About Rod

Rod likes building stuff, particularly steampunk and microscale. He's built for a number of the Dorling Kindersley LEGO books, including LEGO Play and the Awesome Ideas book. When he's not building, he writes, and has published a trilogy of old-fashioned adventure stories. To pay the bills he works in innovation and marketing for one of the world's biggest brewers, inventing new beers and ciders. This is clearly the best job in the world.

Posts by Rod

LEGO Soyuz launcher stands 1.25m high and took a year and a half to build

Since it’s first flight in 1966, the Russian Soyuz rocket system has become the world’s most frequently used launch vehicle. With over 1,700 flights in 50 years, this Russian stalwart has hauled cosmonauts, satellites, and cargo aloft, with its relatively simple design creating an enviable reliability record. However, this LEGO version of the latest Fregat version of the Soyuz is anything but simple — Jussi Koskinen has pulled out all the stops to capture every last feature of the spacecraft’s detailing. The scale of the effort involved is impressive — the model took 18 months to put together, and measures over 1.25m.

The overall structure of this massive model is excellent, and the shaping and angles on the lower boosters are particularly good. The smaller details are worth a look too — don’t miss the texturing around the base of the boosters, the scaffold-style connection between stages, and the nice integration of the Russian flag into the upper stage’s colour scheme. This formidable model wouldn’t look out of place on display beside the LEGO Ideas Saturn 5 set, and that’s high praise indeed.

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Building it old school: PlayStation’s Spyro in LEGO

We see a lot of LEGO dragons, but they’re rarely as cute as Marius Herrmann‘s version of digital superstar Spyro. This winged beastie, familiar to PlayStation (and N64 and Xbox One) owners, is a delight, perfectly capturing the cute styling of the character. It’s worth taking a close look at this model to check out some of the details. Don’t miss the smart segmenting of Spyro’s underbelly, the subtle ridges down the tail, and the use of dismantled minifigure legs to provide the dragon’s nostrils! The base is a nice touch, adding more visual interest than simply displaying the model alone, and I love the inclusion of Sparx, Spyro’s flying insect pal.

You know my methods Watson

When the body of Sir Charles Murgatroyd is discovered in his library, the local Constabulary are immediately called for. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation begins. Despite their best efforts, the police remain baffled as to motive or culprit. Only one hope remains, to summon the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr John Watson…

Since reading The Hound of the Baskervilles as a child, I’ve always been a huge fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve often pondered the idea of building scenes from some of his most famous adventures, and this little model was something of a trial. The library-based murder depicted is not based on any particular story, but I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. The trickiest bit of the whole model was the window — it took my ages to get the curtain to look right, and to get the leaded windows to fill the space without gaps.

Long have I served as the guardian spirit

Guardian of the Hyrule Forest. Giver of Quests. Insides infested with Skulltula Spiders.
The Great Deku Tree from Nintendo classic Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is given the LEGO treatment by Julius von Brunk. The microscale model is nicely-done, perfectly capturing the tree’s sleepy-looking face. But it’s the amazing photography which sets this creation apart — Julius has combined three images into one to create this stunning look, which manages to make a small model appear much larger. I love how the low angle and out-of-focus foreground foliage gives the tree such physical presence. Excellent stuff.

LEGO Millennium Falcon hides in plain sight

It’s one of the coolest moments in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo evades the Imperials by hiding his ship in plain sight, latched on to the hull of a Star Destroyer. Here this memorable scene is recreated in LEGO bricks by Didier Burtin. The model is immediately recognisable — indeed, at first glance it’s practically indistinguishable from a still from the movie. The Star Destroyer’s surface is impressively detailed, packed with a generous level of detail that breaks up all that grey, and the lighting for the photo is spot-on, managing to capture the stark contrast and drama of the original scene.

1% inspiration, 99% perspiration

That was Thomas Edison’s recipe for innovation. But he failed to mention the importance of keeping things simple. When it comes to LEGO creations, sometimes the simplest models are the most impressive, and this wonderful LEGO lightbulb by Josephine Monterosso is a great example. It may be comprised of only seven pieces, but this economy of parts only makes it all the more impressive. The transparent minifigure head and clear space helmet make for the perfect recreation of retro lightbulb curves, and the short length of silver ribbed hose is a nice way to evoke a screw thread. Maybe this LEGO lightbulb will give other builders ideas too!

