It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a MEGA Tower of Orthanc. The last one, by OneLUG, stood at a staggering seven feet tall. But records are made to be broken, and in this case in style.
Brendan M (LegoRyu42) has done the unbelievable making his 1/65th scale version almost two feet taller:
But what’s impressive isn’t simply the wonderful details and immense height, it’s that it has AN INSIDE (and here’s another picture for scale):
The tower is made from 9 individual stack-able sections, plus towery penthouse. All of which are wired for lighting. This tower was on display at Brickworld, and of course took home the Best Mega Creation award.
Check out the amazing gallery of all the little details in this mega creation.
As one or two of our readers may have noticed, I have been absent for last few months – which I do apologize – I took a bit of a dark age to focus on real life priorities … like Video games! And the one that undeniably consumed me was Borderands (2 and TPS), with it’s co-op play, unique cell shading, randomly generated gun zaniness and an adorable robot, I was in love…
So when it came down to sitting down and playing with bricks again, I knew I didn’t want to leave Pandora behind, and much like the game, it’s more fun with friends.
With that in mind, I went to the best LEGO gunsmith around: Nick Jensen (Nick Brick) and challenged him to build me a randomly generated Borderland guns.
Enter the Bandit SMG: The Bandit gun philosophy is simple: MORE BULLETS! MORE SHOOT BITS FOR BRAIN SPLATS! BANG BANG BANG BANG! …BANG!
While not nearly as elegant looking as some of the guns Nick has built, it’s awkward ridiculousness is fantastically built , with not one, but TWO working magazines clips – cause that’s how we roll. Don’t believe me, check out the video:
Of course, that’s only half the fun. The other iconic element of the game is everyone’s favorite/most hated robot Claptrap – CL4P TP, built by Simon Liu:
But as in the game, sometimes friends just randomly drop in unannounced, so I was delighted to see that Matt De Lanoy (Pepa Quin) also got in on the Borderlands action this year at Brickworld with a far more adorable version of Claptrap:
It’s a bit of a challenge to build a unique mech these days, but to build one pretty much entirely in a monochrome colour scheme and look this good is a feat. But Dead Frog inc, who has a long history of quirky and interesting Drones and Mechs, did just that:
I particularly like the the piece usage on the foot and the disproportionate – but very interesting arms.
(*And yes, I know it’s actually light-bluish-grey)
The Clone on a Plate Contest wrapped up with an astounding 124 entries! This one day flash contest kept everyone here on the edge of their seat to see what the creative LEGO geniuses out there would come up with! This isn’t our biggest contest ever, but if we extrapolated the number of entries over a typical contest length of a month this would have generated a whopping 3840 entries!
With so many entries we had a very hard time determining what would be worthy of the COAP Prize Pack. It was a tough for the contestants as they were given just one instruction: “Clone on a Plate”, with multiple interpretations:
From an artistic side, I think we all agreed VerSen‘s “Walk on the Water” entry was simply gorgeous:
Equally artistic, with a very Shepard Fairey entry, we have Nick Royer (HJ Media Studios) with a cool rendered clone and some 3rd party weapons:
But the winner of the Prize pack was the entry that made us laugh the most. Despite the fairly obvious method of creating entries, Jonas (Legopard) provided the perfect dead pan entry of “Clone on a Plate WITH INSTRUCTION”:
This made us laugh not once, not twice, but three times as Mr. Jonas proceeded to submit his entries to LEGO Ideas, and subsequently get rejected.
Congrats Jonas!
And on behalf of the TBB team, I do wish to apologize to LEGO Ideas for the extra work, though I assume that was definitely the highlight of their day, as it was ours.
According to Marvin the Martian, who peers at us from his telescope on Mars, we are very very curious. Matt Rowntree brings us this fantastic rendition of everyone’s favorite Martian:
While the figure by itself would have been enough for me to share, I love how Matt spent the extra time to build out the famous telescope he is typically seen with. I particulary like the top of the helmet with its fantastic usage of a series of skis. Though the secret fun trick of this build is how he built the rim of the helmet.
It’s time to spot light the minifig a bit more here on The Brothers Brick (brought to you by Carls Jr), so we’re announcing the Clone on a Plate contest!
Simply take your favorite Clone and put it on the best plate or plates that you have and add it to the group here.
Our expert panel of LEGO Enthusiasts will choose the best Clone on a Plate and receive a prize!
FAQ:
Does it have to be a Clonetrooper? – No, we don’t discriminate at The Brothers Brick (brought to you by Carls Jr) and will also accept Stormtroopers or any expanded universe Star Wars Trooper.
What’s the prize? – that’s a surprise!
Can I customize my trooper? – Absolutely! Use sharpies, paint, stickers or stock troopers!
