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

It’s-a-me, Mario!

Cecilie Fritzvold is clearly a Nintendo fan, judging by this excellent vignette depicting a Super Mario Bros session. Check out the microscale recreation of the game onscreen — the floating coins and piranha plant are particularly good.

Super Mario session

Click through to see more LEGO Nintendo goodness!

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Self-portrait bust in LEGO bricks

Julius von Brunk built this amazing self-portrait bust in LEGO bricks. There’s great brickwork here, capturing the curves, planes, and lines of a head and face more accurately than you’d expect possible using plastic blocks. But for me, the main attraction is that raised eyebrow. It transforms this from being a cool technical achievement into a genuine portrait with a sense of character.

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Two boldly go...

A couple of excellent microscale Star Trek spaceships for you. First up, this recreation of the classic Enterprise by hachiroku24 — a lovely little model elevated with some excellent photography…

USS Enterprise

And then there’s Ben Smith‘s cracking version of the Excelsior. If you fancy a go at building this little beautie for yourself, Ben’s been kind enough to provide the LDD file

USS Excelsior

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All your tiny space base are belong to us

Karf Oolhu does it again with his unique blend of stripped-back style and clever parts usage. The little flyers are lovely, but the highlight of the show is the pyramid structure built with old-school printed logos.

Space Base

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Little LEGO flower cart is overflowing with nice touches

de-marco has built a cute little flower cart which wouldn’t look out of place in an official Town set…
flower cart
There’s good use of different varieties of LEGO flower stems and petals here, and the baskets and hanging buckets are nice touches. But it’s the canopy and the handles/stand which are the best bits for me – nice and simple techniques which do a great job in the minimum amount of space. Just goes to show a model doesn’t have to be large to showcase quality building.

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Kid’s room lovingly recreated in LEGO

Kelvin Low takes a break from his usual fun mecha models to bring us a beautiful rendition of a kid’s playroom.

titanrm05

The recreation of the painted wall is obviously charming, but I love the sense of clutter and the feeling that this room is genuinely lived-in. Too often LEGO scenes like this can be a bit stark, lacking life, and looking like showhouse photos. This room feels “real” and I can just imagine kids having a great time playing in it.

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Dieselpunk artillery has its sights set on awesome

Beau Donnan is a master of dieselpunk – which is like steampunk but oilier, dirtier, and more 1940s than 1840s. One of his latest creations is this tracked artillery vehicle, and it’s a beast…

“Hog” Heavy Diesel Artillery Mk. XXV

This crazy contraption features Beau’s hallmark realistic color scheme and fantastic greebling, but what makes this model really shine is the motorized features. Check out the artillery functions in action in this video.

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Inside a Dalek is a cooler place than you’d imagine

Xenomurphy has been no stranger to the pages of The Brothers Brick in the last few months. We’ve been loving his LEGO versions of scenes from the Elder Scrolls Online. However, he also built this cracker of a diorama, based on an episode from Dr Who where the Doctor and Clara are miniaturized and end up inside a Dalek.

Doctor Who – Into the Dalek

There’s some good greebling here, immediately identifiable as Dalek-style tech if you’re a fan of the show, and there’s an impressive sense of a wider space beyond the limits of the photo’s framing. All-in-all, this is excellent sci-fi building, and it’s great to see a Dr Who build which doesn’t rely on including a TARDIS.

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Long live the King!

Jonas Wide‘s latest creation is a detailed and realistic palatial residence, with crowds cheering a newly-crowned King and Queen. The model itself is excellent with intricate levels of texture provided by clever parts use — I’m particularly enjoying the textured columns, the use of ingots, and the croissants in the crest.

Vive le Roi!

However, aside from the obvious strengths of the model, this image really stands out because of the camerawork. The out-of-focus crowd creates a strong sense of depth and scale, making for a more striking and realistic scene.

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LEGO cyclops has his eye on you

Don’t mess with LEGO 7‘s latest creation — it doesn’t look like it’s in the mood for any of your nonsense. This little beastie has a brilliantly menacing expression, and I love the aggressive posing. It’s just waiting for you to try and make your move.

Cyclop-6

The model’s base is a great bit of work too — check out the skeleton half-buried in the sand. Great stuff.

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Famous derailment recreated in LEGO bricks

One of the most famous crashes in rail history is captured in this build by monstrophonic. On 22nd October 1895 the Granville-Paris Express entered the Montparnasse station travelling too fast in an attempt to make up for lost time. It failed to stop and ploughed through the buffers, across the concourse, and out through the station wall. Amazingly only a single person was killed — a woman hit by falling masonry.

Montparnasse 1895 Trainwreck

This would have been a great model on its own merits, but the fact it’s a compelling recreation of such a famous image just makes it all the better. Check out the original photograph and more information about the crash here.

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Stunning LEGO Nebulon-B Medical Frigate

Morten_Svendsen has built a massive and highly-detailed model of the famous Nebulon-B Medical Frigate, first seen in The Empire Strikes Back. Morten’s dedication to getting the angles, details, and textures just right in comparison with the model used for shooting the movies is frankly astonishing…
 Nebulon_2_full_front perspective
The overall shaping and coloring are simply spot-on, but the little touches are what sets this creation apart. Check out the medical bay window featuring the famous scene of Luke, Leia, and the droids watching the Falcon depart to begin the search for Han Solo…

 photo Nebulon_window_zpsc7vqh9dh.jpg

See more images of this fantastic model after the jump

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