I guess we are on a car kick. Check out this rendition of the VW Samba-Bus by Scandell. I love the color scheme and that interior is pretty sweet. I’m loving those seats!
Category Archives: Building Techniques
1912 Ford Model T
edulyoung has built an incredibly detailed Model T. I think my favorite detail is the tires. Awesome.
A Visit to the Lettuce Patch
Classic Castle member, Lord Scuba, recently posted a single picture of his lettuce patch.
Besides the plethora of green hairpieces, the simplicity of this creation really stood out. The posing of the farmer is just about perfect and I have never seen that rat used so well.
It doesn’t get any more real in LEGO
Jarek’s (Jerrec) Polish Junak M10 motorcycle is as real as one can get in LEGO. For a small model at roughly only four inches in length, this creation packs in so many realistic details and contains unorthodox building techniques such as using a sticker taped to 1X1 tiles to create the curvature of the fenders. Amazing!
Flowers on a string
Flickr user Kiolden‘s vignette is worth highlighting for a very clever technique used. Can you see what it is? It’s flowers on a string for the smoke from the rocket! This is a very useful and a much cheaper alternative to the ice-cream smoke technique invented by Mark Stafford.
Radiohead’s House of Cards video in LEGO by Ian Mackinnon
The music video for Radiohead’s “House of Cards” from In Rainbows (naturally available from 
) just seemed to be begging for the LEGO treatment.
Ian Mackinnon obliges with this strange and gorgeous rendition (with a hat-tip to reader wb):
Ian used the 3D plotting data from the original video to do his time-lapse LEGO interpretation of “House of Cards”. The result is sheer brilliance.
And here’s the original video for “House of Cards”, for comparison:
Previous LEGO + Radiohead on The Brothers Brick:
Massive LEGO Eurocopter Tiger ARH by Peter Edwards uses 5,866 bricks
Peter Edwards was commissioned to build a Eurocopter Tiger ARH for Australian Aerospace, the company building the real thing.
As you can see from the minifig in the photo, the LEGO Eurocopter is absolutely huge. It’s over 51″ (130 cm) long, with a rotor span of more than 44″ (113 cm).
Peter designed the helicopter in LEGO Digital Designer, ordered the necessary parts from Pick-A-Brick, and then put together the 5,866 pieces over a weekend.
To withstand the rigors of long-term display at Australian Aerospace, Peter then took another 150 hours over 5 weeks to glue the model together.
To see lots more photos, check out Peter’s Bodville site and click ARH Tiger in the menu on the left.
Sadly, for those of you hoping to build your own Tiger from Peter’s design in LEGO Digital Designer, many of the bricks Peter used are no longer available from Pick-A-Brick, making this truly a one-of-a-kind creation.
Custom Final Fantasy X-2 minifigs Photoshopped by morgan19
While working on custom decals for a trio of Final Fantasy X-2 minifigs, Jamie Spencer combined his decal designs in Photoshop with scans of the minifigs he’ll be putting them on, resulting in a rather cool effect:
Rikku, Yuna, and Payne never looked so good. I can’t wait for the finished minifigs.
MINDSTORMS NXT Rubik’s Cube solver by Hans Andersson
Hans Andersson’s Tilted Twister is a Rubik’s Cube solver built from only parts available in the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT retail set. Here’s what Hans says:
An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces of the cube. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.
Check out the video of Hans’ MINDSTORMS Rubik’s Cube solver here:
If you want to build your own Rubik’s Cube solver, you can check out Hans’ instructions, executables, and source code on his Web site.
And don’t miss the MINDSTORMS NXT Rubik’s Cube solver we featured a year ago, by Daniele Benedettelli.
Thanks for the tip, Clay!
PLUG members build LEGO underwater
Fernando Correia of TechnicBRICKs and his fellow PLUG members got together recently and did something that I believe has never been done before: They donned scuba or snorkel gear and built LEGO sets underwater. “Okay,” you say, “I did that once at my grandma’s place in Orlando.”
Fine, but did you build the set underwater while it was still in the bag?! Hmm? Hmm? Did you? I think not.
Only slightly less impressive is Fernando building 8418 Mini Loader with full scuba gear on — though not in the original polybag:
(Thanks for the tip, Roger!)
Remyth gets into a bit of a skirmish
The last time we blogged Thomas Wunz, I noted his castle-building skills, observing that he improves with each new diorama.
For his latest, Thomas applies these skills to ApocaLEGO in a scene titled “Clash”:
The architecture is great, and the scene has all the elements of good post-apocalyptic LEGO (including the requisite telephone pole), but what floored me was this photo:
That’s a white car door that Thomas is using as a bandage being unwrapped. That right there is pure genius.
Sailing the Steampunk Seas
SlyOwl’s latest creation combines two of my favorite themes into one sweet little ship. Crammed with all the fun details we have come to expect from this builder, this pirate ship sets off on its quest to plunder the Steampunk world!
