Monthly Archives: April 2024

Tall towers are all well and good – as long as you don’t mind stairs

No-one likes a show-off. Now I’m not accusing Peter Botcher of being one – although his builds are certainly worth bragging about. But the owner of this enormous LEGO tower? That’s a different story! At the bottom, you’ve got two medieval small businesses: one a bakery, the other a small kiosk. I imagine the owners have to work really hard to get customers. But an alchemist has moved into town, and built their potion shop to tower over the others. What a nerve! I suspect it may backfire on them, though. Elevators won’t be invented for another few hundred years, and going up all those stairs may put off all but the most athletic of clientele…

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A Colibri of the highest calibre

I do sometimes wonder where Andreas Lenander gets his inspiration for some of his more fantastical LEGO creations. Part of the fun is taking a guess, and for this one, I’m somehow getting a vibe of mythical Mesoamerican deities. It looks like some form of bird, but equally, it also looks like… Not quite a bird? The strange foliage and dragonfly-esque creature next to it certainly evoke somewhere exotic. Perhaps it’s a cousin of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. As a matter of fact, Andreas has named this piece ‘Kolibri’, and Wikipedia tells me that Colibri is a genus of birds with brightly-coloured plumage from Central and South America. Hey, maybe my hunch isn’t that far off after all!

The stage is on fire in this heavenly KISS concert build

You don’t have to be a member of the KISS Army to lick up this sizzling concert scene from virtuoso LEGO builder Paul Hetherington. In this fantasy staging, The Starchild, The Demon, and The Spaceman shred on pedestals above lava, while The Catman owns the drums from atop a flame-spewing podium flanked by metallic demon dogs and backed by a deafening wall of speakers while Detroit Rock City burns in the background. Doesn’t get more rock and roll than that! Paul artfully blends flat typography and graphic design with a minifig vignette to create this popping poster. (It’s a technique he’s used before, including in this TBB favorite golden age batman masterpiece). I find the use of color particularly striking, with flame shafts and geometric brick-built lava matching the KISS logo. While there are few visible LEGO studs on the stage itself, Paul uses an enviable amount of silver-grey elements to mimic the band’s studded leather look in the design. The custom minifigs come courtesy of Big Kid Brix. And is that a Bionicle Kanoka Disk hiding behind The Catman? If you love your LEGO loud, you’ve got nothin’ to lose revisiting Paul’s classic black diamond builds.

This AT-TE does whatever a spider can

How’s this for a classic Star Wars moment captured in LEGO diorama form? It’s 2008, and you’re watching The Clone Wars, surely the last Star Wars movie you’ll ever see in theaters (haha, right?) when suddenly, a normal-looking All-Terran Tactical Enforcer starts climbing a frickin’ purple cliff like some sort of fat metal spider. Tim Goddard uses unevenly layered sloped bricks and tiles laid out in SNOT (studs not on top) fashion to achieve the irregular surface of the cliff. The AT-TE looks great in midi-scale—all the way down to the tiny clone trooper sitting at the turret.

‘M’ is for Marvelous Magnetic Mech

What’s your favourite LEGO space theme? I think mine would have to be M:Tron. The colours! The vehicles! The magnets! Over on Flickr, user legomess ticks off all three with this modern take on the theme. They’ve done a great job of blending classic parts (like the magnet holders and neon-green windscreen) with newer ones. The overall design is neat, too. I like how such a big, bulky walker wanders around on its tiptoes!

Naturally, it wouldn’t be M:Tron without a bit of magnetic play action. The ‘M’ in M:Tron may have stood for ‘magnet’, but in this case it’s equally apt for it to mean ‘massive’, ‘mecha’, or simply ‘magnificent’!

