About Benjamin Stenlund

Benjamin started building he was three, when his father gave him a small Futuron set (6810), and has not stopped since then. Castle and space are nearest and dearest to his heart, but other themes occasionally get built, too; there are quite a few super heroes and Star Wars sets in his collection, at least. He builds as Henjin_Quilones on Flickr, and under the same name is the leader of one of the guilds on Eurobrick's Guilds of Historica role building game. When he is not building, he is busy being a stay-at-home dad to three kids and trophy househusband to one wife.

Posts by Benjamin Stenlund

I hate sleeping in hotels!

I’ve met a few people who prefer staying at hotels to being in their own house and bed, but they seem to be a strange minority. I mean, who really wants to sleep in a bed where the night before some strangers did something not fit to be described in an upright publication, rather than their own comfortable and familiar bed back home? Eww! Anyways, my own stays at hotels have never been as bad as the terrified LEGO minifigure’s night in this build by Jarek Książczyk. If I saw an eerily-lit giant hand outside the window of my Marriott room, I’d be huddled on the bed, too.

?? ????

Jarek has captured everything one would expect to see in a hotel room, down to the horrid vertically striped beige wall paper, but then you see that there’s a piano in the corner. What hotel has a piano in the rooms? None that I know of. So perhaps this isn’t a hotel after all, but the minifigure’s own comfortable and familiar bed…in which case I might go stay in a hotel. Even soiled bed linens would be better than that hand. Then again, maybe it was just a nightmare. Things do look much brighter in the morning light.

?????

What the shell is this creature?

As a kid, I developed a mild obsession with prehistoric creatures, especially dinosaurs, and loved looking for fossils along limestone bluffs. I found a tiny trilobite or two, and a few segments of worms, but never anything cool like a chambered nautilus. That would have been awesome, since all the pictures of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs had nautiloids, too. And then one day I discovered that animals of that sort still exist, and look almost the exact same as they did 200 million years ago. Mind blown! And then I see that Jonas Kramm built one out of LEGO bricks, and, as is usual for Jonas, the build is amazing. But he also did it with only 101 pieces. Mind blown again.

Nautilus | 101 pieces

It’s a study in concise use of LEGO elements since there is no wiggle room to get complex and piece heavy; every element has to be carefully considered, like a DUPLO plant and a pearl of great price in the oyster. The colors are spot-on, and the cephalopod eye staring at me is perfect. My only complaint is that the shell of Jonas’ model does not exhibit a precise logarithmic growth spiral. Come on, Jonas! Why can’t you do the impossible with just 101 LEGO bricks?

I want much more than this provincial life

It takes a careful eye for detail to craft a large LEGO immersive scene since every corner of the frame has to be considered. But it also takes a large number of LEGO bricks, far more than one would think before beginning the project (especially for the foreground, which always needs more, always). Talented LEGO builder Joe (jnj_bricks) has both the careful eye and the pile of bricks and uses them masterfully to craft this castle harbor scene, with a quay, lots of shops, a castle, and even a drunken pirate down on the dock. It certainly fits the bill as a large scene, too, measuring 144×80 studs.

A Cloudy Day

Joe neglects no surface in the scene, from the textured roofs to the detailed walls. There are slight variations in color to show weathering, and no two houses have the same wat-and-daub pattern. The selling point is the minifigure posing, however, which can be one of the trickiest bits to nail down, but Joe got it just right, with dynamic and natural poses all around. It really sells that this is a normal day with people going about their ordinary lives. Pretty sure I see the baker with the same old bread and loaves to sell. And do you see the goat? He’s got a goat, the Holy Grail of castle builders!

A Day at the Docks

Sittin’ on the porch, enjoyin’ the view

Just this evening, after we finished our dinners, my kids, wife, and I sat out on our front porch enjoying the warm, sunny weather while eating our popsicles for dessert. It was quite the treat to sit there, watching the world go by, barefoot on a rocking chair. The way I felt while sitting there is the same way I feel looking at this LEGO scene by Elias Hübner. There’s the warm light of the setting sun, the verdant green of the lawn and garden, and reminders of yard work that still needs to be done. Sure, my own garden is not as green as this one, and none of my flowers have bloomed, and I haven’t had to mow yet. But the mood is there. And it is pure summer bliss.

