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

Tranquil hilltop temple

This lovely little LEGO temple is exactly what you need at the end of a busy day — the perfect place to let your cares slip away with the passing clouds. John Cheng‘s landscaping is nicely-done — rugged and uneven enough to create a natural feel, with an obvious bamboo forest vibe. The temple itself is relatively simple, but neatly put together, with the black and gold providing a strong contrast to the surrounding greenery. The toro lantern is particularly good — whilst we’ve seen many of these before in LEGO creations, this might the first I’ve seen using the hollow-stud “Apollo” 1×1 round piece on the sides. It’s an effective texture which I’ll be stealing for my own Asia-inspired scenes.

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Living space for living it up

We’ve featured a few of Heikki Mattila‘s stunning LEGO interiors, but they just keep getting better and better. This beauty uses a touch of forced perspective to create a sense of space and openness — the shelf on the far wall, and the TV and speakers, are built lower and to a slightly smaller scale than the rest of the apartment. As ever, the clean lines of Heikki’s scene wouldn’t look out of place in a fancy furniture catalog or interiors magazine. Personally I think it’d make a great venue for a stylish party. Where’s my invitation?

Space explorers looking for a hug

The Prometheus movie wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but that doesn’t stop it providing inspiration for good LEGO models. Grant Masters has created a wonderfully eerie scene of curious astronauts about to get themselves into a whole world of trouble. The build itself is relatively simple (although I do like that backdrop of arch pieces), however the use of dry ice and LED lighting, coupled with good photography, creates a striking image.

Truck stands separate from the others

This orange truck by LEGO 7 is a nice little build, but perhaps unremarkable — until you spot the clever use of the orange brick separator to provide the stylish stripes of the tipper bed. This is a great example to show anyone who ever talks about “useless parts” or “specialist pieces removing the imagination from LEGO nowadays”.

You can get a better view of the truck’s rear in the image below, and see the shaping the brick separator provides to the lip of the tipper. Sometimes the deliberate use of an “unusual” piece can stick out like a sore thumb, a gimmick rather than really adding to a model. But that’s not the case here — the separator is well-integrated and genuinely enhances the creation.

An elegant carbine for a more civilised age

We see plenty of well-built LEGO recreations of weapons from videogames, and I’m full of admiration for the scale modelling skills on display. But I also love when builders produce something which doesn’t rely on existing sources for inspiration. This steampunk machine gun by Martin Redfern is a lovely model — full of chunky cartoony detail and classic ray gun styling. The bullets on the belt are excellent, and the flared muzzle and touches of gold give this a wonderful Flash Gordon feel. And don’t miss the use of a gold elephant trunk part for the trigger.

It’s like microscale, but turned down to -11

Nanoscale — taking microscale building and shrinking it further. Karf Oolhu takes teeny-tiny city building to the extreme with this lovely little creation. There’s an impressive amount of texture and detail on these buildings, especially when you consider the entire model occupies a footprint of only 3 x 3 studs! Particular kudos should go to the use of an official LEGO pen top for the building at the rear right. Sweet.

Bwahaha. Soon I will rule this world

Your mileage may vary when it comes to LEGO’s Bionicle-style “constraction” figures. However, even the most militant “bricks-or-nothing” builders should recognise excellent construction skills, regardless of where some of the parts come from. Kelvin Low has simply smashed it with this stunning large-scale Skull Knight figure.

Kelvin has made smart choices with the large armour pieces — couple those with some beautiful greebling details between the plates, and a stylish splash of colour in the cape’s trim, and you’ve got a great piece of work. I love the sense of heft and power in this model. You get the impression the Skull Knight would stomp you into dust as soon as look at you…

Moving LEGO tribute to the fallen of Passchendaele

Dan Harris is one of British historical building collective Bricks To The Past. On this, the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1’s Battle of Passchendaele, he offers a moving brick-built tribute to the fallen. In particular, it commemorates the loss of Welsh poet Ellis Humphrey Evans. You can read more about the poet and his work in Dan’s blog post. In the meantime, this quiet little scene provides a poignant image with which to commemorate the thousands of young men who gave their lives.

Chunky fire truck to the rescue

It doesn’t matter what age you are — everybody loves a LEGO fire truck. This impressive beast from S Asbury doesn’t disappoint with its beefy proportions and use of custom chromed elements.

The truck is built “seven-wide” — a relatively unusual standard in the LEGO world, but one that pays off here, giving the vehicle a real sense of heft and scale. Such a design decision makes for a more complex building experience though — LEGO tends to be better-suited for even-width building. You can see how the builder has had to use a combination of plates on the underside…

And what rescue vehicle would be complete without an extension selection of on-board gear. This model fully delivers, with a number of well-stocked compartments…

All-in-all, this is a cracking model — an air of the “official” LEGO City style letting it fit into any brick-built scene, but at a scale that creates some sense of realism. Big enough to tackle any rescue, small enough to still look kinda cute. Lovely.

Pretty peculiar parts usage

It’s not every day you see a castle made of body parts. And you might not expect such a thing to look quite this pretty. Fresh from using bananas for a cottage roof, alego alego has now put together a cute little microscale castle which makes extensive use of torso pieces from Friends minidolls. The parts selection somehow works, resulting in a creation that’s both weird and wonderful. I particularly like the minifig lifejacket used to create the yellow gatehouse — inspired.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

Prolific Australian builder Karf Oohlu (aka Fedde Barendrecht) makes use of the still relatively-new “macaroni pipe” piece to create a twisty bendy pipey masterpiece of greebling. I have no idea what this piece of equipment does, but I imagine it makes some immensely pleasing gurgling noises when it’s operating. Aside from the piping, the use of engine turbine inserts placed back-to-back makes for an effective gasket – I’ll be stealing that for my own models.

Fantastic fantasy inn

The inn — an essential location in any half-decent fantasy tale. Where would your adventurers be if they didn’t have a good tavern to bed down in, get drunk in, hear gossip in, and get into fights in? titus.verelst‘s Grand Griffon is an impressive creation, with nicely-built Tudor-style panelling, and landscaping which adds detail and a sense of place without distracting from the central building.

This builder is on something of a roll with the fantasy creations at the moment. I really liked this detail shot from another model, showing an armourer at work in a side-street of a bustling town. It’s great when LEGO builders get their cameras down and close, creating minifigure eye-level scenes like this…