us to travel to Uzbekistan – admittedly not a place that was high on my destination hit list. But isn’t it beautiful? It depicts the historic city of Bukhara. The blue decorations of the Mir-i-Arab madrasah make use of a lot of flower pieces, depicting the well-preserved paintwork of the real building. And if you thought there were a lot of flowers here, try and work out how many 1×2 plates and 1×1 studs are used in the Kalyan Minaret next to it! My guess is, er, a lot. It’s a tried-and-tested method of making round towers, but the considerable height makes it look like brickwork here, to great effect.

Storage wars in the 1700s

I’ve had a soft spot for white-washed buildings guarded by red- or blue-coated troops in tricorns and shakos ever since I got LEGO Pirates 6267 Lagoon Lock-Up for Christmas around 1991. This supply depot by Ayrlego tickles that nostalgia, while bringing it up to date with much more detailed building. My favorite part of this build, though, is that Ayrlego has figured out the perfect use for all those yellowed and dirty white bricks that are probably floating around in your collection. While they’re normally unsightly and probably relegated to the filler-brick bin (or worse), they’re on prominent display here and couldn’t look better as the weathered stucco on this colonial-inspired structure.

Supply Depot

Lose yourself in this immersive brick-built workshop

Hasn’t everyone wished for a workshop like Victor van den Berg‘s at some point? I know I have. Unfortunately I still live in a one-bedroom apartment that is becoming rapidly overrun with interlocking plastic bricks. So for now, I’ll have to live vicariously through Victor’s absorbing build. The lighting is super atmospheric, and gives off a vibe of countless quiet evenings spent working on little projects here and there.

The Workshop

Check out all the amazing details in this immersive workshop scene

“I came in like a cuuu-rling stone!”

I love this fun scene from Ids de Jong. It depicts the beloved classic space minifigures enjoying a game of curling. While the curling stones are cleverly made using a Dots decorative piece, Benny has taken to launching himself down the… Whatever a curling playing field is called. A rink, I guess? Anyway, it’s much to the amusement of the onlookers, with the exception of the brown spaceman. He’s the only one who seems to have noticed the baby on the rink. What drama! For a relatively simple build, the careful posing of the figures and choice of facial expressions really breathe life into this scene.

Curling Practice

The everblue trees in the everglow forest

Here in Finland, many of the forests (and there are a lot of forests) are made up of evergreen trees, which stay green all year round. Eli Willsea has created a LEGO scene that could well be in one of the Nordic countries: a reindeer wandering through a peaceful Everglow forest. Wait, everglow? I guess the trees aren’t very green here… And that’s intentional. Eli says this was a LUG challenge to build things in unusual colours. So we have lavender water, light green rocks, dark orange forest floor, dark blue leaves, and a pink frog. It all looks quite mystical, underlined by the glowing fruit in the trees that, presumably, give the forest its name.

The Everglow Forest

A distressed badger badgers the Mouse Guard for help

A builder who goes by the name of Evancelt Lego presents a diorama that is called Redwall: A Visitor to Loamhedge. From their Flickr page; “After receiving the distressed badger and hearing his tale, Abbot Gersey sends warrior mice out to aid in his search for his daughter. Weasels had been spotted near Loamhedge a fortnight earlier and the abbot has his suspicions they were behind the badgermaid’s disappearance.” They go on to say that this started as a chance to play around with light lime alongside yellowish green and lime in the base, which incidentally, was the very thing that attracted me to this build. Those of us in the know about such things understand that these colors are as scientifically different as pink and orange and can look pretty neat when presented together.

Redwall: A Visitor To Loamhedge