Sunset View

This is Elias’s latest build for the Iron Builder competition. The seed part this round is the obscure “Large Figure Part Shield Holder with Axle” in blue, used in many ways throughout the build, from chair cushions to a birdhouse, as well as lawn mower bits and flowers and exterior lamps. But my favorite use is definitely that watering can. Just perfect!

Who knew you could build big spaceships all year round?

Most people who have spent much time around the LEGO fan community have at some point encountered the phenomenon known as SHIPtember, that crazy building challenge every September to construct a spaceship that is at least 100 studs in some dimension (a SHIP being a seriously huge investment in parts). But what if it isn’t September, and you only want to build a spaceship that’s exactly 99 studs in length, featuring copious amounts of teal? Well, then you must be Markus Rollbühler. And then you build something like the Liu’s Inspiration to celebrate your new challenge month, MARCHtember.

MARCHtember '21: Liu's Inspiration

Yes, I know, MARCHtember doesn’t make sense. Markus knows it, too. But it gets the point across, I suppose. And speaking of points, the large disassembled lime catamaran hulls make for some great greebly forward bits. And then there’s the teal: teal hot air balloons, and teal 3×3 dice, and just too many other teal elements for Mark Stafford’s peace of mind. But it couldn’t be inspired by Simon Liu without teal.

I’ll take mine on the rocks, please

There are some LEGO builders that I would just love to hate, since they seem to be living the perfect LEGO life, and Markus Rollbühler would be at the top of my list; he’s one of the most talented builders out there with about a billion social followers, he has an enormous and perfectly organized collection, and he even works as a set designer for LEGO, the (pipe) dream job of every aspiring LEGO talent. But Markus is impossible to hate, because he is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, super humble, always offering advice and help when asked, and available to even the most rookie builder. How could I hate a guy like that? I can’t. Instead, I admit that he’s one of my personal favorite builders, regardless of what genre he tries his hand at. In this case, it is a delightful little lighthouse.

Coastal Guardian

Markus shows of his skills by building a compactly small round tower out of tiles, pairing that with a ramshackle hut with a teal roof (got to love teal, right?). Markus is famous for his cheese slope roofs, and really his ability to make a roof out of virtually any piece (see Ninjago City Gardens, a set he designed, if you doubt the truth of the statement). He is also well known for his foliage, and this tree made from yellow feathers does not disappoint. The color scheme is just about perfect, as is the composition, and the building techniques are on point…in short, it’s enough to make one green (or even teal) with envy, except that the builder is just too darn nice.

Lighting up the bad guy, in the future

While the future sure looks bleak in cyberpunk LEGO builds, and the entire genre of cyberpunk in general, it still looks awesome. There are all the greebles a space-lover could imagine, atmospheric lighting, folks with strange hair; what more could you want? Sebastian Bachórzewski delivers a great example of this, using some third-party lighting elements in a brilliant way (yes, that pun was deliberate) to set the mood. And the posing of the minifigures is excellent, with the two of them in mid-leap, blasting away with their guns. It reminds me of a still from The Matrix, which makes sense, since that was also cyberpunk.

The Duel

It looks even cooler cropped closer, filling the screen with all the LEGO awesomeness and revealing the cinematography behind the build. And while you’re here, you should look at our collection of LEGO Cyberpunk builds.

The Duel

I’m just trying to appreciate the gravity of the anti-gravity situation

I’m something of a sucker for sleek, futuristic racers. Whether the physics of the blazing fast machines checks out is another matter, but I’m no scientist, so who cares? As long as it looks cool, I’m happy. Tino Poutiainen knows how to build something with LEGO that’s just up my alley, inspired by the videogame Wipeout, which is all about anti-gravity racers. How does it work? Umm, well, shoot, where’s one of those scientists now when I need them? Er, it works, you see, by utilizing the power of superb color blocking (the Blacktron fan in me is loving the black and yellow, especially the thin stripe in the back using hinge bricks) along with a perfect amount of greebling, together with a simple yet crisp base in a contrasting color. Does it look fast? Yes. Is it sleek? Yes. Is it just about perfect? Yes.

Radon VII

This isn’t the first time we’ve featured LEGO builds by Tino Poutiainen, nor is it the first time we’ve featured some LEGO Wipeout anti-gravity racers. You should do yourself a favor and check them out.

