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

Futuristic military truck is packed with grunt

When LEGO builders tackle the future, they’re often tempted to make everything smooth and sleek. No danger of that here, with Joshua Brooks‘ Manticore Truck offering a serious sense of heft and gritty purpose. This comes in no small part from the impressive levels of texture and detailing evident despite the relatively restrained colour scheme. I particularly like the winch on the front fender, and the tools clipped on the sides — details which evoke classic Jeeps and Hummers, helping make this military vehicle feel realistic as well as futuristic.

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Alright stop... it’s hammer time

What better way to break up a featureless brick wall than with a bunch of hammers? Letranger Absurde (aka Vitroleum, aka Pacurar Andrei) will have all the LEGO Castle builders sobbing into their mead with this neat wall technique — a texture-tastic fortress constructed from Thor hammers! However, it’s not just the tool use which makes this model stand out — don’t miss the ingots on top of the crenelations, and the shaping of the rockwork around the wall’s ends. This is small enough that I’m going to call it a nice little “proof of concept”. I now insist on seeing a full-scale castle creation using this technique.

A grand day out at the pavilion

Take a moment to appreciate the restful atmosphere around the Dudok Pavilion — a restaurant in a park, put together by Niek Geurts. This LEGO creation has wonderful clean and crisp lines, which the builder says was inspired by the Dutch Modernist architect Willem Dudok.

Sometimes these kind of architecture-led creations can feel a little sterile. I like the way Niek has populated the scene with numerous minifigures, enjoying the pavilion facilities on what looks like a pleasant afternoon…

The restaurant has an interior, but it was the little touches around the outside which really caught my eye. I loved the bicycles leaning against the wall. Such a minor detail, but so sweet, and so Dutch!

Retro micro console goodness

If you weren’t lucky enough to get your grubby hands on a SNES Classic, maybe you could build your own out of LEGO instead? Brick 101 has created this smart microscale recreation of the retro console, and it’s very cute. Coming from the UK, I’m always going to say the PAL version of the SNES was far prettier, but for everyone who remembers the original design, this is a wonderful blast from the past. As an added bonus, there are instructions! Check out the video on how to put this together.

Pirate ship leaves the rest in its wake

There’s no shortage of impressive LEGO pirate/sailing ships. This entry into the genre by albert might not have the impressive scale or detailing of some of the large pirate craft we’ve seen but it’s nicely put together all the same. I love the wake effect, built up from layers of different colours of transparent pieces, and the mixture of tiles and studded plates to create texture in the water.

Personally I don’t care for the tiled lettering. I feel it distracts attention from the rest of the model. However, the ship itself and the wake more than make up for that minor quibble.

Tapping into LEGO creativity

Here’s a cool LEGO diorama by Josh David. The model is deceptively large — check out the “bricks” built out of tiles for an idea of the scale. Protruding from the wall, the tap itself is nicely sculpted, and I like the simple flower and its pot.

However, the coolest thing about this creation is the hidden features — it’s a fully-operational kinetic sculpture! Josh has provided this video of the mechanical elements in action…

The height of 70s office chic

Micropolis is a LEGO building standard which allows for large-scale collaborative builds of microscale cities. The usual module sees a 16×16 base with roads down two sides, leaving a 14×14 “development site”. Tammo S. has used the space to great effect with this 70s-style office block. The curving balconies and the colour scheme are totally retro, and very cool. And don’t miss the little touches like the use of the clock tile, and angled grille bricks as steps — the sort of things that elevate a microscale model out of the ordinary. This office might be beige, but it’s anything but bland.

My only criticism is the lighting on the photo isn’t great. But that doesn’t detract from a lovely model.

Welcome to itty-bitty Springfield

Teeny-tiny, and yet immediately recognisable — that’s Primoz Mlakar‘s microscale LEGO version of the Springfield skyline. The Kwik-E-Mart stands out as a cracking re-creation, but all the buildings are excellent microscale versions of the originals. If it works with landmarks from The Simpsons, I reckon this could work for other fictional cityscapes. Hey LEGO, if you’re listening, I would literally give you all my money for a Skylines series of sets including Gotham, Metropolis, and maybe Mega City One!

Elegant guardian robot

This super-sleek LEGO robot figure looks like it could have stepped straight out of some Destiny concept art. Red mixes up regular System bricks, Technic connectors, and “Constraction-figure” pieces to great effect. The tan and dark grey colour scheme is nice and simple, and allows that splash of red in the robot’s face to really stand out. I love the shaping of the shoulders and that round boss on the chest, they give this creation an individual style.

LEGO collaboration is sweet and super-cool

At first glance, these LEGO popsicles look totally sweet. A collaborative creation by Carl Merriam, Niek, and Milan CMadge, the twin models perfectly capture the shapes of an ice-cream sandwich and a half-munched orange popsicle (or “ice lolly” as it’s known where I come from).

However, regardless of how nice the models are, you might wonder why it took 3 builders collaborating to create them. Well, it all comes down to the sheer scale of the endeavour. Perhaps the image below will make everything clear? It’s only when the massive size of these models becomes apparent that you can truly appreciate the effort and skill which went into their creation. Genuinely amazing stuff gents — well played.

LEGO camera is a huge success

A year on from building a remarkably accurate LEGO version of a vintage camera, Milan CMadge does it again with this excellent rendition of a Leica III. The model features brilliant shaping around the top with all those buttons and dials, and nice intricate bits of detail, particularly around the lens.

What might not be immediately apparent from the first photo is the scale of this creation — it’s absolutely enormous! The large-scale allows for the use of black quarter-circle tiles in the creation of the realistic texturing around the camera’s body. To give you a clear idea of quite how big this thing is, check out this fun image…

Sci-fi city is more than the sum of its parts

This isn’t “LEGO building” as much as “LEGO arranging”, but it’s nice work by McLegoboy! all the same. A well-judged selection of textured parts, coupled with good macro photography, creates a striking composition which wouldn’t look out of place in the universes of Judge Dredd or Mad Max. Not bad for a total of eight pieces!

About Rod

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