Category Archives: Building Techniques

Not sure what SNOT is? Want to learn innovative new ways to create awesome LEGO models of your own? Peruse our posts about LEGO building techniques to pick up tricks & tips from the best.

An Ancient City Besieged

This vivid scene by flickr user Mark of Falworth portrays the fictional Hellenistic city of Tiylis being assaulted by medieval troops. Mark’s techniques for the palm trees and rocks are worth noting, and it’s always good to see some ancient architecture outside of the northern/western European styles, but it is Mark’s water technique that really stands out here. He’s used plain bricks in several shades, jumbled in a thin layer, to produce a quite fascinating style that appears vaguely painterly.

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Raising the bar for building floating rocks

Barney Main (SlyOwl) built a floating rock sculpted in complex angles. There have been a few notable instances of this technique used, but it has never been applied to a floating rock due to the instability of angling the bricks. Here is the technique he used.

Caution: hot

Simple is good.

By Vanjey_Lego

It’s a rat circus out there, and I’m beginning to enjoy it!

Joe Klang (derjoe) has provided the perfect opportunity to sit in the hot and summery wastelands from Australia. There was a time when Mel Gibson was considered kind of cooler than an anti-semitic drunk. And Max Max comes very much from that time. In his second recent car-based diorama Joe shows why. You can almost hear the soft murmur of the thunderous engines of Toecutter’s merciless bike gang heading this way. The last of the V8 Interceptor’s is sitting calmly and waits…

A cuter scooter

Karwik is no stranger to two-wheel creations but I think these latest scooters are some of his cutest. The use of the hollow 1×2 slope brick is the cleverness that makes these work.

Shadow prowler

Ralph Savelsberg (Mad Physicist) has packed in the action on his latest iteration of the EA-6B Prowler of VAQ-141 Shadowhawks. I’m especially keen on the opening brick built cockpits but the rest of Ralph’s impressive bag of tricks are all on show.

Awesome Veritech fighter(s)

I’m glad that Mike Yoder (builder42) covered and added to maxvf1‘s amazing Valkyrie/Veritech fighter as it gives me an excuse to blog both. maxvf1’s is available on LEGO Cuusoo and was mentioned by Nannan a while back. ~~Unfortunately maxvf1 has restricted use of his pics so we’ll have to provide a link to the Gerwalk and Battloid modes.~~

Luckily Mike doesn’t.

And now maxvf1 doesn’t

Best LEGO X-Wing Yet

I usually avoid making a judgement call about a model being the ‘best yet’ (at least here on TBB). But I’m making an exception for Mike Psiaki’s (psiaki) latest iteration of the X-Wing Starfighter. Mike has packed in every detail possible from an accurate backside to detailed guns to working landing gear.

See more details of Mike’s amazingly accurate LEGO X-wing

Le-Go Yo-Yo

Lino Martins (Lino M) claims this Yo-Yo is 100% LEGO and who are we to argue? I’m also wondering if this model doesn’t have the fewest pieces of any we’ve blogged here.

And to let you all in on a personal shame: if you give me a yo-yo I will be ‘that annoying yo-yo guy’ until it breaks. Not the one who can do tricks, the one who just makes it go up and down constantly. I get so mesmerised.

Functioning Lego bumper cars arena

Nuno C creates this classic amusement park attraction featuring bumper cars that actually move. The mechanism is described as a system of gears underneath the floor that moves magnets that pull the cars. This technique has been used in at least two instances but none as complex as this. See the video on Flickr.

Here’s the video:

T’Met Monastery

Oftentimes we see applications of a new building technique on a small experimental model, but rarely do we see them applied to a large creation. I am delighted to see tiberium_blue‘s T’Met Monastery, which not only uses Technic liftarms for its massive stone walls but also depicts a refreshing subject of a fictional sanctuary inspired by a Star Trek Vulcan monastery.

RAILBRICKS Issue 10 is out

RAILBRICKS issue 10 is just out. Chock full of the usual trainy goodness with a focus on recent events. And it’s happy editor birthday to Elroy Davis who marks one year in charge of RAILBRICKS.

RAILBRICKS Issue 10 is now available for download. The new issue features stories covering some fan events from the past summer, as well as tips and building instructions.