Monthly Archives: September 2013

T47 Sheridan Walking Tank

I’ve wanted to try my hand at some alternative WWII vehicles for quite a long time. Long enough, in fact, that I originally planned to use sand green, then dark green, then sand green again (as these color became available, or had new parts show up). Of course, when I finally built something, I ended up using olive green.

The idea with this creation is a sort of “what if” scenario. In this case, what if WWII lasted longer, and militaries started fielding diesel driven mecha. Far-fetched, perhaps, but it certainly seemed like fun.

I also tried something new (for me) with this creation, and photographed it only in a scene. I’m hoping this presentation is pleasing to our readership.

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Kaname Madoka: Magical Girl

Kaname Madoka is a character from an anime television series about a girl being granted a wish in exchange for transforming into a magical girl tasked with fighting witches and despair. LEGO DOU Moko creates another amazing interpretation of an anime character out of LEGO. Most notable in this creation is his masterful posing of Kaname with her knee bent and magical bow drawn.

Bringing down “Yankee imperalist air pirates” with the Cuban SA-2 Guideline

Andy Baumgart (dtowncracka) obviously has an interest in military equipment from the (former) Soviet Union and its allies. After building his cracking ZSU-23 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery, he has turned his attention to something a bit more obscure: the Cuban T-55 mobile SA-2 Guideline launcher.

The SA-2 Guideline is a Soviet surface-to-air missile developed in the nineteen-fifties, which was exported to Soviet allies all over the world. During the Vietnam war, North Vietnamese SA-2s were used to shoot down close to 200 US aircraft, known as Yankee imperialist air pirates in contemporary propaganda. Before then, SA-2s gained notoriety when they were used to shoot down Francis Gary Powers’ CIA U-2 spy-plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 -an incident which caused great embarrassment to the US government- as well as a U.S. Air Force U-2 flying over Cuba during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

By now the SA-2 is an old clunker. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, Cuba has been unable to buy more modern and more mobile air-defense equipment. By mounting an SA-2 and its launcher on top of an obsolete T-55 tank chassis, Cuban engineers have managed to come up with a slightly more mobile version. To me it doesn’t look as though it can do much damage except to Cuba’s roads, but it is a great choice for a LEGO model, expertly built by Andy.

LEGO Knifehead rises from the Breach

February 29, 2020. Anchorage. Knifehead. Category III.

This is the beast that took down the Gipsy Danger. This is the Kaiju that demonstrated that they were learning our defenses. This was the battle of the beginning of the end for the Jaeger program. And it is magnificent.

OliveSeon brings us this brilliant brick-built beast from Pacific Rim, in all its glory. I can’t wait to see what else she has planned!

Gnarly BMW Rat Rod

It was hard to pick which photo I was going to post of Calin’s (_Tiler) sleek BMW rat rod, because as Vaughan James so accurately described, his “photography is like LEGO car porn”. So I will just post a small selection.

I am admittedly not a ‘car guy’, but I do enjoy a gnarly looking vehicle like the best of them. Also the fact that Calin was able to fit an entire minifig in at this scale earns big time bonus points.

Check out the rest of the ‘LEGO Car Porn’ in the full photoset.

Here be serpents

Since both brickshelf and flickr seem to be down right now, I went outside my comfort zone and had a look at MOCpages. And after discussing the excellent “Guardian of the Emerald” creation by LukeClarenceVan I’m very glad I did. The sea serpent uses a great set of multiple textural techniques, including some nice water effect, and the diorama itself is well set up. Great work all around.

Sea Serpent LEGO Model

Fire and water

Sean and Steph Mayo have cranked their building skills to overdrive to bring us two back-to-back creations featuring real fire and water. The first is a spinning flame sculpture called Green Fire Tornado, and the second is a beautiful terrarium with a working waterfall. There are no limits to what can be built with Lego when these two are at work.

Swooshing through Endor

Régis Gamba (Anio) is a French builder whose UCS Star Wars models were first known to me through Brickshelf. His latest is a UCS speeder bike, which you can see more photos on his Flickr set.

