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

Collaboration breeds a fine set of rovers

Jason Briscoe has shared an excellent space rover featuring multiple trailers. It was part of a collaborative display at the recent Portugal fan weekend, with many of the attendees bringing along a trailer design based on the common chassis. I was lucky enough to see Jason’s contribution “in the brick” at the Bricktastic show and they’re lovely little models.

Miguel Reizinho came up with the original design for the trailers. It’s a smart little build and clearly made for a good solid base for the participants to riff on. Nice work. I love when little collaborations spring up like this — especially ones that cross borders. It reminds me our hobby is an international one, and that plastic bricks speak their own language.

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Cutest Police Patlabor

Lee Young has nailed it with these super-cute chibi Mobile Police Patlabor mecha models. Despite the dinky scale and super-deformed proportions, these guys still have an impressive chunky heft about them. They look like they’d just relish the opportunity to suppress your street protest.

Lee has been building a few mecha figures at this scale recently. Check out this pretty damn awesome rendition of Optimus Prime using your local downtown for cover…

Majestic giants of the African plains

Legostrator‘s latest creation is a fabulous scene of sub-Saharan Africa — featuring wonderful brick-built elephants traversing the dusty plains.

The elephants themselves are great examples of brick-sculpting — with complex organic shapes well-rendered. However, as with all the best LEGO scenes, the central models are elevated into something special by the surrounding attention to detail. The feel of a hot, dusty plain is captured perfectly with the depiction of scrub vegetation and the color choices. The lighting for the photo adds immensely to the atmosphere as well. Great stuff.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people...”

Oh you can’t help that — we’re all mad here. So much so that we love these Alice In Wonderland figures by Brick Blue Wren very much indeed. We’ve featured a couple of Alice-themed LEGO creations recently, and personally I never tire of seeing Moko’s brilliant Alice and the White Rabbit model, but I thought these figures were very cool too…

The details of the Mad Hatter’s outfit are simply spot-on, and the shaping on the female figures’ outfits is excellent. I particularly like the turntable bases on the Red Queen’s dress — simple parts use, but creating a realistic impression of an embroidered pattern. I want a White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat at this scale now please. Oh, and a drug-smoking Caterpillar while you’re at it.

So you wanna upgrade your podracer eh?

Usually a clutter of detail in a LEGO creation can be a bad thing, dragging the eye around the image and distracting attention from what should be the scene’s focus. However, Patrick B.‘s excellent recreation of Watto’s Workshop from The Phantom Menace takes surrounding clutter and turns it into the main event.

As well as some smart brick-built greebly things lying around, Patrick has also made use of individual LEGO elements with interesting textures. Okay, this might not be actual building as such, but the carefully-haphazard arrangement of these bricks adds nicely to the overall sense of detail and depth. And don’t miss the lovely touches like the use of textured grille bricks for a cross-hatched floor effect, and the conical equipment built of “cheesegrater wedges” standing towards the rear.

Original Star Wars movie poster recreated in LEGO

Gamabomb‘s latest model is a fantastic recreation of the original 1977 Star Wars movie poster. While the large figures of Luke and Leia have been effectively crafted using bricks (check out the abs on Luke!), the builder has also cleverly used minifigs of C3PO and R2D2 to represent the famous droids as they appeared in the original print, while the sinister Vader looms out of the background shadows. All in all, this is an excellent version of an iconic image, immediately recognisable even as a thumbnail, yet rewarding of a zoom-in to catch all the details. The Force is strong with this one.

The great outdoors awaits

… and what better way to get there than in Lino Martins‘ latest creation? This fabulous 1974 Ford Bronco features the trademark touches which make Lino one of my favourite builders — smooth curves and good color choices all wrapped up in the large scale he seems to have made his signature.

Obviously the canoe and the power winch are lovely, the wood paneling effect is neat, and that metallic stripe down the side is just sweet. But what tops this model off for me is the detailed engine beneath the bonnet — brilliant stuff.

Donald Duck mech is ready to take the fight to Mickey

Looks like Donald has finally had enough of that mouse hogging the limelight. Dvd‘s latest creation shows just how everyone’s favourite anthropomorphic duck plans to even the score. This is the sort of model we love here at TBB — it’s not just good fun, it’s a really well-built mech too.

Too often these kind of mash-ups rely too heavily on the presence of the minifig to explain themselves, but here the job gets done with excellent colour-blocking — realistic-looking, but also unmistakably “Donald”. And if you need any more convincing this is a cracking mech model in it’s own right, then check out the beautiful greeble-work on the legs…

My only criticism here is the photography is a little washed-out. I wonder if a gray backdrop and less harsh lighting might have given better contrast for the base and white elements of the model? However, that’s minor nitpicking at an otherwise excellent creation.

Microscale office looks like the perfect place to work

Modern architecture might appear to be the perfect subject for recreating in LEGO. However, many of the angled planes currently in vogue amongst building designers actually make for difficult modelling in bricks. Polar Stein pulls it off in style with this microscale version of an award-winning office complex in New Jersey.

The model is beautifully simple, with excellent lines, much like the building it’s based on. I’m a particular fan of the angled supporting columns at the open corner. Also, at this scale, the use of multiple trans-clear bricks manages to suggest an internal structure. The builder suggests they’re going to have a go at this in minifig-scale. Interesting challenge, and they’ve already set themselves a high bar with this lovely microscale version.

LEGO Spaceman is made of LEGO Spacemen

aido k has created a fabulous tribute to LEGO Space — a classic blue space figure created from a multitude of classic space figures. I’m not normally a fan of rendered LEGO creations, preferring to see models and scenes created within the restrictions of regular part availability. However, I dread to think how expensive this idea would have been to recreate “in the brick”, and besides, as far as I can tell, there are no weird part/color combinations used here, just spacemen… lots and lots of spacemen.

It’s sheer steampunk balloonacy

Lego Fjotten continues to be one of the most interesting builders in the steampunk genre. Hot on the heels (wheels?) of his recent LEGO steampunk creations comes this cracking little hot air balloon. There are great details on display here — particularly the use of droid arms for an effective basket texture, and the mechanical boiler elements are simple yet believable. However, it’s the clean composition of the image and the cobbled base which elevate this model out of the steampunk norms. Plus, I love how the builder isn’t using the “same-old same-old” minifigs which constantly seem to show up in steampunk creations. Long may this builder’s refreshing foray into the genre continue.

Life’s a LEGO beach

Michael Jasper has pulled off a difficult trick with this image. I’m not normally a fan of minifigs and models appearing in the natural environment in photos. Having real foliage or objects tends to destroy any impression of scale within the models, making it obvious how small they really are. However, this beach scene is enhanced by the sandy setting. It obviously helps that the beach chair model is a sweet little build, and don’t miss Michael’s inspired parts-usage for the bikini top…

Edit: This relaxing scene is actually 10 years old, and it happens to be the very first LEGO creation not built by founder Andrew blogged here on The Brothers Brick! We’ll call this post a “classic rewind.”

About Rod

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