About Iain

Iain Heath is an avid builder specializing in the "Bricks of Character" style, which he helped define. He has been using LEGO to parody popular culture since 2007, when he created the now infamous Stephen Hawking model. He is a SeaLUG member and regular theme coordinator at BrickCon. For five years he also ran a blog called The Living Brick, that showcased the best character-based LEGO creations from around the world. You can find his irreverent body of work on Flickr.

Posts by Iain

Dust Bunnies

While clearly inspired by Japanese Anime, RWBY (an American animated series from the Rooster Teeth stables) could never be mistaken as a product of that genre. But that hasn’t stopped Anime building master Mike Dung from adapting his signature style to depict Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang in full 3D….

I’ll admit that my first reaction upon seeing the show was “Anime-skinned Red vs Blue”. Which is not surprising since it’s made by the same team that gave us Red vs Blue. But its snappy dialogue, rock soundtrack, great fight choreography, and short episodes seem to be winning combination within the RT community.

Personally, I’d love to see Mike break from his trend of only building female characters, and perhaps try his hand at some of the guys from this show as well, like Roman or Junior!

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E.T. phone home

Love him or hate him, you gotta admit Steven Spielberg has had his moments, and the classic movie E.T. the Extraterrestrial was definitely one of them. Despite how crazy the alien in this movie looked, there pretty much wasn’t a dry eye in the house when [32 YEAR LATE SPOILER ALERT] he died. I still remember the little girl in the seat next to me balling her head off, and teenage me trying very hard to keep it together! And a killer soundtrack by John Williams? Oh, too much… This build by Jimmy Fortel brings that super slice of Eighties-ness flooding right back:

Just remember, don’t get him wet, and don’t feed him after midnight ;-)

Mini Mini Cooper

It’s been barely a week since LEGO’s announcement about the new Mini Cooper creator set. Inspired by the pictures of that set, Miro Dudas built a mini-fig scaled version:

I haven’t decided yet whether this super little build is going to temporarily satisfy my craving for the real set, or just make waiting until August even that more hard to do!

Bootlegging bricks

It’s a little known fact that the LEGO company once explored the idea of a 20’s gangster theme. Sadly it was not meant to be (too soon?). Anyway, that hasn’t stopped many builders exploring the idea themselves. And since I’m heading off to Brickworld Chicago today, it seems fitting to present a couple of recent examples.

First up Brian Lyles (BrickCityDepot) applies his formidable skills as a Café Corner style builder to bring us the Club 23 Speakeasy.

It comes equipped with every convenience and every character you’d expect to find in such an establishment – including some unwelcome guests in the form of a police raid! Check out the full album to see the action unfold.

I imagine the Godfather slipping out the back and making his getaway in this snappy Model-A Ford:

Meanwhile, down by the river, a gang of enterprising bootleggers take advantange of all the ruckus up at Club 23 to smuggle away their wares in this rum-runner built by Joshua Brooks.

Looking forward to meeting some of you at Brickworld! I’ll be live tweeting from the event. And keep an eye out for me, Chris, Simon and Carter in our fancy new Brothers Brick shirts. And deliver the secret passphrase to claim some swag. You’ll be making us an offer we cannot refuse.

Cloud Cuckoopocalypse

Being the only builder gutsy enough ever to attempt a minifig scaled version of Howl’s moving castle, it’s comes as no surprise to discover that Imagine Rigney was behind this mind-bending recreation of the fall of Cloud Cuckoo Land from The LEGO Movie…

But the diorama just wouldn’t be complete without our heros escaping in the Bat Submarine. So he build that too, naturally. Awesome!

This makes me really wish LEGO would put out more official sets based on that particular region of the LEGO Movie universe. However, if anyone suggests the above creations be submitted as projects to the Lego Ideas site, be warned: I will reach through the screen and slap you!

Please excuseth our duste

You could be forgiven for thinking this castle scene by JP_Creations is a work in progress. Well in a manner of speaking you’d be right, because it’s a scene of a work in progress!

Flying the unfriendly skies

From his Flickr stream, it’s clear that builder arwen qiea is a Cold War military vehicle buff. It’s an impressive portfolio of (mostly Soviet) tanks, missile carriers and navy vessels from the 50s and 60s. But his gigantic airplanes kind of steal the limelight! Here’s his latest one, a model of the Soviet TU-135, an experimental supersonic bomber from that era.

From that angle, the TU-135 seems almost as sleek as a modern Russian fighter jet. But from a higher vantage point you can see why it was nicknamed the “flying wing”.

So that’s a pretty big plane, right? Nope. THIS is a big plane…

…say hello to the Russian Antonov AN-22, probably the largest turboprop ever built. And the big builds don’t stop there. His version of the Lockheed C5a Galaxy (a heavy transport used by the USAF) is so big it literally eats other LEGO models for breakfast!

And here it is, digesting its meal of tanks and other armaments:

Service with a smile

LegoWyrm has started creating adorable LEGO chibi characters, based on a style originally developed by legendary Japanese builder Moko. Here is his version of the titular heroine from the videogame American McGee’s Alice (click here for bonus gory version).

He’s also churned out some beautifully chibi-fied characters from other games and anime. See if you can name any of them (regular readers should be able to name the last one by now). And tell me that these figures don’t immediately put a huge smile on your face! Just remember to turn away before your head explodes from all the cuteness…

I ❤ HEART URANUS

After enjoying Evan B’s recent miniland scale Firefly lifter, I’m overjoyed to see yet another iconic spacecraft get the same treatment! This time it’s Eagle 5 from Mel brooks’ classic Star Wars spoof Spaceballs, courtesy of Chris Rozek.

And in a matter of days you’ll be able to see this creation – and a million others – at Brickworld Chicago. Let’s just hope Chris can hang onto this build longer than the giant one he traded away in Simon’s Red Brick Game!

Life sized Hatsune Miku built from LEGO

It’s been almost three years since Japanese builder Chaosbrick (カオス煉我) created the first LEGO version of the wildly popular digital pop star and Vocaloid character Hatsune Miku (初音ミク). Since then there have been plenty of other versions, by such builders as Moko, Mike Dung, LegoWyrm and even yours truly. But now Chaosbrick has returned to outdo them all with this life sized version!

Construction of the model began in October 2013 and took 6 months to complete, during which time the builder teased fans with work in progress shots from his Twitter feed. The final model uses over 20,000 bricks, and by all accounts it was quite a feat of engineering to make such a tall and slender LEGO model stay in one piece. But the end result is spectacular in its detail and accuracy, and should meet the expectations of even the most hardened Hatsune fan. Especially with the cheeky inclusion of some brick-built fan service ;-)

Contents may settle during shipping

Marc Reid imagines the logical evolution of the Maersk shipping company (and corresponding LEGO sets perhaps?) into the far future with the MAERSK LINE 976534 SPACESHIP. According to Marc, each shipping container would be a mile long – which by my calculations is large enough to ship an entire shipping company!

I love the idea that the even as the technology and environments change, the Maersk containers would retain their iconic look over the centuries. In fact, I think it’d be cool to see other builders interpretations of the Maersk line in increasingly distant periods in the future. Get to it, my friends!

Tooth and nail

To complete this week’s brief exploration of unusual steampunk creations, let’s go wild …literally! First up, here’s a punked-out Kraken courtesy of Jonas (the guy that gave us the steampunk Batcave and Tumbler).

And to remind us there’s a lot more to steampunk LEGO than simply “using a lot of brown and gold”, who better than Mark Stafford with this overlooked steampunk dinosaur from 2012 (the year, not the movie).