It takes a village to raise up good builders

Back when I was first exploring the world of online LEGO fandom, years ago now, one of the first places I landed was the Guilds of Historica, a medieval fantasy-based role building forum on Eurobricks. It was an eye-opening experience for me, then just a novice builder fairly fresh out of my dark ages, seeing all the incredible castles and villages that talented builders the world over had contributed. I quickly joined up and contributed my own creations, getting invaluable building and photography feedback along the way, and Mathijs Dubbeldam was one of those helpful folks giving me feedback and support. His latest build feels like a medieval piece of Ninjago City, with the blue water and grey walkway along with the tower and colorful buildings. The varied roofline and angled walkways give it a wonderfully organic feel, like a real city. Fancy a visit?

Merodaquinas - Trout's Crossing

Don’t forget to browse other LEGO fantasy builds while you are here! Perhaps you’ll be inspired to build your own, especially with the new LEGO Ideas 21325 Medieval Blacksmith shop out now.

Always remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle

As a LEGO fan, reusing seems like second nature, but reducing can be hard; instead, the desire is always for more, more, more, right? Recycling is something that LEGO fans do, too, taking the same ideas and making them again and again, in slightly different forms, or else taking parts from one build and using them in another. In my case, I took parts from a Star Wars Eta-2 Actis-class Jedi Interceptor and turned it into a Vic Viper-style racing ship. The central cockpit stays, the sloping side wings stay, but the engines get an upgrade (and it needed a hyperdrive, of course) and of course a giant fin gets put on the back. It looks faster than the basic Interceptor, ready for some serious space racing. I added a large space gate, too, so that it had something to fly through, marking the space race course.

Veena's Viper

This was built for the Space Jam racing team collaboration category, as well as for the Iron Forge. So many contests. But while you are here, you should check out our collection of LEGO spaceship builds and make Benny proud.

Cooking up something special with bananas

The LEGO banana element is not necessarily the most useful piece, right? It has only one connection point, at one end, and no matter what you do with it, it still looks like a banana. That has not stopped LEGO from using it all over the place, whether that be gold bananas in Ninjago sets, grey ones in Mixels, or white, teal, and dark blue from various Chinese festival sets; but it still looks like a banana. But when I was taking my almost-two-year-old to the bathroom the other day, I realized that the handles on the faucet looked remarkably banana-like, with the same curve and general shape. So that got me thinking: could I make a kitchen that used a banana sink? In my own collection, I have only yellow and gold bananas, so it had to be a gold sink, but brass is coming back in, right? Or was it in, and now it’s back out again?

The Nocturnal Kitchen

The rest of the kitchen came together around the sink, scaled to that. It’s loosely based off of the kitchens from my last two houses in layout, though the dishwasher should be to the right of the sink for better accuracy. It ended up using almost all my dark brown tiles and bricks and plates (as well as slopes!) for the cabinets, so I’m glad I did not go bigger, and if you look closely at the sand green walls, you’ll see that they are largely made of 1×2 plates. I am not looking forward to taking this one apart. The ceiling came last, but I knew I needed one, since I wanted an immersive shot, and those always look more convincing with the ceiling and a controlled light source. So I made it studded, to replicate the horrible textured ceilings that so many houses have (including my own), and made the light for the photograph come through the ceiling fixture, with a little reflecting in from the window and the banana moon (which would have been better in white, admittedly). I’m fairly pleased with the build, though I do think the floor is ugly, and so does my wife, but that’s the tiles I had in abundance, so that’s what I used. Maybe we’ll remodel it someday.

If you like this build, you’ll probably like this collection of LEGO kitchen builds. And don’t forget to tune in to the Iron Forge competition, where the banana is the seed part.

Not all bounty hunters are Mandalorians

I’m one of those annoying Star Wars fanboys who liked Boba Fett for no good reason. What did he do to deserve the adulation poured down upon him? Nothing. Ok, he had some menacing lines, and cool looking gear, and an awesome spaceship that flew the wrong way (or maybe landed the wrong way), but beyond that all he did was get embarrassingly knocked into a Sarlacc mouth by a blind guy with a spear. But as we all know by now, bounty hunting is a complicated profession, and the popular love for Mandalorians and their ilk has only grown, getting featured in The Attack of the Clones, The Clone Wars, Rebels, and even getting their own eponymous show. My love has grown correspondingly, too. So when one of the categories for this year’s Space Jam was to build a LEGO bounty hunting ship, I was all about that, and started making something inspired by the Razor Crest.

Harvester II

Click to read more about my design process