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

What is the nature of your space emergency?

We see a lot of military and exploration rovers and ships in LEGO Space, but other services make only irregular appearances. Frost attempts to balance things out with this smart Medical Rover. The colour scheme absolutely pops on this model, especially coupled with the lime green minimalist scenery. But for me, it’s all about the double cockpit and the angled “snout” — an eye-catching unusual design, nicely-built.

Don’t miss the view of the rover’s rear, and the excellent use of short red axle pieces in “cross-hole bricks” to create mini Red Cross symbols. Lovely.

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Sad robot will make you happy

LEGO’s new Brickheadz line has prompted a few fan-built creations using the same chunky feel. This robot by Luigi Priori was inspired by the official line, but rises above aping the style to be a great model in its own right. Here the chibi look enhances the creation, whereas recently I’ve seen a lot of Brickheadz-style figures where the blockiness has felt a little forced. Luigi’s Mr Robot may look terribly sad, but he’s nicely put together — the over-sized limbs work well with the cubist feel of the torso, creating a super-deformed super-cute robot with a real sense of character.

A little slice of LEGO serenity

Sometimes all you need to relax is to contemplate a beautifully-built LEGO model. This wonderful bonsai by ZiO Chao deserves your attention — chill out and soak up the serenity. The gnarled and twisted tree itself is nicely-done — with an interesting technique of inserting flower stalks into larger leaf pieces — but it’s the little rock and the display stands which elevate this into brick-built art. I want one of these for my house.

Hovering across the apocalyptic gunk

Curved silver elements lend a nice retro chopper feel to George Panteleon‘s hoverbike, but it’s the smart use of sand green pieces to depict a post-apocalyptic sewer which grabs the eye. The tentacle tip makes for a perfect outpouring of skanky muck, and the soccer pitch part creates a great impression of a thick gloopy liquid in motion. I love when builders pay as much attention to the surrounding scenery as to the central model in a scene — it makes all the difference between a decent image, and a standout one.

Tremble at the might of Mecha T-Rex

The maths involved here are simple: (LEGO + T-Rex) * Mech = AWESOME. Mitsuru Nikaido knocks it out of the park with this amazing mechanical menace. The white cladding gives just enough structure and shaping to the model, whilst still leaving plenty of room for the greebly details to show through beneath. The restrained colour scheme works well, the dark grey mechanical gubbins offering sharp contrast to the panels. This could have been enhanced further with a different colour of backdrop for the photography, but that’s a small gripe at an otherwise excellent creation.

There’s so much good work on display in this model, but the highlight for me is the use of minifig chainsaw pieces for the jaws — simply perfect.

When giants roamed the Earth

It’s not often a small LEGO creation manages to look HEAVY, but takamichi irie‘s wonderful Styracosaur carries enough heft that you can imagine the ground shaking as it passes by. The use of bow plate curves across the build creates a real sense of muscles and sinews beneath the skin, and the colour choices are excellent — muted and natural-looking, but not bland. There’s good parts choice for the “beak” at the front of the mouth too.

I don’t care if Styracosaurus was a herbivore, and that those horns were probably for display rather than protection, I’m not getting within a hundred yards of this behemoth. Check out the close-up look and tell me you feel any different.

A Nordic town to settle down in

Games can provide inspiration for LEGO builders, although its often videogames rather than their more old-school cousin, the board game. Simon NH, however, has taken Settlers of Catan as his muse, and it has prompted a wonderful island scene, which ironically wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval real-time strategy game on PC! The landscaping grabs the initial attention, with a lovely colour gradient around the shoreline and excellent rockwork. But it’s the buildings which hold the eye, rewarding a closer look at some of the fabulous building techniques on display.

See more of this great medieval building

Judge me by my size do you?

Yes Yoda, I AM judging you by your size. And I judge you to be the cutest little Force-wielder ever. These microscale LEGO Star Wars figures by dmitri dolgov are fabulous — enough detail to be instantly recognisable, yet teeny-tiny enough to be supercute blocky interpretations. Sorry Dmitri, but I insist you go and build all the other Star Wars characters at this scale. Immediately.

Summer 2017 LEGO Disney Princess sets revealed at New York Toy Fair 2017 [News]

Continuing our coverage from New York Toy Fair, here’s a look at the new LEGO Disney Princess sets, coming this summer.

Everyone’s favourite mermaid, Princess Ariel, makes an appearance in 41145 Ariel and the Magical Spell. This cute undersea playset depicts the moment Ariel makes her ill-advised deal with Ursula the Sea Witch, gaining feet, but losing her voice in the process. The set contains 222 pieces and will retail at $29.99

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Summer 2017 LEGO City Jungle sets revealed at New York Toy Fair 2017 [News]

Continuing our coverage from New York Toy Fair, here’s a look at the new LEGO City Jungle sets, all coming out this June.

UPDATE (June 1): The summer wave of LEGO City Jungle sets is now available.

First up, the biggest set in this new theme: 60161 Jungle Exploration Site features a jungle temple, a crashed plane, a helicopter, an exploration truck, and a cool little amphibious vehicle. The set contains 813 pieces and will retail at $119.99

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Like a bridge over troubled lava

Whilst collaborative building is often all about massive displays for LEGO shows, sometimes it can result in something smaller, but no less cool. Eli Willsea and Grant Davis follow up on their impressive tropical island megabuild with this microscale scene of two cities separated by a river of fire. This would be an impressive little creation anyway, but knowing it was put together by two different builders somehow only adds to it. There’s a real sense of two different cultures and architectural styles confronting one another from either end of the bridge.

Typical day in Laketown – everyone just chilling

Despite mixed reviews of what happened to Tolkien’s beloved stories, the trilogy of Hobbit movies still served up some eye-popping visions of Middle Earth. One of the best, to my mind, was of Laketown — the city of wooden huts built over the Long Lake in a doomed attempt at protection from dragonfire. Marcel V. must have liked the movie version too, as he’s built a wonderful slice of it in LEGO bricks. Trans-clear tiles as icy water creates an appropriately chilly atmosphere, and the house on stilts is good enough to make me wish Marcel had built more of the town. And don’t miss the imaginative parts usage — minifigure ice skates as ladder rungs, and skeleton and minifigure limbs to create the twist of smoke rising into the frigid air.