Tag Archives: Portal

Whichever way you look, a new world awaits

The best LEGO builds tell a story. Take this one by Carter Witz, which begins with a simple premise: what if a magic portal separated a land of summer from a world of winter? What happened to divide these two realms? And what will it take to bring them together again? While you’re pondering those answers, be sure to appreciate the rich combination of plates, tiles, sloped bricks, and plant elements to achieve the textured greenery. Same with the variation of elements that make up the ancient, weathered stone wall. (I count at least twelve different kinds of brick in that wall.)

Between Worlds

Here’s a better view of the opposite side, where winter still reigns. Rather than simply duplicate the topography of the summer half, Carter added mysterious ruined columns topped with drifts of snow. Enchanting!

Between Worlds

An undead LEGO army marches on Skaerbaek Fan Weekend

This past weekend, LEGO fans from all over the world converged on Skaerbaek, Denmark for the ultimate builder gathering (that also happens to be in LEGO HQ’s metaphorical backyard). Builder and LEGO designer Wes Talbott featured this fantastic horde of baddies at the Fan Weekend, about to pass through their nerco-powered portal to attack their sworn foe, the Moon Elves. The intricacies of the portal are spectacular, from the organics growing out of its side to the stone dragon heads sitting atop it. But my favorite part has got to be Wes’s integration of bones and skulls into the structure, using the 1×1 round plate with bar. The part really gives those skeletal minifig heads a jaunty slant, evoking the makeshift/natural/ritualistic nature of goblin magic. But don’t let the glowing green gateway distract you from the brilliantly-crafted army surrounding it. Specifically, that big, boney behemoth in the background is a masterclass in character creation and choice part usage.

So GLaDOS to see you

Ivan Martynov has turned to everyone’s favourite evil-robot-overlord-with-homicidal-tendencies for inspiration in the Digital Iron Builder contest. This doesn’t appear to be GLaDOS herself – but there’s no telling whether it’s just as evil or not. The seed part is a SPIKE sensor, an unusual part in its own right. It does look superb as the iconic eyes of Aperture Science technology though. In a way it makes perfect sense for this particular part use – the colour sensor is basically an eye, of sorts. The massive robot in the centre would be impressive enough on its own here, but the addition of a turret and Personality Core really ties everything together.

Portal

The world between worlds

Portals, parallel dimensions, time travel, etc. Those concepts sometimes spice up storytelling, like in Back to the Future, and Avengers: Endgame. And sometimes they fail, like in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the sequel fan-fiction that was canonised into a theatre production. Even Star Wars: Rebels tried to explore those concepts in an episode titled “The World Between Worlds”, which didn’t work at all. As for this small two-hour build by Luka (First Order Lego), it works very well.

“A world between worlds” - 2 hour build

Titled “A world between worlds,” but totally unrelated to Star Wars, Luka’s creation is a small microscale landscape build. A portal to another world dominates a lush valley with a small cute village built into the cliffside. A barren wasteland from beyond oozes something dark and dreary that pollutes the idyllic paradise. Overall, this has some great details for such a small build. I really enjoy some of the part choices for the greenery, like the green Hero Factory blades for evergreen trees. In addition, a half-hidden Knights Kingdom buildable figure helmet also adds texture to the hills.

Check out more of Luka’s builds!

It’s a good thing robots don’t have feelings

If you ever felt like just a cog in the machine, take heart. At least you aren’t a disposable worker-bot spending your short and miserable life testing deadly trap/puzzles for Aperature Science, and suffering endless verbal abuse from GLaDOS, like P-Body here, built by M. Squid and featuring a skillfully constructed frame combined with an outer shell that is very accurate to the source material. You can do it, P-Body! [CRASH!] well, better luck next time.

P-BODY

If you’re going to create a portal, make sure you know where you’re going

My favorite LEGO builds are always ones that contain story, humor and lots of color. Builder Victor hits all three of these points perfectly and throws in a little absurdity for good measure. As the story goes, Diogenes Trexler ordered a pizza on his home planet that smelled so delicious it attracted the attention of a giant worm. Plotting his escape, our pizza-loving hero created an ill-advised portal that opened on to the bathroom of one very surprised bather.

Diogenes Trexler escaping the Korvonian worm

The landscaping and colorwork in this piece are gorgeous and there is a minimum of visible studs, giving it a very slick look. The worm really pops with its blue colors and excellent shape. The alien fauna is colorful and appropriately weird and creepy. The portal is nicely rendered with transparent pieces and the change between the two universes is wonderful, going from organic shapes to the clean tiles of a modern bathroom. The surprised bather, caught in mid blow-dry is the perfect punch line with his terrified face and hair blowing toward the ceiling. In my opinion, it’s little touches like these that make the difference between a good model and a great one.

