Yearly Archives: 2019

Delivering tofu with style in a Toyota AE86

This build by Peter Blackert is a throwback to the culture that sparked drifting and made the Toyota AE86 an iconic phenomenon. It’s said that, to date, Toyota AE86’s inflated price is not only because of its rarity but also because of its cult following from fans seeing it featured in the Japanese manga Initial D in the mid-90s and its appearance into the anime scene in the late 90s. The AE86 was popular for its capability to drift with its relatively lightweight and rear-wheel drive combination and also the main premise of the legendary stories in the aforementioned manga. In LEGO, the 10-stud wide design gives it a lot more room for design language compared to the regular 6-stud wide designs from the Speed Champions series from LEGO’s own take on popular cars.

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All that is gold does not glitter, but don’t tell this dragon that

I love dragons. One glance through my own Flickr stream would show you that. I grew up reading books about dragons, watching movies about dragons, collecting pictures and sculptures of dragons, playing with dragon toys, and even writing stories about dragons. Some dragons are evil, others are good. This dragon by Jessica Farrell looks more like the evil variety, e.g. Smaug from The Hobbit, Fafnir from the legends of Sigurd, or the wyrm from Beowulf. Why do I think so? Well, judging from the picture, it is the type that gathers gold, guards it jealously, and gets attacked by resplendent knights. Plus, it is spiky and red and black, and everyone knows that spiky red and black characters are evil (hello, Darth Maul).

What I love about Jessica’s dragon is the size and setting. This is a large beast, probably fat from eating all those brave knights and the kings who once possessed that gold. The articulation in the tail and neck makes for a very natural pose, despite the hard and mostly rectangular nature of LEGO. The giant columns are also lovely, with the curved slopes making for good round shapes. That glittering golden bed, though, draws the eye like nothing else can. It looks like just about every gold piece, whether that is pearl gold, flat dark gold, metallic gold, or chrome gold, went into this dragon’s hoard (I’m not seeing any pearl light gold or speckle black-gold, but maybe I just missed them). This dragon has stolen crowns, as one might expect, but also satellite parts, the One Ring, and even Aquaman’s buckle! Plus everything else that’s gold. Jessica says that the model consists of precisely 7,416 LEGO elements, and it seems like half of them are gold. The dragon would know for sure how many, since they know down to the smallest coin what their hoard contains.

Ollivander’s shop looks wand-erful in LEGO

My preferred style of LEGO build is the kind geared towards a fully immersive photograph. The lack of edges, the painstaking arrangement of light, and precise positioning of the minifigures contribute to a realism that is gratifying with tiny bits of plastic. It is about the photograph. The work of up-and-coming builder Lego_nuts is in a similar vein, with splendid use of light. The subject matter will be apparent to anyone who has seen the first Harry Potter movie, as Harry tries just about every wand in Mr. Ollivander’s shop before finding the right one, making a huge mess in the process (though why anyone cares about messes in the wizarding world is beyond me, as it cleans itself up with a flick of a wand). But what excites me about the build is the light streaming in the window in the back, giving it a feeling of harsh daylight outside on Diagon Alley.

The stacked wand boxes are also beautifully arranged, utilizing a number of different elements to create the effect, from ingots and grille tiles to masonry bricks and grille bricks. I love how many of them are at an angle, just stuffed in there wherever they can fit. The desk has some wands for display, of course, highlighting the different colors that one could have (perhaps the different woods?), along with a ledger and quill. Some 1x4x1 fence pieces make for great wrought-iron risers on the stairs, too. What sells the build, though, is the tiled ceiling and the light fixture hanging down, finishing the space. It’s the details like those that are the difference between a lackluster immersive build and a lustrous one.

Lamborghini unveils the new 8-stud wide LEGO Speed Champions Huracán Super Trofeo EVO and Urus ST-X [News]

Earlier this month Jaguar shared the new LEGO Speed Champions in its new 8-stud wide design. Lamborghini now takes center stage to show off their new addition to the same LEGO design language with the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO and Urus ST-X. The two new models were revealed at the Super Trofeo World Final on stage in Jerez.

Click to take a closer look

Build your own LEGO creepy crawlies for Halloween scares [Instructions]

Builder Corvus Auriac brings us this creepy looking spider made of LEGO just in time for Halloween. Just imagine how much fun you could have if you could spare enough parts to make a dozen of these to scare the bejesus out of your loved ones opening the medicine cabinet–or perhaps left on the toilet seat cover after midnight with the lights out. What a lovely surprise to bring joy and scariness to celebrate the season.

Click to see full instructions and parts

When desert warriors take over your classic castle

Here’s a fabulous tribute to a classic LEGO set — the iconic Yellow Castle 375, reimagined as a desert fortress. Galaktek has done a cracking job with this Arabian take on the 1978 original. Whilst the shape is immediately recognisable, a modern parts selection allows for the injection of more detail, with printed tiles and patterned fencing helping create the impression of elaborate tiling, and an appropriate choice of minifigures adding to the exotic Arabian atmosphere.

