From our “We missed it two months ago, but it’s still pretty awesome” department, here’s a fantastic scene from Star Wars by markus19840420, whose sleeping AT-AT we featured here back in June. Luke swooshes his T-16 Skyhopper model while Threepio takes an oil bath. In addition to a micro version Luke is playing with, Markus’ scene even includes the briefly glimpsed “real” T-16 outside the doorway.
“Talented” and “prolific” make a great combination in a LEGO builder, and like many of the builders we feature here on The Brothers Brick, Finnish builder Eero Okkonen manages both. Following his fantastic LEGO characters from Nausicaä, Eero has tackled Palutena, Goddess of Light, from the Kid Icarus series of Nintendo games (also featured in Super Smash Bros.). Never shy of color, Eero incorporates numerous pearl-gold and light-blue trans-clear elements.
Read more about the build on Eero’s blog, Cyclopic Bricks.
Disproving my assertion last week that LEGO models inspired by Classical literature are rare, the talented and prolific Letranger Absurde has just posted a microscale scene from the Iliad in which Greek ships stand offshore as their horse rolls up to the gates of Troy. While one’s eye is drawn to the red-roofed temple, don’t miss the Greek ships, whose bows and sterns are chocolate frogs! The whole scene is set on sideways bricks, enabling the builder to create some excellent waves with white wedge plates.
The upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens LEGO sets may be getting all the attention these days, but the original trilogy and even prequel trilogy continue to provide inspiration for many LEGO builders. AdNorrel has posted a Venator-class Star Destroyer from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in the style of the large UCS LEGO sets. Built from about 2,000 LEGO elements, the Star Destroyer took about 20 days to create.
Antique trams scurry along the streets of Porto, carrying visitors to Portugal’s second-largest city hither and yon. rupilego has built one in Coca-Cola livery, complete with a cobblestone street for a base. The rounded cab and little windows on top of the roof are lovely details.
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
We post a lot of LEGO mecha here on The Brothers Brick, and even though I’m the main culprit I’ll admit that most of them are bipedal, humanoid contraptions that all blend together after a while — the style inspired by anime shows like Evangelion and Gundam. But Moko takes a very different approach with his latest mecha, built for an event in Japan, which is more of a hardsuit or exoskeleton than a true mecha.
Moko himself says that it was inspired more by military helicopters than “Japanese style” robots. A minifig operates the exoskeleton, and I love the jet engines and helicopter blades on the shoulders. You can see more photos on Moko’s blog.
Longtime readers of the blog will be aware that the Mercedes Unimog is one of my favorite vehicles. While rare here in the US, they’re ubiquitous across Europe. Polish builder Damian Z. doesn’t disappoint with his Unimog crane truck in high-visibility orange.
One of everyone’s favorite vehicles from the trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the speeder that shoots across the sands of Tatooine in front of the crashed Star Destroyer. Fortunately then for all of us, 75099 Rey’s Speeder is one of the first wave of LEGO sets from The Force Awakens released today in advance of the movie’s opening in December. I picked up a copy at my local LEGO Store, and here’s a brief review — it is, after all, the smallest of the new Star Wars sets at $19.99 and 193 pieces.
Read the full review after the jump!
Over the last few months, Irwan Prabowo has been posting a series of microscale LEGO dioramas inspired by all of the Star Wars movies, including the upcoming The Force Awakens.
My favorite is the crashed Star Destroyer seen in the trailer for the new movie. An X-wing and TIE fighter in the sands add some additional visual interest to a scene that might otherwise be a bit more plain at this scale.
Here are all of the mini-dioramas together, including the Death Star trench run, AT-AT assault on Hoth, and Sarlacc pit:
To see all of them in detail, plus some more not in the group shot above (like Owen & Beru’s moisture farm with a Jawa sandcrawler) check out Irwan’s photostream on Flickr.
Maybe it’s that I’m just noticing more LEGO Star Wars models as excitement has been building about the new The Force Awakens LEGO sets, but it seems like there have been a lot of pretty great Star Wars models popping up online over the last few weeks. de-marco brings us a scene from Tatooine with a cool green land speeder pulling up to a junk dealer’s shack. The builder doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, but I can imagine this scene happening in the same time frame as the crashed Star Destroyer in Episode VII.
de-marco has only included his TIE fighter wing in this one scene, but I’d be interested in seeing his take on a complete fighter.
The LEGO sets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens are hitting hitting shelves and online sites today, three months ahead of the movie’s release in December. It’s apparently “Force Friday” or something to that effect. As a result, the world has gone insane.
If you’re not insane and would like to help The Brothers Brick out by purchasing the sets through us, you can do so by clicking through from the links below.
As the grandson of an American World War II veteran who was born and raised in Japan, I have a rather complicated relationship with the Pacific War in World War II. From Nanjing to Bataan, there’s no denying the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese military against both the peoples of fellow Asian nations as well as Allied prisoners of war, and yet I feel deep sympathy for the genuine suffering that the people of Japan experienced themselves — from the firebombing of my hometown Tokyo to burning Okinawan civilians alive as they hid in caves. The end of World War II could not come soon enough, and Japan’s surrender ensured that my GI grandfather did did not get shipped from Hawaii across the Pacific to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands.
To commemorate this important event 70 years ago today, Dan Siskind has built the American battleship USS Missouri, which was the venue in Tokyo Harbor for Japan’s surrender. At 26 feet long, Dan’s “Mighty Mo” is the largest LEGO warship ever made (four feet longer than Jumpei Mitsui’s Yamato).
This giant LEGO battleship dwarfs the room it’s currently housed in at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
You can see more photos, including lots of work-in-progress shots, in Dan’s “USS Missouri Project” photoset on Flickr.