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

I’m completely operational and all my bricks are put together perfectly

It’s the great-granddaddy of rogue AIs — HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built from a small selection of LEGO bricks by Jason Allemann, this model perfectly captures the unblinking stare of the famous fictional computer. I can’t look at this without hearing the iconic voice in my head, only this time there’s a disagreement over access to the bricks — “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t let you build that”.

And don’t miss the computer’s ID number — 0937, a number which keeps cropping up in LEGO creations for some reason. Who knows, perhaps it has some mysterious and deeper significance, like a digital version of 2001‘s monolith?

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Snoopy and Woodstock at rest

This brilliant little LEGO recreation of Snoopy and Woodstock was apparently a commissioned model. I really hope _BrickBro_ didn’t get paid peanuts for it. This is a deceptively simple build, and I predict it took a long time to get it this perfect. The use of old-style minifig capes for Snoopy’s ears is inspired, and the version of Woodstock captures the scruffy bird’s character in a handful of tiny yellow pieces. This would make a lovely desk ornament for any Charles Schultz fan.

Now hear this! Now hear this!

Listen up! Here’s something you don’t see every day — a cross-sectional model of the human ear, built from LEGO bricks. The work of South Korean builder Jin Kei, this is a large-scale sculpture with (as far as I can tell) an excellent level of accuracy detail. I’m a particular fan of the shaping of the Inner Ear organs in dark blue, and the rendering of the skull cross section in white with red dots to represent the honeycomb-like structure of bone.

I’d like to see more large-scale medical LEGO sculptures please. Could someone build me a model of a spleen?

Neo-Tokyo menaced by spindly mechanoid

It’s nice to see a LEGO mech placed into some sort of context, and F@bz knocks it right out of the park with this diorama of an unusual mech making a nuisance of itself on a busy city street. The cars and commuter train give an idea of the scale of the fearsome machine, and while the rest of the backdrop is very plain, it creates a real focus on the mechanical star of the show.

The mech design is wonderfully weird — spindly legs, a relatively smooth carapace stuffed with greebly detailing, and that vast sail panel sticking up from the machine’s rear. I love when LEGO builders let their imaginations run riot in genres that generally have established “rules”. This model breaks just about all the norms — and does it with real style.

Everyone’s favourite Disney princess

Immediately recognisable, and packed with a whole heap of attitude — that’s Miro Dudas‘s latest LEGO model: Princess Leia Organa, dressed for cold weather, hand on hip, all ready to give Han a hard time. In a relatively small amount of bricks, this creation really manages to capture Leia’s feisty character. The padded jacket and the boots are nicely built, but it’s the way the model has been posed which does all the work. The stance is perfect. I can almost hear her speak. “I don’t know where you get your delusions from, laser brain.”

We’ve covered one of Miro’s brick-built Leia figures previously, but he appears to be on a roll with a whole series of them. As well as the great Hoth-variant above, there’s an excellent rendition of the Princess disguised as Boushh the Bounty Hunter. Don’t miss the clever use of the printed letter-E tiles on the mask, and the great brickwork to create the belt and harness…

Dreadnought delivers the whale mail

A cute pocket battleship combines forces with a whale, apparently to deliver the mail, in this LEGO creation from Revan New. I genuinely have no idea what is going on here, but I like it. First up, we see the chibi-styled dieselpunk dreadnought sailing into a moody sunset, a companionable whale matching the ship’s course…

And then the true nature of this partnership is revealed — some sort of oceanic postal service…

The styling of the little dreadnought is smart — I particularly like the curve of the hull and the maroon striping. Those deck guns are pretty good too. And then the whale itself has a friendly face. Who wouldn’t want this guy turning up at the door with their Amazon packages?

All-in-all, this is nicely built, nicely photographed, and nicely crazy. Just the sort of stuff we like round here.

Unibunny wants chocolate

And now, for your continuing Easter enjoyment, Chris McVeigh presents his latest LEGO model — a hypercute Bunny version of the mighty Unikitty. Perched in a smart little basket and surrounded by eggs, Unibunny looks all set to enjoy a mountain of chocolate and then probably go on some sort of sugar-induced rampage. The colour choices here are great, as are the use of Angry Bird egg pieces, and whilst the crinkled paper isn’t quite purist in terms of building techniques, we’ll let Chris off because it’s ALL SO PRETTY.

Light-hearted brick Jesus reminds us of the real meaning of Easter

There’s always a question of taste when it comes to the depiction of religious or political themes in any artistic medium, and LEGO bricks are no exception. However, I hope it’s impossible for anyone to take offence at Lasse Vestergård‘s brick-built interpretation of Jesus’ return from the grave.

This is a great little model, depicting victory over misery and death and carrying an appropriate sense of joy — something you can surely enjoy regardless of your particular choice of belief (or unbelief) system. The thumbs-up and the cheeky inclusion of wounds in Jesus’ palms add a touch of black comedy, but the visual contrast between the grim grey backdrop and the bright flowers carries a more serious message of hope and an eventual release from suffering.

When there’s something square in your neighbourhood

There’s been a lot of LEGO creations inspired by LEGO’s new Brickheadz line recently. So it takes something special to catch the eye and rise above the rest of the blocky crowd. James Zhan does exactly that with these renditions of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man and Dr. Venkman from Ghostbusters.

Mr. Puft is looking very dapper in his sailor’s hat, and there’s good work on his little red bow tie too. Setting him loose amidst some microscaled buildings is a nice touch to give an idea of a different scale. Peter Venkman looks fetching in his boiler suit, and the ghost trap is excellent. But just check out Smiler — the use of a green minifigure tub as his mouth is absolutely inspired!

Designer interior with feature brick wall

There are so many lovely details in Heikki Mattila‘s latest LEGO interior. The exposed brick wall and the painting provide a smart and stylish backdrop, and the glass tables look very classy. However, closer attention is rewarded with some lovely touches — a golden spaceman visor as a designer bowl, Gollum/Frodo’s precious ring adding lustre to the lamp, and Technic half-pins for the little round legs of the IKEA-style sofa. The best detail of all is perhaps a little lost, slightly washed-out in this image — don’t miss the use of grille bricks, partially inset into the floor, to create the effect of the white rug at the room’s centre.

Here are some more examples of stylish modern LEGO interiors by this Finnish builder that we have featured previously here on The Brothers Brick:

Living the high life
Join the famous 800 feet club
Come warm yourself by the LEGO fire
Modern spaces for modern living
Chill out in this beautfully serene LEGO spa

One tiny leap for mankind

Our first look at the forthcoming LEGO Ideas Saturn V model prompted a bit of discussion amongst the staffers here at The Brothers Brick. A comparison of the portion of the set revealed thus far with schematics of the original rocket suggests the model is going to stand 3 feet tall. That set me thinking — what size would the astronauts be at this scale? Well, once you have a thought like that in your head, what else can you do but get building?

This started with the little figures and went on from there. Once the Saturn V set is released, I plan on building a launch tower to stand alongside it, with these little guys trooping across the gantry to board their ride. We choose to go to the teensy-weensy moon.

Pod 3 on station for all your outer space maintenance needs

A lot of the LEGO spaceships we feature here are large capital ships or nimble starfighters. David Roberts brings us an interesting change of pace with a heavy-duty maintenance pod — the sort of workhorse utility vehicle which keeps the solar system running. The striping and the brick-built ID number are excellent, but what caught my eye were the manipulator arms, the thruster design, and the cockpit design. A shout out for the landing skids too — a nice little practical touch in a building genre often obsessed with style over realism.