If you are a huge fan of the Voltron LEGO set, you might also be interested in the “Form Your Most Imaginative Voltron Scene!” contest on LEGO Ideas. The contest has produced some excellent entries, such as aido k’s breathtaking tribute to the green lion, “In its Element.” The entire scene is comprised of an excellent likeness of the lion’s head, which is split into mechanical and organic halves.
Yesterday in Billund at the LEGO House, adult LEGO fans from all over the world gathered to celebrate the first birthday at the Home of the Brick in a special, invitation-only event. With the Skærbæk LEGO fan event just around the corner over the weekend, featuring LEGO creations from fans who’ve traveled from more than 25 countries, the timing is perfect to bring everyone together for a celebration.
Read more about the LEGO House’s first birthday party in Billund
Strategy game Plants vs. Zombies became an international hit after its 2009 release, and it has been going strong ever since. A portion of the game’s success can be attributed to its colorful cast of characters, like Torchwood. Torchwood is a mean, green, shooting machine and this LEGO version built by chubbybots is a great character build. His model offers a nice balance of function and form, with articulated joints and expressive facial features.
The mouth opens and closes, which allows for some fun poses like this one. Together, the tilted eyes, open mouth, and outstretched weaponized arm all scream attitude.
He’s even ready to go head-to-head with the game’s namesake zombies.
Hearkening back to the 80s LEGO Monorail with its centre-engine car and retro look, Jason Allemann has come up with another fantastic kinetic powered creation. This time he has built a motorised train for the new LEGO rollercoaster system.
Jason is using an ingenious design with Technic half bushes and rubber tyres to attach and propel the mini monorail. Watch the video to find out more about the challenges he faced and overcame to create this cute little piece of LEGO nostalgia.
Staves may be little more than glorified sticks, but they have managed to work their way into the very heart of fantasy symbols. Some of the most famous examples are found in The Lord of the Rings, wielded by some of literature’s most famous wizards. Jon & Catherine Stead have recreated in 1:1 scale a pair of the wizard staves seen in The Lord of the Rings films.
The staff of Saruman the White is a remarkably clean model built around the Star Wars planet elements for the orb. Unless you zoom in, it might be hard to recognize the staff is actually LEGO. This is even more impressive if its mere five hours of build time are taken into account. The builders also share the exact piece count, which is 831 for this particular model, and it measures 91 inches in length.
The staff of Gandalf the Grey is an impressive creation in a completely different way. It is not quite as accurate to its movie representation as Saruman’s staff, but the complexity of the source material makes its recreation a much more impressive achievement. The spiraled headpiece is created using multiple arch elements wrapping around the shaft. The build was completed in an impressive four hours using 938 bricks. It measures 61 inches in length.
LEGO has revealed a new experimental product line designed for adults called LEGO Forma. The first wave of small-batch sets produced under the LEGO Forma line will be kinetic sculptures of fish, created with a moving Technic core and wrapped with four “skins” made of foil to represent three types of Koi and one shark.
The core set, 81000 Koi Model, contains 294 pieces including the Technic base and a single life-like koi skin. The model measures 10 inches high (27.9 cm) and 11 inches long (12.7 cm). The initial wave of LEGO Forma sets are available for pre-order on Indiegogo as “backer perks” from now until November 6th or whenever product runs out. The base set sells for $45 USD and is only available in the United States and United Kingdom for the time being. If the project meets its funding goals, the sets will ship in early 2019.
With all the clamour online surrounding LEGO’s new Betrayal at Cloud City set, it’s great to see a builder with a very different take on life in the sky. Marcel V has taken inspiration from the super-talented anime illustrator Chong Fei Giap, famed for his sprawling cityscapes. Wonderfully photographed with the nimbus mist swirling around the towers’ stilts and only a cable car system to get around, the model really captures an other-worldly quality. Still, the mind boggles as to how the inhabitants pin their clothes to the precariously hung washing line–I hope they have a good pulley system! Marcel plans to take the model to the Skaerbaek LEGO fan weekend in Denmark next month; for those of us who are not lucky enough to attend, you can still check out detailed images of each of the balanced abodes on his Flickr stream.
Do you ever get the feeling we are living in a simulation? One of the greatest cinema moments of the nineties has been brought to life in LEGO by Douglas Hughes in this scene from The Matrix where Neo asks, puzzled, “I know Kung Fu?” Morpheus looks at him quizzically and challenges, “Show me.” Douglas has captured the simple complexity of the dojo beautifully, adding special lighting for the sword racks. With its stark lines and contrasting colours, Neo deftly dodges one of Morpheus’s relentless attacks.
There are a bunch of classy LEGO microscale building techniques on display in this island castle put together by Henjin_Quilones. The island’s rockwork and sparse greenery are neatly-done, but don’t miss the sandwiched grille tiles creating tiny windows in the rock face, the Technic “weapon barrel” wheels to give texture to the larger round towers, and the clever use of half-plate gaps to create arrow slit style openings. The highlight for me is the use of angled grille bricks to provide the steps up from the little jetty — it’s a microscale technique we’ve seen before, but placing it front and centre adds a touch of detail at a scale which makes the whole creation feel much bigger than it really is.
LEGO has announced it is going green with the re-release of an old fan-favorite set currently owned by very few: the 10268 Vestas Wind Turbine. The original set (numbered 4999) was released a decade ago as a limited production run for Vestas, a sustainable energy company, and never saw wider availability. That changes on Black Friday.
Following in the path of the last year’s re-released 10256 Taj Mahal, LEGO is “opening the vault” once again with a slightly updated rendition of the Creator Expert Vestas Wind Turbine. The set comes with 826 pieces (11 more than the first version), three minifigures, a dog, and Power Functions motor and lights, as well as the first spruce tree element made from plants available in a retail set.
The set is slightly more than three feet tall (one meter) and will retail at $199.99 USD from LEGO (coming in at $249.99 CA and £159.99 UK respectively). It will be available for purchase by everyone starting Friday, November 23 (also known as Black Friday).
Click to take a closer look at the Vestas Wind Turbine
As the month of September draws closer to an end, so too, the month-long annual epic that is SHIPtember. The challenge of building a spacecraft that measures at least 100 studs in any direction (AKA a SHIP) in a single month is no easy accomplishment. One of the most critical aspects of a good SHIP is its structural frame, requiring careful crafting to keep the vessel from falling apart under its own weight without looking too bulky or boxy. This ship by Chris Perron is a great example of this balance, combining form with industrial function. Another hallmark of the SHIPtember shipyard comes from making use of parts not typically thought of as spaceship parts, like the trapezoidal orange dump truck ends so expertly used by Chris to form the hexagonal sections along the fuselage. Another great detail are the flat gold flanges in front formed by angled tiles.
Chun Li was the first female character to appear in a beat-em-up, bursting onto arcade and console screens in Street Fighter II in 1991. John Cheng has built a cool chibi-styled LEGO version of the character. The outfit and stance make the model immediately recognisable, with all the signature elements present and correct — the white boots, the split skirt, the gold embroidery on the bodice, and the buns in the hair. Put that attention to detail together with a supercute big-headed anime styling and you’ve got a cracking LEGO creation. Spinning helicopter kick for the win — KO!
