Yearly Archives: 2016

LEGO sea serpent is coming to get you

Fresh from delighting us with a rusty hot rod, Austrian builder sanellukovic turns his building skills to more organic shapes with his Midgardsnake creation. The curves and scales of this mythical water-serpent have been captured brilliantly with some nice use of slopes and smart color choices. Whilst the splashes and water running from the serpent’s body are well made, the mix of trans-clear and trans-black plates used for the water itself is just inspired. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed that particular combination being used like this before — it certainly creates a great impression of water in motion. Lovely stuff.

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Collaboration breeds a fine set of rovers

Jason Briscoe has shared an excellent space rover featuring multiple trailers. It was part of a collaborative display at the recent Portugal fan weekend, with many of the attendees bringing along a trailer design based on the common chassis. I was lucky enough to see Jason’s contribution “in the brick” at the Bricktastic show and they’re lovely little models.

Miguel Reizinho came up with the original design for the trailers. It’s a smart little build and clearly made for a good solid base for the participants to riff on. Nice work. I love when little collaborations spring up like this — especially ones that cross borders. It reminds me our hobby is an international one, and that plastic bricks speak their own language.

Failure is always an option

When The Matrix came out in 1999, it was groundbreaking for many reasons and gave rise to plenty of cultural references. And then they made two more movies: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of the later movies, they both had some redeeming features. This little version (by David Lipton) of an epic truck crash happens to be one of them.

I particularly love the use of cheese slopes to emulate the crumpled truck effect. It works very well! I’m also strongly reminded of Mythbuster’s Compact Compact myth, which was equally awesome.

Born to fly ...and submerge

Soviet engineers were people with great imagination. Of course, at that time they didn’t have access to LEGO bricks, but even today their peculiar projects look awesome in plastic. Polish builder Ciamosław Ciamek presents Ushakov’s Flying Submarine — a hybrid of a military airplane and a submarine. Not only does it sound cool, it also looks cool. It’s gray, cold and bizarre even for an ambitious Soviet project.

Cutest Police Patlabor

Lee Young has nailed it with these super-cute chibi Mobile Police Patlabor mecha models. Despite the dinky scale and super-deformed proportions, these guys still have an impressive chunky heft about them. They look like they’d just relish the opportunity to suppress your street protest.

Lee has been building a few mecha figures at this scale recently. Check out this pretty damn awesome rendition of Optimus Prime using your local downtown for cover…

The hardest part of space travel is getting off the planet

I’ve been inspired lately to build some near-future space vehicles, and so I’ve got at least a couple of vessels in the works. But the first step of space travel is always getting off the planet. This space shuttle, the Indefatigable, is designed to carry payloads to orbit, where they can be assembled into a much larger craft. The shuttle is designed for undergoing the rigors of liftoff, while a vessel capable of interplanetary travel may not be.

I generally avoid using stickers, often not even applying them to official models. However, this model really needed a tiny detail for the cockpit, and there’s no way to achieve that with bricks, since the area is just too small. So, a few carefully cut official LEGO stickers work well to mimic cockpit windows.

All are not supercars that are called Porsche

…Unless a vintage tractor is a supercar for you. DB_Kit Fisto entered the latest Build the Porsche of your Dreams contest not at full speed, but definitely with class. His massive tractor is a scaled replica of the Porsche Super from 1960s. That was the time of truly beautiful agricultural machinery, much more elegant than the modern!

The design of this vehicle is simply fantastic thanks to amazing combinations and connections of System and Technic pieces. My favorite part is that small technic corner panel above the front axle placed right among regular plates and slopes. This is how you build a Super tractor!

Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders

If Carl Sandberg had lived to see the skyscrapers of modern Chicago, I’m sure he would have been no less proud of his city than he was when he wrote his poem “Chicago” more than a hundred years ago. Rocco Buttliere has captured the Chicago skyline in LEGO with this substantial group of microscale buildings, including the John Hancock Center. The looming, iconic buildings certainly dominate the skyline, but I love the smaller buildings and landscaping that Rocco has included, like the Lookinglass Theatre building and the Seneca Playlot Park. My favorite LEGO building, though, is 900 North Michigan with lovely green glass.

As fantastic as the buildings look in the photo above, I love this top-down look — as though you’re flying over in a helicopter.

See lots more photos in Rocco’s photostream on Flickr.

Which yellow character would win in a fight? SpongeBob, a Minion or Pikachu?

It’s a question for the ages: which yellow cartoon character do you side with? Wise-cracking SpongeBob Squarepants, the most anthropomorphic sponge to live under the sea? One of Gru’s Minions, an adorable comedy sideshow who manages to steal the limelight? Or Pikachu, the elusive and beloved Pokemon? Takamichi irie decided to build all three, so you can see how the LEGO versions stack up. Cast your votes in the comments!

Check out Suicide Squad in LEGO [Video]

Some talented folks over at Forest Fire Films decided to recreate the Suicide Squad teaser trailer in LEGO, and it’s great — though if the early reviews are anything to go by, it may even be better than the actual film! Jared Leto’s deranged Joker is even more creepy as a minifigure, but it’s doubtful we’ll ever see any official LEGO Super Heroes sets based on the film, which opens today.

‘Ello, guv’na

Kids, the key to a really great photo-realistic mosaic is to build big, using simple colors. Oh, and make sure you choose an extremely cool character. Let me tell you, nobody is cooler than Sir Michael Caine. If you only know him as Alfred in the Nolan Batman trilogy, or as Austin Powers’ “fahjah,” you are missing out on one of the hippest cats in the history of British cinema. David Hughes has captured an iconic photograph from 1965, 5 years before Caine finally quit smoking.

Harmony in blue, yellow, and white

My office at work looks across Lake Washington toward Seattle, and I spent much of the morning and afternoon distracted by F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets of the US Navy Blue Angels acrobatic team as they roared past my window. When I saw the predominantly blue and yellow color scheme of this excellent X-shaped fighter plane by Thomas W., I was immediately reminded of the Blue Angels. But with the double gull wings and large propellor, the real-world US Navy fighter that Thomas’s design truly evokes is the Vought F4U Corsair from World War II — one of my favorite aircraft of all time. The yellow stripe on the leading edge of the wings is lovely, and the white accents give the whole plane a more modern look for some reason.