About Bart Willen

Bart Willen (badboytje88) has been a fan of LEGO for as long as he can remember. When he hit puberty and slowly but surely started losing interest in the brick, LEGO released their first line of Harry Potter sets. Keeping Bart from slipping to a Dark Age. He is a fan of a quite broad range of themes, from Star Wars to Johny Thunder and from Elves to City. But somehow he always navigates back to the magical world of Harry Potter. He attends LEGO World in the Jaarbuurs in Utrecht on a yearly basis where he enjoys meeting other fans and seeing some of their creations 'in the brick'. You can check out his own creations here.

Posts by Bart Willen

First contact

Bart de Dobbelaer never ceases to amaze me with his LEGO creations. Ever since his ‘The Life Aquatic With Clumsy Pete’ series, he has been making one astounding creation after another. First Contact is no exception to this. It features an out of this world landscape with a spaceship in a colour scheme that will send you on a trip down memory lane. The space crew is carefully conducting their work without noticing that their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Bart is a master at building alien creatures from obscure LEGO parts. He always manages to use the parts that I am never able to think of a good use for.

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Black Family Tree Tapestry

The Black family had a tapestry depicting their family tree. Gayle Spiller managed to recreate the tapestry in LEGO and it is stunning! The magical artwork was made in the 13th century and contains family members from the Middle Ages all the way through to the present. It is located at 12 Grimmauld Place, which means it is currently owned by a certain mister Harry Potter who is not at all pictured on the tapestry. The Black family having been horrifyingly concerned with being purebloods, quite a few of the family members got disowned for various reasons; supporting Muggle rights or being a Squib. Walburga Black, Sirius Black’s mother, is presumably responsible for removing most of the disowned family members.

This incredible brick version really deserves a good zoom in. Gayle used the LEGO flag for the banners where the family members’ names are portrayed, and most of the hats are brick-built using all sorts of parts, from cones, to skirts to the ruff neckpiece. She even managed to include the Black family coat of arms. You can more find closeups on her Instagram.

Counting sheep til you sleep

Some fans of LEGO are convinced that LEGO Friends animals do not belong in the LEGO universe as they are too cutesy looking. Gayle Spiller proves them all wrong in her creation titled Insomnia.This creation has everything that makes you feel sleepy. You can sway away in her rocking chair made of a regular chair with two flotation rings attached to it. Have a cup of hot milk. Read a bedtime story in one of the books on display. Turn on the radio and play some sweet lullabies. And last but not least you could focus on the wall clock’s ticking noise. And if all of that doesn’t help, you could always start counting sheep.

Could Bellatrix be a Disney Princess?

To me, the scene where Bellatrix Lestrange escapes from the Azkaban prison always looked like it was filmed in black and white. Everything looks grey, dark and gloomy. Even Helena Bonham Carter looked a bit grey. To me, it depicts what a wretched place it is. Most of the prisoners there die of despair, having lost the will to live. This is due to the presence of the Dementors guarding the island, draining people of all happiness, and leaving them with their worst memories. Long-term exposure usually leads to insanity and even death. Kale Frost depicts Bellatrix in her LEGO prison and everything is a different shade of grey. The only splash of ‘colour’ is the brown mouse and the white bedsheets. Although only grey bricks were used for the walls of the prison Kale managed to make them look interesting and intricate thanks to all the different bricks he used to add texture. However, the Bellatrix figure looks perfectly happy between her four prison walls.

This 3,000+ piece 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina is the next LEGO Star Wars Master Builder Series set [News]

While a few images of the set were revealed in our article last week, today LEGO is fully revealing the next Star Wars Master Builder Series set, 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina. The newest version of the iconic Star Wars location includes 3,187 pieces. It is accompanied by 21 minifigures (plus Artoo), including many characters that have never appeared in any other LEGO Star Wars set. The set will retail for US $349.99 | UK £319.99 | EUR 349.99 starting sales on September 16 for LEGO VIP members and then globally from October 1, directly via LEGO.com and LEGO Stores.

Click to see all the images and read the full press release

Mischief Managed

LEGO released the new Harry Potter Collectible Minifigures recently and Dishbrick placed the Weasley twins in the perfect setting: Brewing potions for their own practical joke shop. I like the use of the 5 point crystal and the power blast to show that the potions in the cauldrons are either exploding or steaming hot. Also the use of the back of the hidden side ghost faces as a bottled substance is very nice. But the best thing about this creation is the clever use of the lantern for the bunsun burner set up.

Goat raid

LEGO released the 7189 Mill Village Raid set nine years ago (yes, you heard it correctly, nine years ago!). To this day this is the only set to feature this particular LEGO goat. Buying a LEGO goat on Bricklink is like buying a kidney on the black market. Somehow adding a goat adds to your creation makes it ten times as good. Hellboy.lego made a beautiful new rendition of this set. And it doesn’t need goats to make it look good. However, he added 4 of them anyway. I am not sure what is being raided in this creation but it would be wise to snatch a goat or two while at it…

My uncle is a great fan of LEGO. He once spoke these wise words: “Making something awesome out of LEGO is not about having a lot of different bricks, it’s about having a lot of the same bricks.” And Hellboy.lego proves him right by using a ton of 1×2 tiles in this creation. Most of the walls and the roofs are composed of 1×2 tiles. Even the blades of the mill are made of them!

A nomad’s life for me

LEGO has produced a lot of castle sets, but in my honest opinion there always has been a lack of travel carts! Markus Rollbühler is here to fill that gap for us. One of the best things about this creation is that the walls of the cart are positioned at an angle. The only straight wall, where the door is located, uses 2×1 cheese slopes to fill up the gap created by the slight angle of the other walls. But that’s not the only thing. This creation is filled with original details! One of the best used pieces has to be the blaster trigger. The blaster adds great playability to the set for kids, but as an adult fan of LEGO, I do not tend to use them. Markus used the trigger piece as table and chair legs and it looks stunning. Have you noticed the candle holder using the scuba breathing regulator. And don’t even get me started on that cute brick-built snail!

In case of a lack of bullets, just use birds instead!

This just has to be one of the ‘silliest’ scene’s from Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade and General Tilney managed to capture it quite perfectly in LEGO. The best thing about this photo is that everything is made from LEGO bricks, even the sky! Partway through the film, Indiana Jones and his father Henry are trying to escape from enemy airplanes. There is a lot of bombing involved and at one point, they get cornered on a beach full of birds. Father Henry charges the flock of seagulls while flapping his umbrella. This startles the seagulls and they take off into the airplane which causes it to crash. Henry mumbles a Charlemagne quote, which might actually not be a Charlemagne quote and the scene ends. That is some classic Indiana Jones right there!

Johnny Thunder is always a good way to go!

Having a Johnny Thunder figure in your creation always is a big plus! Valerius Maximus however made a lovely LEGO temple to go along with his Johnny Thunder and Pippin Reed figures. There are also two chameleons hiding in the creation, as well as a few odd parts using camouflage to blend in with the surrounding. Can you spot the army helmet? Valerius Maximus also used not just the flower stem with 3 leaves but also the sprue part, which I always greatly appreciate.

Let me give you a tour of the house

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!

Click here to start a tour…

There and back again

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