When I was a kid I fondly remember the Playmobil houses my friends used to own. You couldn’t build anything from them but they were packed with small little details, which I loved! I always wondered if LEGO would ever produce something of that sort. LEGO never did but Jonas Kramm sure did! Let’s get started!
Some LEGO creations manage to turn up a soundtrack in your head. A new series of builds by Thorsten Bonsch is a perfect example. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies had numerous wonderful film locations, but the journey always starts by the Bilbo’s home Bag End in the town of Hobbiton located in the lush pastures of the Shire.
Click here to take a look at other creations in the series
Ah, nature. It feels great to get out of the house and stretch the legs, hiking strenuously over hill and dale to find the perfect vista by a babbling brook to soothe the troubled soul. Or, you could save yourself the strenuous part and just look at this beautiful waterfall built by Grant Davis, like me. From the smooth rock, comprised of larger elements not often seen in LEGO cliffs, and the hint of greenery at the top, all the way down to the sparkling blue pool and perfectly captured foam, it is a satisfying blend of the complexity of technique and simplification of texture and hue. While I do not envy the folks in that unfortunate boat at the top of the falls, I can at least reassure them that they are just falling into a pile of flowers.
If you love builds of waterfalls, check out the TBB archives of waterfall builds. Or if you just can’t get enough of Grant (and who can?), here are some more of his builds.
As any builder knows, the release of an existing LEGO piece in a new colour provides lots of opportunities for building. Such was Andreas Lenander‘s thinking when getting hold of the gold ingot in tan, a new colour for the piece. His build of the aptly named Kumi’dia residence utilises this part all over the middle-eastern style dwelling. The ground is packed with these ingots to represent cobblestone brickwork as well as the textured base of the build. But my favourite is their combination with masonry bricks and 1×2 rounded plates for the textured wall. With a sprinkle of dark tan here and there, it perfectly conveys the weathered wall of the desert retreat.
Some gold and transparent light blue parts adorn the top of the building, conveying the resident’s wealth. In addition, Andreas uses a Bespin hemisphere part (from the Star Wars: Planet series) for the dome. Aside from the building itself I really like the small tree in the courtyard. It uses lasso and whip parts connect the leaves, which is a unique building technique and difficult to get right.
See more of Andreas Lenander’s builds here on TBB, as well on his Flickr, where he has similar architectural builds.
Once a year, my long-distance partner Alyse Middleton and I, Chris Doyle, try to take a week of vacation together. With the realities of life in the USA in 2020 limiting the potential destinations, this time we opted for a “Quarencation” at my place. Kind of a bummer, but staying here kept us within easy reach of my LEGO workspace…and that paid out some nifty results. We were able to take an idea we had been kicking around all the way from concept to physical model. Working in the style of the new LEGO Art sets, we created a mosaic of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman.
I’d built a number of mosaics in the past, so I had a few ideas on how we could approach making a new one. And while that experience was helpful, we ended up taking a very different route to reach our goal. Come along with us on our journey of highs, lows, seemingly endless moments of “I guess we’re starting over again“, and, yes, eventual triumph.
Today, LEGO has announced a new platform for idea incubation called LEGO World Builder. The platform, powered by content-creation brand Tongal, is intended to generate broad concepts which the LEGO Company can then scout and potentially purchase. Creative artists can work alone or leverage each other’s strengths by calling for input from other talent in the community, as the platform promises to bring together contributors across geographic boundaries with a formalized system to enable collaboration.
Click to read full details about LEGO World Builder
European readers will recognise these busts of two big-nosed cartoon characters named Asterix and Obelix. These Gaulish warriors are from a French comic series with the same name, following their fantastic adventures and fight against the Roman Empire. They sometimes get temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by their village druid. George Panteleon built the perfect portraits of the titular heroes, each instantly recognisable by their characteristics. Asterix is the small but strong warrior with his signature winged helmet. Obelix is his sidekick, overweight with permanent superhuman strength because he fell into the cauldron of magic potion as a baby. Obelix’s double chin and broad shoulders set him apart from Asterix, all with the clever usage of rounded bricks. Smaller quarter-dome bricks give the shape of the noses, cheeks, and helmets of these cute but fierce characters.