Block-rocking beats from this LEGO Walkman

When Ralf Langer put together his excellent LEGO headphones and tape cassette, all that was missing was something to provide the tunes. Now he’s filled the gap with a brick rendition of the innovative 80s hardware that reinvented how we listened to music — the Sony Walkman. The colour scheme is a perfect match for the 1979 original, and the details down the side are simply spot-on — don’t miss the use of a silver ingot piece and grille bricks to recreate the volume slider, the offsets so the buttons stand out from the casing, and the nice deployment of the “back-to-back grille tile” technique to make those tiny square holes. I also love that silver stripe separating the blue from the grey — excellent attention to detail.

Got a gyro or gear loose? You need Gyro Gearloose’s Little Helper

Fresh from the Disney town of Duckburg, here’s Little Helper, built from bricks by Oliver Becker. Eccentric inventor Gyro Gearloose’s automaton assistant makes for a delightful LEGO character — using ribbed metallic hoses for limbs is a perfect choice, and cockpit parts for the robot’s lightbulb head are simple yet effective. I find it wonderful how such a model, put together from relatively few pieces, can embody so much character. It’s down, in no small part, to the care taken in posing the model for photography, getting the curves of the back and limbs just right. The dangling feet are spot-on, as is the thoughtful angle of that transparent cranium. Lovely.

Temple’s crowning glory

What is serenity? One definition — perfection of form, coupled with a strong and simple colour scheme. That’s exactly what we’ve got in this temple building by jaapxaap. The standout feature is the purple and gold roof, adorned with beautifully shaped corners and nicely offset tiling. Don’t miss how the shaping flows perfectly around the golden decorative elements, almost as if they were designed to fit the spaces, rather than the other way around. The stark grey structure is striking and forms a robust backdrop to the ornate roofing. There’s nice landscaping and foliage, along with some minifigures, placed around the model, but the colour choices are perfect — complementing, never distracting, from the model’s central subject.

Brick Wave Off Kanagawa

The world-famous Great Wave Off Kanagawa print by Japanese painter Hokusai gets the LEGO treatment in this great piece of work by koffiemoc. The model’s inspiration is immediately recognisable — from the overall colour scheme, the towering wave threatening the three boats, through to the triangular white peak of Mount Fuji in the central distance. The builder has added in some of the more subtle details of the artwork too — the crests of the waves are tipped with clips, capturing Hokusai’s depiction of the water having claws. There is also the triangular shape of the foreground wave, mirroring the form of the background mountain. This is a beautiful brick-built tribute to a beautiful image.

The Lego Movie 2’s biggest set: 70840 Welcome To Apocalypseburg [Review]

The LEGO Movie 2’s range of sets has got us excited, not least because of Classic LEGO Space astronauts in multiple colours. But what really set hearts aflutter and pulses racing here at Brothers Brick was the reveal of the massive 70840 Welcome To Apocalypseburg — a shanty town built around a fallen Statue of Liberty, apparently Emmet & Co.’s new home town in the forthcoming film.

70840 Welcome To Apocalypseburg includes 3,178 pieces and 12 minifigures. The set is available now for LEGO VIPs, and is on general release February 1st, 2019 from the LEGO Shop (US $299.99 | CA $399.99 | UK £279.99).

Read our hands-on review of 70840 Welcome To Apocalypseburg

Hidden in the forest, bandits lurk

Stumbling across a bandit hideout in the forest might normally cause some alarm. But this Oriental LEGO creation by John Snyder evokes nothing but admiration. It’s a lovely scene, with great landscaping, a nicely detailed building, and some fun minifigure action around the fringes. Normally I like when the central subject of a creation is built in a colour scheme that contrasts with the backdrop, but here the building’s muted tones blend in perfectly with the browns and reds of the autumnal forest. This means you have to look harder to spot the details, but that’s perfectly appropriate for something that’s supposed to be a hideout! Also, don’t miss the use of minifigure legs as curling waves at the edge of the stream — a clever way to avoid the harsh cut-off this kind of diorama base sometimes causes.

About Rod

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