Best of all, the model features one of the most fondly-remembered elements of the original — it opens up. This was a much-loved play feature “back in the day” and, in this creation, allows us a better look at the fine interior work…

Many minifigures would give their right arm for a rover like this

There are many LEGO builders out there who are such strict purists that they would never, ever use an “illegal” connection, such as one that stresses a piece. I’m not one of those people, and it seems that official LEGO designer Chris Perron is not, either. Try to wrap your ~~mind~~ arms around the way the wheels get a grip on the terrain, or do your best to get a handle on that gold accent near the front; something seems off, not quite orthodox, but I just can’t seem to put a hand on it. Besides the countless arm-less and hand-less minifigures walking around Chris’s workbench, I would be remiss if I did not point out something else that separates this build from the pack: the use of a teal brick separator on the hood, seamlessly integrated. I also love the bubble canopy and the bright colors of the rover and the landscape. It’s so pretty! It is like a Friends version of Neo-Classic Space.

Read more about “illegal” LEGO connections, or check out our glossary for other cool LEGO terms you might not know.

Blast to the past with Generation 1 Transformers

Builder Alex Jones (Orion Pax) has a laser-focused talent to bring our favorite Transformers to life. They not only look great and recognizable in their humanoid form, but it takes skill to also make the same builds look fabulous in their alternate vehicle modes using LEGO bricks. This is not an easy task indeed and would likely take tons of hours of experimentation. These sets of builds feature; Autobots Ironhide, Cosmos, Mirage, and Powerglide each decorated with the unmistakable patterns and prints from the original box designs from the 80s. They certainly don’t make morning cartoons like they used to!

Click to see more Autobots in action

Unique take on a classic TIE Fighter

Despite its relatively simple design, it’s amazing how many different approaches there have been to building LEGO TIE Fighters, in both official sets and fan creations. The latest design to catch our eye, is Fuku Saku’s rendition.

It’s interesting to see what features tend to be common among the various versions, such as the seemingly natural use of round corner dome top bricks to shape the cockpit. More interesting though, is what’s unique. While wings in LEGO TIE Fighters have often been made of brick, plate, or tile, this model takes them a step further and uses grille tiles to give the wings a more accurate solar panel texture. Another feature that’s often different, and is again here, is the design of the forward facing lasers. They’ve been represented by so many different parts in the past, and here they’re masterfully recreated using one of my favourite subtle decortative elements, the Technic 3/4 pin.

I’ll build about that tomorrow, after all tomorrow is another day

We see plenty of LEGO creations depicting scenes from movies. However, it’s less often we get a behind the scenes look at film production. That’s exactly what Marcel V. provides with this neat little diorama going backstage during the making of the 1939 classic Gone With The Wind. The scene shows Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler face-to-face inside a set which captures the feel of Tara, the plantation mansion in the movie. You can almost imagine the snide remarks and love-to-hate-you banter passing back and forth between the leads for the cameras’ benefit. The surrounding equipment is nicely put-together, with the lighting rig an obvious highlight. This is a fun little build and makes me want to see more “behind the scenes on the movies” LEGO creations.

Fun fact: for the famous sequence in the movie where Atlanta is set ablaze, the film-makers actually torched the abandoned sets from 1933’s King Kong.

All aboard for some hot steamy action

Two builders who go by the names of Brick Rebel and Monstrophonic have put their noggins and considerable skill together to build this exquisite Steampunk city layout called LEGO Steam Company. What is Steampunk exactly? It’s a sci-fi sub-genre that takes into account if H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were right about their Victorian-Era visions of the future. Zeppelins, steamboats, copper robots and steam-powered trains abound in this genre where everyone from an airship mechanic to the mayor look fantastic in a top hat and copper goggles. The builders tell us this layout features an array of moving elements including a steam power plant with tall chimney, the Steam Rail (moving train/monorail), skyscraper with functioning elevator, the Department of Dirigibles (with working revolving door and searchlight on the roof), a ‘flying’ zeppelin with whirling rotors and cabin lighting. There is also a city park with a botanical garden, a restaurant with robotic waiters and various other buildings and figures in Victorian Steampunk style.

Click here to go full steam ahead and discover more.

Laughing all the way to the bank

There’s no stopping the insanity of the Joker at the box office, with it now surpassing the Deadpool movies to be the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Though more fan builds will inevitably come, for now this build by Vincent’s LEGO Creation is likely as close as we’re going to get to a minifigure representation of the groundbreaking performance by Joaquin Phoenix, since we all know how LEGO feels about representing movies with that level of violence. However, you never can tell as we’ve seen how LEGO tackles more unconventional topics with convention releases.