Sometimes, LEGO builds are less about amazing techniques or unusual parts selections than they are about a great little story, scene, or joke. Yes, there’s a great monochrome background behind the bright blue hues in the foreground in this vignette by Julius von Brunk, but it’s ultimately the very silly pun in the title that makes this LEGO creation wonderful.
LEGO has spoiled us with an enormous choice of colors over the past couple of years, most notably in the Elves and Friends lines. So it would be foolish not to keep an eye on new trends in the color industry. Now that LEGO has unveiled most of its lineup of sets for the first half of 2017, it’s about time we looked at them in terms of colors using the Pantone Fashion Color Report. This annual report, presented by the Pantone Color Institute, the world leading provider of color systems, predicts the top 10 trending colors for the upcoming 2017 spring season.
Based on a list of the most popular colors seen on the world’s hottest fashion runways, this guide includes hues described as natural and vital, rustic and relaxed. According to Pantone’s press release, the selected colors are perfect for portraying the warmth of a sunny day (with PANTONE 13-0755 Primrose Yellow) or conveying the feeling of breathing fresh mountain air (using PANTONE 18-0107 Kale), while PANTONE 14-4620 Island Paradise represents the tones of some far away exotic location.
And naturally, each of these trendy shades can easily be found amongst the LEGO color palette! Here’s our totally fabulous LEGO version of the list, showing rough equivalents of the Pantone colors:
Clearly any self-repecting, fashion-conscious LEGO fan will want to stock up on next season’s trendiest colors as fast and efficiently as possible. So which sets should we begin hoarding in the new year? We browsed the Spring 2017 themes to create the ultimate shopping list for a multi-colored and diverse refresh of your LEGO collection. We’ll start with some basic options and work all the way to the most fashionable new sets. Feel free to use the current official LEGO color chart to compare the selected colors with the wide range of the colors available.
Welcome to Day 12 of your digital LEGO Advent Calendar! Each day, we’re revealing the day’s calendar model for the LEGO Friends, City, and Star Wars Advent Calendars. We know some of you want to be spoiler free, so you’ll need to “open” the day’s post to see the models by clicking below!
And if you want to build your own LEGO Advent Calendar, you can win big prizes by building tiny creations in TBB’s Create a Calendar Contest.
The Southern Air Temple was a location in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and the childhood home of the main protaganist in the series, Aang. Micah Beideman has built a LEGO version of the Southern Air Temple, capturing the impressive collection of blue roofed buildings and the tall tower dominating the centre of the white temple. The lower buildings have been built at a nice depth and varying heights to give the model a real ‘temple in the sky’ feel with their steep winding paths. I also like the use of the transparent 1×2 bricks, built up to form the clouds that encircle the temple.
The Old Republic’s Venator-class Star Destroyer is a surprisingly popular subject for LEGO Star Wars builders, given its huge dimensions — and the fact that it’s a Prequel Trilogy vehicle… Nevertheless, several brave builders have created this huge ship in LEGO, including a 6-foot LEGO Venator by Alec Doede and a recreation of Master Model Builder Erik Varszegi’s 8-foot Star Destroyer by iomedes. The latest LEGO Venator is brought to us by Philipp Neumann, who has spent the past 7 years designing, collecting over 45,000 parts, building, and rebuilding.
Philipp’s Venator measures over 7 feet long, nearly 4 feet wide, and over 2 feet tall (that’s 220 cm x 117 cm x 68 cm) and weighs over 143 pounds (65 kg).
Click to see more of this enormous LEGO Star Wars ship
The real world frequently inspires — or creeps into, imposes itself upon — the world of LEGO creations. The Brutalist architecture of many government buildings has inspired Swedish builder Magnus to create this Micropolis section. The building has narrow slit windows, concrete bollards, and an array of communication devices on the roof.
Magnus has incorporated a particularly interesting building technique into his slanted facade, enabling a smooth slope built from 1×2 “cheese grater” pieces.
They say that dance is sculpture in motion. It follows, then, that a frozen moment of dance is an ideal subject for sculpture. This exquisite LEGO sculpture of ballet dancers from David Hughes reminds me of physics class. When I look at it, I see little force vector arrows showing weight distribution, gravity, and muscle mechanics. As it would be in real life, the ballerina’s weight is fully supported by her partner: her toes touching the ground are a mere formality. Based on a famous photo of ballet star Tanaquil Le Clercq, who was tragically stricken by polio at a young age, this large sculpture contains over 3,000 bricks, and it’s amazing how few of them are attached to the base.
This hotel lobby, built as a 16×16 stud vignette by Sven Franic, is all ready for guests. You will be able to check in on arrival and have your suitcase taken up to your room by the smartly dressed porter pulling the luggage rack. There is everything a hotel lobby requires: tasteful wallpaper, a local map, comfy leather couch and a reception desk complete with bell to gain attention. I particularly like the wooden display behind the reception desk with pigeon holes for guests’ room keys or messages.
If you fancy trying out some of these builds as inspiration for your own creations, Sven has even supplied an exploded view:
Welcome to Day 11 of your digital LEGO Advent Calendar! Each day, we’re revealing the day’s calendar model for the LEGO Friends, City, and Star Wars Advent Calendars. We know some of you want to be spoiler free, so you’ll need to “open” the day’s post to see the models by clicking below!
And if you want to build your own LEGO Advent Calendar, you can win big prizes by building tiny creations in TBB’s Create a Calendar Contest.
The LEGO Batman Movie, due out Feb. 10, is making waves in the DC universe as it dusts off villains old and new, and gives the Batman himself a plethora of new costumes. And there’s no better way to get your hands on a whole load of those new characters in minifigure form than with The LEGO Batman Movie 71017 Collectible Minifigures. The 20 unique figures will hit store shelves Jan. 1 for $3.99 each.
[Update] The LEGO Batman Movie 71017 Collectible Minifigures are available now on the LEGO Shop Online.
LEGO sent us a case ahead of time, and you can read our full hands-on review below, or read through our Feel Guide for The LEGO Batman Movie Collectible Minifigures to help you collect a whole set.
This bobble headed Mad Hatter by Julius von Brunk seems to contain both regular LEGO bricks and an element of madness. You might remember one of Julius’ previous works we featured back in September — a menacing set of aces from Alice’s Wonderland. According to the builder, this Hatter figure will be starring in an upcoming stop-motion animation parody. I can’t wait!
The latest kinetic sculpture from Jason Allemann is a classic enemy from the Super Mario Bros games: the Piranha Plant. His instantly recognizable model moves with motions that look straight out of any sidescroller Mario title.
Watch the Piranha Plant emerge from the warp pipe chomping away, followed by commentary and a breakdown of the mechanism, in this video: