Tim Schwalfenberg takes us to Cloud 9 and induces a state of euphoria with his amazing build. Within an ingenious silver gyroscope lies a beautiful, futuristic city that Tim describes as “one of the galaxy’s top tourist destinations“.
This really is a beautiful build. I love the gyroscope orbiting around the city of Cloud 9, while the city itself reminds me of Dorothy’s first view of the Emerald City. I want to pack my bags and go…
Andrea Lattanzio has a talent for building awesome LEGO vehicles, and his latest build is almost too hot to handle. The original Fire Truck is a’67 Chuck Miller’s Ford C-cab and was designed as a custom car to win prizes at car shows. Andrea’s LEGO version manages to be just as cool hot as the original.
Andrea included chromed parts to give the vehicle that special shiny hot rod feel, but his fire truck is made purely from genuine LEGO parts. I particularly love the shiny V-8 engine and the pipes leading to the exhaust — as a chick, it’s not often I can say an engine is a thing of beauty! The ladder is created with 3mm hose and reddish brown minifig hands to ensure the correct dimensions — great attention to detail, Andrea. Also, the build has a nice mix of Fabuland accessories, such as the axe and fire helmet used to match the scale of the vehicle.
We’ve blogged Andrea previously on TBB, and it’s definitely worth taking a look at his Green T – 1923 Ford Model T, 1932 Ford roadster and, my own personal favourite, his VW Transporter getting an overhaul.
Jonas has found his sea-legs and built a glorious tall ship named Taurus. There are no biblical flood warnings ahead as this ship was built to sail the LEGO seas only. Who could predict the ship would encounter a sea monster, perhaps even the Kraken herself, from the depths of the beautifully sculpted trans-clear waves.
As well as the fantastic sea monster and brick-built icy sea, Jonas has added some great details to Taurus. I particularly love the anchor (why use a LEGO anchor when you can build your own?), the ship’s bell at the front and the cute little cannons that might as well be tooth picks facing up against the Kraken.
Jonas’ ship is not the first to encounter a Kraken or sea monster during a voyage, it seems to be a recurrent issue for LEGO ships:
Thomas W. has built a ship; and not just any ship, but a heavily armed scouting ship called New Horizon. Thomas tells us that it is designed for long distance flights, so it has lots of propulsive power. But let’s not forget the importance of weapons to protect it from any naughty people. New Horizon has a nice, aggressively angled cockpit and a host of lovely details across the ship’s body work.
Thomas’ use of stickers is spot on, with just enough to give it identity markings but without distracting from the lovely shaping and greebles. It is definitely worth taking a look at the rear view to see the ‘horsepower’ behind this ship …deliciously ‘thrusty’ for such a compact design.
I’m just not sure where the lavatory is located for those essential breaks during long distance flights…
Chris Adams has developed a series of Disney characters based around the shape of the basic LEGO brick. Entitled Once Upon A Brick, his collection currently has at least 18 Disney characters from Mickey Mouse to characters from Frozen. The concept is simple: The body shape of each character is based on the basic LEGO brick with specific colours and added features to really identify the character.
You can see closeups of each character on Chris’ album Once Upon A Brick on Flickr. So come on, everyone likes a bit of a quiz, how many of the Disney characters in the photo can you name?
The short independent film Keloid depicts a very different world from the one we know. In the film, society has come to rely on an intricate network of artificial intelligence devices designed to bring efficacy and then control. Devid VII has recreated the Militech Weapons Platfom and accompanying drones from the film in LEGO.
Devid’s weapons platform is a fantastic combination of menacing robotic features, weaponry and the intimidating sense that ‘Big Brother’ is watching. I particularly love the use of Mixels joints at the ‘ankle’ as it looks cool, adds function and also accurately reflects the film.
This second view uses depth of field nicely to focus on the impassive drones in front of the weapons platform. The use of minifigure parts mixed with brick heads is perfect to mimic the film’s drones who have big metallic blank faces and eyes that never really look at anything.
With sci-fi, artificial intelligence, a 1984-esque oppressive future and LEGO, Devid has served me a perfect cocktail …cheers!
Over the weekend, TBB brought you photographs and videos of the newly unveiled 2016 LEGO Star Wars sets at Toy Fair New York. The new sets included a few sets and figures from the brand new Disney XD animated series LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures which is set in an era between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
The trailer for the new series has begun circulating online and gives further details about the Freemakers, a family of three sibling scavengers who collect damaged ships and parts from across the Galaxy, turning the old parts into new ships — called “uglies” in Star Wars lore.
The three siblings, Kordi, Zander, and Rowan, become involved in an epic battle of good vs evil when youngest brother Rowan discovers part of a light saber forged entirely of Kyber Crystals.
Folklore tells of a Jedi Master who forged the Kyber Saber, a lighsaber made entirely of Kyber Crystals. When it proved to be too powerful, the Jedi Master shattered it, and scattered the crystals throughout the galaxy, to keep the power out of evil’s hands. With help from their droid Roger and a ‘shero’ named Naare, the siblings begin a quest across the galaxy to retrieve the Kyber Crystals before the Emperor does.
Click through to find out everything we know so far about LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures
Has anyone lost a key? Jonas has found one and is trying to find its owner. Look again. This is made of LEGO. It requires a double (or perhaps triple) take to convince yourself that this is actually made of bricks:
It is worth considering scale, as this key must be for a massive padlock or door. Perhaps this photograph of a Kevin Hinkle minifig holding a LEGO padlock will help put Jonas’ key into perspective!
TBB’s very own Simon Liu was celebrating yesterday… No, not a queue of ladies at his door on Valentine’s Day, but the 5-year anniversary of his first “big boy build” and explosion into the LEGO community. To celebrate all that is LEGO (fun, friendship, contests, community spirit, etc), Simon is running a celebratory Mockaversary competition, best described in Simon’s own words:
Give me an idea that you want.
I’ll choose stuff only from this page.
If I build it.
It’s yours.
The third Mockaversary gift is a microscale build called Micro Katoren that fulfilled two requests, build a castle and build in the Kaliphlin style as part of the larger Guilds of Historica (GoH) community. GoH was one of the first Build-RPGs hosted on Eurobricks and Simon was heavily involved in the initial concept. This is an anniversary moment in itself as the community is still thriving. Micro Katoren is a microscale replica of The City of Katoren, a collaboration between jsnyder002 and soccersnyderi.
What a lovely guy Simon is. I’m just a bit concerned about how he is going to ship my life-sized LEGO Canadian Mountie all the way from Canada to the UK… Maybe I should have asked for a LEGO beaver instead.
Rod Gillies was clearly a young whipper-snapper back in the early 1980s when Super Mario Bros was released as a video game. Mario and Luigi, the adventurous plumbers who explored Mushroom Kingdom, have evolved into Super Mario Bricks. They made dungarees cool again and gave some much needed resuscitation to the video game market.
If your Mario Bros knowledge is up to par, you will note that Rod definitely has an eye for detail. Mario was the shorter, more portly brother, while Luigi was taller with a smoother, more groomed moustache. The M and L initials on the caps is always a good fallback option to avoid confusion. I bet Rod was glad that brother Sergio didn’t make the cut — some letters are tougher than others in LEGO.
Following on from his recent adventures in London at the Houses of Parliament, Rocco Buttliere is back on the other side of the ‘pond’. Rocco’s latest build in his 1:650 Architecture series is 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.
The view of the other side of 40 Wall Street shows the number of setbacks required to form the building. Rocco tells us, “The dramatic massing due to the density of setbacks on the major block of 40 Wall St, is a result of the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This ordinance required the footprint mass of the building to diminish accordingly as the height of the building increased.” In other words, as the skyscraper goes up, it needs to get smaller – seems like a good idea to me too…
Apparently this creation had been on hold until LEGO Architecture Venice 21026 was released as it provided the sand green quadruple convex slope which tops the gabled roof. Did you spot the screwdriver at the top?
Li Li (lisqr) has been exploring building with angles on his own blog and he utilises one technique in this latest build, Spectrum. By off-setting the far end of each level of brick, Li Li has created an ingenious twisting sculpture that displays the visual spectrum in LEGO colours.
This is a lovely work of art and crosses the line between LEGO creation, art and science in a beautiful fashion. The birds eye view show the spectrum of colours in all their splendour.