See more of George Panteleon‘s wonderful builds, including his impressive Joker bust.
I think we can all agree, raised baseplates can be a pain to deal with. Not only are they large and clunky, but these baseplates also come with all sorts of odd features, typically as a result of special molds designed to function best in their original LEGO sets. Bram tackles a raised baseplate from the 1998 Adventurers Sphinx Secret Surprise set featuring a pre-fabricated ramp, off-set staircases, and heavy printing on all sides of its raised platforms. But in Bram’s Ara’Hith Estate, this baseplate virtually disappears into the architecture and seamless landscaping. The baseplate’s wide printed stone ramp transforms into a grand entrance into a shaded portico, and its irregular stud configurations have been cleverly filled in with palm trees and flower beds. Bram has worked around every tricky aspect of this challenge and the result is fantastic. We’re looking at a major NPU right here!
Click here to see more views of this stunning baseplate build
LEGO builder and co-fan-designer for the Ideas Pop-Up Book set, Grant Davis is on a roll lately. As in, one of the best runs of excellent builds in a short time I’ve ever seen. In this latest project, the candlestick holder and rose are lovely. But the real hero of the display is the “lace” tablecloth. Made up of 16 white nets and adorned with both older and new flower elements, it’s certainly convincing. Anyone who has worked with nets in this way knows how tricky and fiddly they can be, but these are expertly held together with carefully hidden connections. There are even white tusks/tails clipped to octagonal parabolic rings for the more intricate center. LEGO has never looked so delicate.
To see the rest of this excellent series of builds, check out Grant’s giant playing card, gingerbread house, renaissance man, and sheep.
Long before the Covid19 pandemic rocked the world, the BrickCon staff chose to playfully name this year’s theme “Hindsight”. The idea was based on the old expression, “hindsight is 20/20,” referring to past events and decisions being clearer in the present. It was hoped that the theme would spark creations that poked fun at the past. Unfortunately, most of us around the world could not have seen this coming, nor prevented it if we did. The irony has been palpable and even painful for millions of people across the globe. There’s no denying it’s been a tough year – for everyone. But one part of “hindsight” that benefits BrickCon, is the fact that it’s one of the last conventions of the year, and thus, they’ve had a chance to learn from all the rest. This con promises to be different than the others. Read on to learn how, and in what ways you can help.
When you’re an up-and-coming builder someone along the way makes it clear that you’re supposed to say and type it as “LEGO” and not “Legos”. It was a LEGO designer who initially made it clear to me. As a seasoned builder and writer for The Brothers Brick, I’m pretty much by now contractually obligated to use the word correctly. However, in a fit of rebellion, I’ll sometimes misuse it for humor’s sake. Legos! See, it’s funny, right? That’s why it’s so refreshing to discover an up-and-coming entity (debuting a few months ago) who goes by the name of LEGOZ ;). The winky face means that he (we think his name is Sean) gets the joke too and what an amazing builder he seems to be! To be clear, this WEGENER Mining Dump Truck is a render created with Bricklink Studio 2.0, and the image was enhanced and edited in Photoshop. However existing parts were used and, as far as I can tell, can be constructed legitimately. I am just enamored with this thing!
Click to see more and to unveil an even bigger surprise!
I generally don’t broadcast my vacation whereabouts to potentially millions of readers but since I’m back I can say I’ve just spent a week in a tiny home similar to this one. With nothing but my own amusing self to keep me company, I have a new appreciation for living minimally. Daniel Barwegen may know what I mean as evidenced by this LEGO shack. Multidirectional bricks, plates, and slopes make for some neat textures here. I really enjoy the barren trees here and the all-around rustic feel. In my tiny rental, I fancied myself as a rugged old hermit (gray beard and all) just like the minifigure here. He’s doing it right with solar panels. And just when I started to smell like a guy who lived in a shack in the woods, it was time to come back to civilization, car payments, Zoom-room meetings, mortgage, and all that. But would I do it again? Totally! In a heartbeat.