Thanks for the tip TheBrickAvenger!

The right tools for the job

One of the things I noticed fairly soon after I moved to the UK (not being a native speaker of English) was that, despite being taught English in school, watching too many American TV series, reading English books and being able to hold my own in conversations about my work in English, I still had some gaping holes in my vocabulary. My job in the UK involved doing experiments in a wind-tunnel, which included working closely together with lab technicians. I could handle their southern English accents, but the names of tools were often completely beyond me, apart from really obvious ones such as a hammer or a screwdriver. If MacGyver never used one, I was basically lost.

David Hawkins (davidhawkins. 1964) has built these very accurate-looking carpenter’s tools in LEGO, which, besides being nice and decently photographed models, instantly reminded me of the time I didn’t know what a wood plane was called and went: “It’s one of those things you use to remove the surface of wood”, only to be handed a chisel. Anyway, you try to name all of these tools in a language that isn’t your own!

The helicopter of the future is here

I don’t think I’d want to be on the wrong side of this one. It’s not often that I see a helicopter design that looks original, but this one by flickr user piratesxlovexrum is awesome. It’s aggressive and bold, and looks vaguely Soviet-inspired. And I have to point out that great bit of photography.

Fully functional LEGO crossbow really shoots!

This mind-blowing working compound crossbow is completely LEGO, and made by builders extraordinaire Sean and Steph Mayo (Siercon and Coral). Be sure to check out the video of it in action! Not only does it shoot, even the cables are made from LEGO train electronics wires.

The Brothers Brick snagged a quick interview with Sean and Steph about this awesome creation:

The Brothers Brick: Where did you get your inspiration?
Sean and Steph: We wanted to use LEGO to shoot a projectile, building something other than a catapult or a trebuchet. We’ve seen lots of epic brick built guns online, and thought it would be tons of fun to create a custom Lego compound bow. This quickly evolved into crossbow for extra stability, as the bow is under tons of tension.

TBB: How long did this build take?
S&S: We probably spent a week playing around with the different mechanics. We had a lot to figure out about the flexibility of LEGO pieces under stress, how much the train cables could take, and which pieces would be useful for the cams. Once that was sorted the actual construction in a couple days.

TBB: Why a compound Crossbow, wouldn’t it have been enough to just create a bow?
S&S: A regular bow honestly would probably have been more effective as a lot of the natural flexibility of the LEGO pieces makes them more conducive to a recurve bow rather than a compound bow. But for ages we’ve been fascinated by the cams, idler wheels, and the mechanics of a compound bow, so we wanted to give it a try!

TBB: How many pieces did you use?
S&S: We usually don’t count the pieces we used, and have no clue how some builders do it, but we estimate around 1700 pieces.

TBB: How far can it shoot/how much would it hurt?
S&S: Disregarding the outliers, it can shoot around 40 feet. As a bow without the compound element it could shoot farther, but we couldn’t resist trying to build the cams. As far as how much damage it can deliver, we’re not entirely sure. We have yet to shoot anyone with it, and it is tipped with a flexible rubber lego (both for the competition this was built for and to minimize any accidental injury). It can likely stick into drywall with a sharp enough tip, but not much else.

TBB: What is it designed from? Is this from a video game or something similar?
S&S: This is an original design, but influenced by the Spartan Laser aesthetic from the Halo series. We also wanted to use the green spikes as viper fangs, so we tried to stick with venomous snake inspired highlights. We picture this to be something a Green Arrow vigilante might carry around.

Be sure to check out some of Sean and Steph’s previous insanely awesome creations, like the giant sushi roll and Cortana hologram.

Orðlokarr Castle

Mark and Steven Erickson have done it again. This castle is gorgeous…truly a piece of art. I love how each feature is seamlessly integrated in the an outstanding whole. Rockwork, mottled walls, foliage and figs are all crafted into a spectacular sum that is greater than its parts.