Check out the model from another angle to see all the details

GLaDos is doing science and she’s still alive

GLaDos is back and she’s serving up some vengeance on Chell and Wheatley in this Portal vignette by hachiroku24. Way back in 2007, the video game industry was taken by storm by Portal, a mind-bending game that pitted a human test subject against technology run amok. A sequel followed in 2011 and the series proved popular enough that LEGO included it as a playable world in LEGO Dimensions, even producing an official Chell minifigure and the beloved Weighted Companion Cube. Hachiroku24 has taken that Chell minifig and built this spot-on recreation of a scene with the evil GLaDos and Portal 2’s friendly AI, Wheatley.

Lego Portal 2 GLaDOS vs Chell and Wheatley

GLaDos is perfectly rendered here utilizing a variety of visible Technic parts to create that feeling of exposed machine technology. The hoses and wires are especially effective and add a touch of realism that make the whole machine seem plausible. I’m very fond of the combination of pieces used to create GLaDos’ elegantly curved “face”. Comical sidekick Wheatley, in contrast to his larger relative, gets a similarly ideal treatment but using only a small number of parts. As a builder, I like “breaking the square” so I really love the use of hinges and angled plates to create a more irregular shaped base for this scene. Although 12 years may have passed, thanks to hachiroku24, GLaDos is still getting the science done for the people who are still alive.

The cake is a lie

Portal has been among the most mind-blowing games for me, and I couldn’t get enough of it in two episodes. While we wait for Valve Corporation to come up with a third, we should entertain ourselves with hiqh quality LEGO creations. Evan skillfully sculpted Chell and a sentry turret over a very Portal-esque base. Crispy photography and an Aperture Laboratories logo really show off the model. Still, some fans expect to see the Companion Cube and maybe a piece of cake to go along with Evan’s work. Perhaps we’ll see them some other time!

Portal 2 Figurines

[Editor’s note: You might not notice this, but The Brothers Brick has contributors from all over the world — not just the US and Canada, but also the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey. Tonight, our thoughts are with the author of this post, Ankara resident Cagri Yuz, his family and friends, and all his fellow citizens of Turkey during this tumultuous time. Stay safe, Cagri!]

Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device in LEGO

Leonid An is running awesome building experiments on some of the new parts. The result is this gorgeous handheld portal device from the Portal video game. I am guessing this build started with the white large figure armour piece, which has the same shape as a part of the original portal gun. However, the rest of the weapon is no less excellent and features a couple of great building solutions including these three minifigure hammer pieces on the other end. Take a moment to appreciate the peculiar scale of the gun; it is not too large, but has enough details which make it instantly recognizable.

Handheld Portal Device

“Your test times show you are going too slowly.”

I have to admit that I’ve never played the popular video game Portal or any of its sequels, but I like to think I know a good diorama when I see one. I’ve been entirely too verbose this weekend, so I’ll just let this lovely image by eldeem do the talking. I will say that I really like the lift-arms under the platform, and the placing of the various elements in this shot is perfect.

Your test times show you are going too slowly.

According to the Ryan you can even actually play this course yourself, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Portal 2 Testchamber: Overall View

The Companion Cube featured in this diorama was designed by Gaelen Mibeck (MooseBot) and used with permission by the builder.

Portal Weighted Companion Cube breakdown

As always it has been a pleasure being your weekend DJ here at TBB. Until next time, the long distance dedication line and the first time caller line remain open.

“I’ve really let the place go since you killed me, by the way. Thanks for that.”

We could fill pages and pages here on The Brothers brick with excellent LEGO models inspired by the Portal universe. In fact, we have. Joining the ranks of wonderful LEGO Portal builders is Gabe Umland, whose dilapidated Portal 2 test chamber includes some excellent technological decay — something hard to do well in LEGO.

Dilapidation

Speaking of GLaDOS, I quite enjoyed seeing Pacific Rim last week, and I’m surprised we haven’t seen more LEGO creations inspired by giant robots fighting giant sea monsters from another dimension…

Atlas & P-Body by eldeeem

Despite heroic contributions from Xbox friends like Tyler, I never quite managed to get all the way through co-op mode in Portal 2. Still, it was really really fun, and I always enjoy seeing LEGO renditions of the paired test subjects Atlas and P-Body. This version by Ryan H. (eldeeem) is at a larger scale that enables him to add plenty of detail and color contrast. I’m rarely a fan of rubber bands as critical structural elements in LEGO models (yes, even in official sets), but by adding them around other bricks, Ryan has softened the corners of several blocky areas rather nicely.

Atlas & P-Body