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 interior prompts nostalgia for Modernism

Clean brickwork and good macro photography make this modernist LEGO interior by Brick Of Infamy really stand out. There’s a lot here to love — from the excellent giant angle-poise lamp, the smart-looking chair, through to the way the desk is integrated into the wonderful bookcase. And last, but not least, don’t overlook the clever use of grey toothed monorail tracks to lend texture to the background wall. This is a deceptively simple-looking scene, which probably took much longer to build than you think!

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He-Man gets whitewashed

By The Power Of Whiteskull! Grantmasters has the Power! Or he certainly appears to, based on his latest piece of LEGO microscale building. The skull sword hilt is put to excellent use here, and its textured elements give an impressive sense of depth and scale to the tiny castle’s entrance. However, don’t miss the use of skeleton legs, wheels, and a good old-fashioned LEGO maxifigure’s arm in the creation of the rest of the keep’s towers.

And they call it Bella Notte

Just look at the puppy dog eyes on display in Nick Della Mora‘s LEGO rendition of the unforgettable spaghetti-eating scene from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Using relatively few bricks, Nick has managed to perfectly evoke this famous moment, and capture the charm and personality of the central characters. Check out the perfect recreation of Tramp’s ears! All that’s missing here is a LEGO version of Tony the Chef, serenading the canine couple with “Bella Notte”.

We are sailing

Not content with crafting beautifully curved brick-built hulls, Felipe Avalar has clearly spent ages getting the rigging and sails perfect on these two boats — the Amberle and the Eritria. Felipe says the below-decks areas on each vessel are stuffed full of Technic gears keeping all the lines at appropriate levels of tension. Such painstaking attention to detail is the hallmark of the best LEGO scale modelling — and these craft are great examples. I marvel at the skills of builders who create brick versions of real-world vehicles and buildings. Personally, I tend to build made-up fantastical things, because then nobody can tell me they’re not accurate!

Beer after wine, feel fine

At least, that’s the theory. I think. By the time I’ve had some wine I can never remember what I’m supposed to move on to next. Jimmy Fortel‘s latest might serve as some form of LEGO-mnemonic on my next night out. Regardless of its future usefulness, this creation sees bent tubing held in place with clips, giving a wonderful impression of line art.

This is a brick-built version of the logo of Jimmy’s local bar in Perpignan, France. Apparently they hosted a small exhibition of some of Jimmy’s artwork recently. As such, I think they deserve the LEGO community’s support — the next time you’re in that part of the world, swing past and buy some wine. And then some beer.

There’s nothing half so much worth doing as messing about in boats

LEGO model-building is rarely straightforward — often the simplest of ideas can become a nightmare to put together in the brick. Whilst the title of this brilliant boat model — Plain Sailing — would suggest city son suffered little difficulty putting it together, personally I’m not so sure. This creation has all the hallmarks of obsessive tweaking, rebuilding over and over to get it just right. I’m glad the builder persevered, as the result is fantastic — a sweet little brick-built boat, an impressive sail, and waves that could have come straight off a Hokusai woodblock print. Beautiful.

Tiny LEGO scene is right up our street

The modular buildings have established themselves as one of LEGO’s most popular product lines (check out our recent review of 10255 Assembly Square, the latest and largest modular set). However, not everyone has the ready cash to hand for these lbigger sets, so de-marco has come up with a lovely microscale town — all the modular buildings you could want, for a fraction of the money!

The wonderful replica of the Ghostbusters firehouse occupies a prominent corner site in de-marco’s version of LEGO Main Street, but it’s the frontages on the bakery on the left, and the Amsterdam-style townhouse on the right which caught my eye. This is excellent microscale that makes me want to go and build tiny towns for myself!

Lights! Mecha! Action!

When I have an idea to build something, it usually comes together pretty quickly — often over the course of a single evening’s LEGO-building. However, this creation has been slowly coming together for about 2 years! The mechs made their first appearance at the BRICK show in London in 2015, before being cannibalised and tweaked and rebuilt almost incessantly until now. Building them a maintenance hangar is an idea I’ve been mulling over for ages, and I finally got it finished a couple of weeks ago.

See more of the Alpha 3 mechs after the jump

Look at the starfighter, look how it shines for you

The wedge is a classic shape in LEGO starfighter designs, and that can mean a pointy model needs something eyecatching to stand out from the crowd. mrutek‘s Arrow does exactly that, through a combination of beautifully-shaped brickwork, and a retina-dazzling yellow color scheme. I’m a particular fan of the use of “bow” curves down the ship’s sides to create a lovely smooth section.

Sometimes LEGO creations using one predominant colour can see the details get washed-out and lost, ending up a little bland. The builder escapes that trap here through some judicious striping, and depth of texture added through the use of smaller tiles. Personally, I might have gone with blue rather than black for the stripes to create a bit more visual jazz, but that’s nitpicking at an otherwise lovely little spaceship.

New fusion battery and an oil change

What use is a super-cool, super-fast speederbike if it won’t go? Don’t underestimate the importance of vehicle maintenance in LEGO’s far-future. Sad Brick makes the mechanic the hero in this smart hangar diorama. The speeder bike itself looks great — it’s a veritable festival of greebling. But don’t miss the wall of neatly-placed tools, and the cabinet towards the rear with its tiny drawers — little details that create a sense of reality. Finally, the use of a blue glass “notepad” by the minifig is a cool futuristic touch (even if it is a it of a sci-fi trope!)

Holy Batbots!

When Bruce Wayne gets too old to pull on the cowl, he can probably hand over duties to this fantastic LEGO Bat-bot by Pete Reid. The automated version of the Caped Crusader looks fully kitted-up and ready to take on Gotham’s worst. I particularly like the use of minifigure “neck brace” pieces to create the iconic Batman forearm armour, and the way Pete has used the same parts to make the eyeholes properly pop in that mask. Also, don’t miss the little Blip-robot sidekick, tricked out in an unmistakeable Robin color scheme. Great stuff.

Foamy beery LEGO-y goodness – on tap

When it comes to refreshment, nothing beats an ice cold beer (subject, of course, to you being of legal drinking age in your country of residence). What could be better than combining beer and our favourite plastic bricks? Jimmy Fortel must agree — he’s built a fantastic LEGO sculpture of a draught beer fount and a glass in the process of being filled.

Now, I work for a big brewery in the real world, so whilst I admire Jimmy’s building skills, I have to take issue with the quality of serve on display here. There’s a lot of fobbing going on. I’d strongly suggest the bar owners check the dispense gas pressure on the beer line, and have a look at the cellar temperature whilst they’re at it. A quick line-cleaning might be in order too, just in case there’s a yeast build up. Jimmy’s really got to get the overabundance of beer foam sorted out, or the guys who run that bar are going to be decidedly unimpressed with the yields they get on draught — no matter how pretty the fount looks!