This is Cale Leiphart and he likes trains, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and enjoying his builds for many years now. His latest culmination of train-awesomeness is the Red Lion Station, and is a model of the Maryland & Pennsylvania RR train station and surrounding areas.
At over 3.5 x 17 feet (that’s 5 meters), this requires adjectives which I do not posses to describe the incredible feat. That’s not to say there haven’t been larger builds, but I have a hard time recalling a build of this size that has this much detail packed in. Not only does each of the buildings have a beautiful facade, but each building has a fully decked out interior. It’s so large it’s incredibly hard to even photograph, and is one of those builds that are best enjoyed in person at a display:
I really liked how Cale has gone against the grain and built buildings and streets at non-right angles, a non-trivial feat, to build off-axis roads and buildings:
Not only are the roads difficult to build at an angle, most people would have simply laid the train track on top of the road to avoid complicated brickwork, but Mr. Leiphart, true to form, built it inside the road with some really clever brick work.
As I mentioned before, I had seen earlier versions of this layout last year and it really caught my eye. By catch my eye, I mean I did a double take and went OH-MY-G-O-S-H. Again the size is impressive, but I’m a detail guy, and this nondescript grey building blew my mind. Take a closer look at the sides, it’s not just nicely stacked brick, it’s made up of panels, hundreds of panels attached in some seemingly magical way. Despite being very late on the first setup night, Cale – who was still setting up this magnificent display – noticed our fevered interest and stopped everything and came over to us and showed us the secret of the grey building. This became my number 1 cool must-see thing at BrickFair that year.
Got builders block and need a break? Want a challenge? Or just want to test your building know how? Then I suggest you check out the fun little Reverse Engineering Contest. Unlike a lot of LEGO contest that ask you to create something, this one asks you to copy a build. They’re all small and deceptively simple, but once you actually sit down and start playing with it, it’s not always as easy as it seems.
This marks the first, of nine, weekly challenges:
It starts off simple and gets progressively harder. So why not join in on the action? Stretch your building brain a bit with these building exercises – oh and don’t forget to read up on the rules on how you could win some prizes. Though this contest is one where the best reward is figuring out all the puzzles.
Oh who am I kidding, a Birds set, and most importantly: rare and useful pieces from contest runner Ryan H. (LDM) is a pretty great prize.
After yesterday’s foray into Classic Space, Chris Perron (thebrickbin) must have known that like a SpaceVampire – I needed more! So magically this jaw dropping atmosphere masterpiece popped up:
It’s a gritty scene where the brave men and women of the First Space Police patrol some cyber-punkish district. I’m not sure who they’re looking for, but with that heavy duty SP1Koma Think Tank backing them up, these boys and girls of the black, blue and trans red are well looked after!
And as a second bonus link, this beauty by Moritz (nolnet) was in my blog queue for awhile it’s just so damn fun and cool:
The model itself is top notch, but what turns this from awesome to #BennyAWESOME is the remote control action:
The combination of Trans Yellow, Blue and Grey (with bits of yellow and black) will always have a special place in many builder’s hearts. It’s the definitive Classic Space colour scheme and it always delights me when I see it, and see it done well.
Today is a great day because Jarek (Jerac) worked his usual magic and unveiled this amazing build to the world:
Chalk full of gorgeous details and super clean lines, this is the sort of Classic Space Starfighted I’d kill to have!
But today is Friday, the best day of the week and as a special bonus B Mauro (bread_man_017), in a seemingly coordinated attempt to make me happy also posted his Classic Space Starfighter:
While it might not be as pretty as Jerac, B’s version has some pretty great wing play action.
Hopefully this is a sign of more great Classic Space builds to come!
A slight digression … I’ve been meaning to see the Chappie movie for a while now and finally got around to it last night. And of course like any good builder, I spent an inordinate amount of time during the movie mentally figuring out how I could build him when I got home. I’ve seen a few other LEGO Chappie’s built already, but not a really big detailed one. It would have been my time to shine! And maybe even get blogged!
So I was super stoked to try … I got home, broke out my Dark Blues, got the Orange antennae built and just… gave up. It would have been too large and too complex and too difficult. But thankfully for everyone, Roman (th_squirrel) didn’t give up as easily as I did. Much like Chappie himself, he kept on going and built a super awesome LEGO Chappie:
This is just a thing of beauty. I also really love how Roman used pieces with the original stickers on them, it really adds that gangster touch to his LEGO Chappie.
I’m not going to debate which Star Trek is the best, feel free to do that in the comments, but I will say this is the best TNG phaser I’ve seen made out of LEGO by Ryan H (LDM):
Though feel free to compare it to Tommy’s Original Series Phasers.
But what’s impressive isn’t simply the wonderful details and immense height, it’s that it has AN INSIDE (and here’s another picture for scale):