A gilded chapel for repentant pirates

The LEGO Pirates theme might not have the range of sets that we’ve seen in City, Space, and Castle, but for many AFOLs, the Pirates flame still burns as bright as Captain Redbeard’s chin whiskers. For several years now, builder Marcin Dski (Sleepless Night) has been expanding on an original series of dockside modular buildings that bring to life the Golden Age of Piracy in stunning detail, and their latest addition is this majestic chapel. The façade features some attractive use of gold elements for detail work, but my favorite section has to be the powder dome, ribbed with flex tubes and cupola. Sleepless Night’s modular pirate journey started with a re-imagining of their favorite classic set, Lagoon Lock-Up. From there, they added Captain Redbeard’s mansion and a custom house, and now this lovely chapel to tempt freebooters with its golden façade. Here at TBB we are excited to see what other historic additions Sleepless Nights adds to this bootyful tableau.

In the Shire, there’s always time to take a break from your chores

J. R. R. Tolkien imagined Bilbo Baggins’ door as a circular construction, green and impressive in size (for a hobbit). Peter Jackson ran with the description and the gently rustic feel of the Shire and created an organic-and-tudor style mix that Gus has wonderfully captured here in the blocky medium of LEGO. There are so many details to love in this scene; the fence is made from a pair of whips, while the circular window to the right of the door is a bicycle tire! The organic side of the hobbit style is on full display as Gus has achieved both a cobbled circle for the windmill tower, and a smooth roof-line mimicking the slope of the of the hill – not to mention the striking red of the wood slats in the door. With all of this excellent building on display only one question remains; are these two folks Bagginses or Tooks?

Imagine a bowling ball, but angrier

“Carcinisation”; a very fancy word that means “some animals tend to look more like crabs over time”. This build by Djokson demonstrates what might happen if even our tanks turn into crabs! Djokson has tone a fantastic job of creating a round rolling shape for the tank using unusual parts. The Crab-Tank’s forehead is made from a handful of rubber handles from the short-lived Vidiyo line, the yellow disks on either side of the body come from the old X-Pod line (oh the nostalgia!), and the little warrior in the cockpit is sporting a old technic helmet for protection. I don’t know about you, but I’d feel crabby if I had to square up against that thing!

From the ashes, a LEGO build arises

Built of a bevy of LEGO Bionicle bits, this phoenix by Dan V is quite the fiery triumph! All the trans-orange flames play well in the backlit model, highlighting the fringes of the bird’s wings, as well as sufficiently obscuring the model’s base. In fact, quite a bit of the design here is hidden from view, with so many dark red spiked panels at work hiding the skeleton of the wings and body. There’s certainly a bit of sorrow for the dark figure at the base of the flames, but clearly this mythical beast has got nothing but rebirth on its mind.

Take a look, it’s in a LEGO book...

When he’s not busy designing LEGO sets like 40505 LEGO Building Systems, Markus Rollbühler finds the time to make creations of a less-official variety. His latest is an entry into this year’s RogueOlympics, a competition where each round’s entry must clock in at 101 bricks or less. And with this limited palette, Markus still tells quite the story, full of forced perspective and hard-to-use fabric pieces. But I think the real victory here is the integration of some of the oldest LEGO trees, circa 1960.

Watch for the right time to build something new

It’s that time again, LEGO fans! We’ve got yet another exceptional creation by Dicken Liu, and this one is the embodiment of exceptional timing. Well, maybe not exactly in the way you were thinking. This goofy, anthropomorphized alarm clock is an exceptional accessory, with it’s cartoonish arms and legs jutting out from a watch face adorned with a blue boomerang for hands. And while it may not actually tell time, at least the band does clip together to make it the perfect brick-built fashion statement.

An artist’s journey in full bloom

As a three-time member of the LEGO Ideas 10K club with some of the most stunning modular buildings we’ve ever seen, Jiwoo Seon has become something of a celebrity in the LEGO community. But those past works didn’t prepare us for her latest masterpiece: a gallery-ready floral artwork built for the (now-concluded) Create Your Own Exhibition contest. Overture of Blossoms: Journey to Freedom is the builder’s most personal work to date.

Click for more details of Jiwoo’s floral masterpiece!