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

Asymmetrical starfighter is a little classic

Aaron Dayman and Pascal have collaborated on this brilliant little asymmetrical space fighter:

The model is Aaron’s and shows a great approach to variable geometry. The off-centred cockpit and unbalanced wing design are excellent touches amidst the usual conventions and colors of Classic Space building. And Pascal’s trademark photo-editing skills are put to effective use with the background and engine flares. A brilliant little model, presented with style — exactly what we like to see around here.

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Sugar and spice and all things nice and LEGO

Check out the power of the Powerpuff Girls in this cracking setup from Seattle area builder Michael Kuroda. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have never looked so good. Bright bold colors, immediately recognisable characters, and a sense of motion and speed. It’s like a still snatched from the opening titles of the cartoon — excellent stuff.

Massive LEGO Avatar diorama imagines Pandora’s future

Jon & Catherine Stead have built an enormous Avatar-themed diorama depicting a future for Pandora where low-impact ore extraction has become a reality, with humans and Na’avi working together in harmony.

The layout is 3m x 1.5m — a huge undertaking, which the builders have managed to stuff full of detailed plant life and mining machinery. Jon says the model took 6 weeks to complete — you can see why!

Sadly there are no separate close-up images, but I’d heartily recommend clicking through to the image here and zooming in to see some of the details.

LEGO Dr Who chess set has all the moves

Adam Dodge has built a fantastic miniland-scale Dr Who chess set. The figures and characters he’s created for it are fabulous – various Doctors and companions facing off against a collection of classic enemies and villains.

We have multiple Doctors and the obligatory TARDIS…

And then there are the enemies. I love how Adam has nailed the design for Missy’s hair — immediately recognisable in only a handful of pieces. Cracking work on Davros too…

Click through for more images of this great creation

Who’s watching this watchtower?

Great landscaping and medieval style building skills are on display this latest model from Isaac S. There’s also a nice contrast between the stone texturing of the tower itself and the wooden hall, and the detailed organic looking base makes a pleasant change from the “square base framing” which has become something of a cliché in LEGO castle and fantasy building.

In his Flickr post, Isaac is happy to point out where he’s taken inspiration from other builders in this model. I enjoy when builders do this — it’s a little hat tip show of respect, and it doesn’t retract from this being a solid creation in its own right.

A double-helping of Spacey goodness

First up, Moko with a beautiful little space crawler decked out in Classic Space livery. What’s not to love here? Trans-yellow windows, blue and gray color-scheme, black and yellow striping, and even the red and green lights in appropriate positions — this model follows all the “rules” for Classic Space building, but still manages to look fresh and interesting.

And then we have Jason Briscoe‘s latest, a tanker truck in M-Tron colors. This is a great little model, and despite being built in an “old” LEGO theme, it makes interesting use of the some of the newest LEGO parts. Check out the Nexo Knight shields as plating and mech torso pieces as greebling. Really good work.

Desert dwelling puts other houses in the shade

Marcel V. has built a wonderful little desert scene. The house walls show lovely texturing and color choice, and there’s some nice parts usage on display — particular props go out for the white snake as a curl of smoke.

I’m also impressed with the rock and plant details on the base. Sometimes “tanscaping” like this can feel a bit plain and formulaic, but the curved rocks, minifig-hand scrub plants, and the paving around the door make the base of this model as visually-interesting as the house itself. Good stuff.

The height of good microscale

This lovely towerblock by delayice is a great piece of microscale building. The blue and grey color scheme creates a sense of modernity and style, and there’s good details in the lower lobby building at the tower’s base. Check out the offset “headlight brick” providing wall texture and window detailing — nice work.

Rusty rail truck gets the job done

There’s a real art in depicting decay and dilapidation in LEGO. The solid colors and straight lines of our favourite construction system tend not to lend themselves well to such subjects. But Maciej Drwiega has nailed it with this rusting rail truck. Smart color combinations and a clever sideways construction technique have created a convincing impression of battered and bruised metal.

Whilst I’m not really a train guy, I’d heartily recommend a visit to Maciej’s photostream, where you’ll find excellent photos of more lovely railway models and layouts. I particularly like the images shot with tilt-shift.

These chibi girls rule the school

Mike Dung has created a troop of supercute chibi schoolgirls. A relatively simple frame structure and face design manages to support distinctly different characters thanks to great use of color, and some fantastic hairdo designs. Brilliant stuff Mike.

For the anime aficionados among you, these characters are from Love Live! School Idol Project (ラブライブ), a Japanese multimedia project co-developed by three companies. The project revolves around a group of fictional school girls who become idols in order to save their school from shutting down.

Beautiful LEGO sculpture glorifies the engineering mindset

Jason Allemann presents a brilliant model built by his partner Kristal — a stunning piece of kinetic sculpture designed to represent what goes on inside the mind of a LEGO engineer.

As a fully-fledged steampunk geek, you can imagine what the video of this creation in action did to me. This is absolute genius — expanding platforms, rising towers, crank-powered electric lighting. Check it out, it’s genuinely brilliant…

The red ones go faster

What’s not to love about a candy red hot rod? Andre Pinto brings us this excellent little model, which has just the right amount of chrome and tubing details to imply a sense of muscular engine grunt.

I love this. I want to push one around my desk and make vroom-vroom engine noises.