This elegant rendition of Minas Tirith by lisqr strikes a nice balance between detail and simplicity, managing to instantly capture the iconic style of the fortified city while not overwhelming with unnecessary minutiae.
Category Archives: Models
Citroen car of the future
What would it look like if you crossed a Citroen car with a Tron Light cycle? F@bz answered just that with this concept build:
I’m a total sucker for funky lit builds – and he has done a wonderful job using Lifelites inside the car to light up the wheels and the headlights. But it’s not just the lights that make this build super slick – check out some of the neat slope usage to round this baby out especially that 45 degree offset white windscreen in the back.
Epic LEGO Movie Diorama by South Korean Fans
Creative quad OliveSeon have unveiled a spectacular diorama based on the recently released LEGO Movie. Collectively, this group of four South Korean fans produce some of the best dioramas in the fan community. Their latest incorporates numerous official sets while cleverly expanding upon them to capture various scenes from the film.
Volleying doom for doom
During World War II, the Allies fielded approximately 50,000 M4 Sherman medium tanks. But ignoring the hard lessons that the Soviet Red Army learned about German armor on the Eastern Front, the United States and its Western allies delayed production of better-armored tanks with bigger guns until very late in the war. That bigger, better tank — one that could go head to head against German tanks — was the M26 Pershing. However, only 20 Pershings saw combat, between February and May 1945.
American 3rd Armored Division veteran Belton Cooper argues in his 1998 book Death Traps
After more than a decade on the web and a dozen LEGO events, one of my failures as a builder is that I tend to build first for static display and photography rather than functionality, and it takes a couple of iterations before I go back and give my models a bit more of an interior life. I’ve tried to improve this over the last year by adding internal details to my vehicles like a removable engine in my Shermans. But I still struggle with tank guns that elevate and depress properly. I’ve now addressed this shortcoming with my latest tanks, including this Pershing, my Soviet KV-1, and a couple of my newer Stuarts. Given differences in turret design, the challenge has been that each tank has required a different solution to achieve an elevating gun, ranging from guns that pivot on Technic pins to ones that go up and down on simple hinge bricks. It probably shouldn’t be this hard…
Strangely perhaps, my favorite detail on my Pershing is the set of stowage boxes on the sides, which are half-stud-offset in two directions to leave half-stud gaps between the boxes and a half-stud lip at the edge of the tank. You can see this best in this comparison shot, which shows just how much lower and wider the Pershing is compared to the older Sherman — a difference that made the Pershing simultaneously harder to hit and more agile on rough terrain.
Finally, here’s a quick little build I tossed together to showcase some of the rarer BrickArms elements that I’d picked up around BrickCon last year — an original American version of the M3A1 Scout Car that I posted last summer in Lend Lease program Soviet livery.
I managed to pack all of the following custom elements into this tiny little armored car:
- BrickArms M2HB .50 caliber machine gun (prototype)
- BrickArms M1917 .30 caliber Browning machine guns (x2 prototypes)
- Citizen Brick US Army Ranger torsos
- BrickArms brodie helmets
- BrickArms M1 Garand rifles (x2 overmolded “Reloaded” version)
- BrickArms M1917 printed crate
- Citizen Brick diamond plate tiles
For those of you curious what “overmolded” means, it’s an injection molding process in which a second color of plastic gets injected on top of another, bonding the two together. Will Chapman of BrickArms has been experimenting with the technique for a year or two, with absolutely beautiful results. But don’t expect to see this in large quantities anytime soon — Will hand-injects each batch in his secret laboratory. Josh and I had the privilege of visiting the BrickArms workshop last year, and learned first-hand just how labor-intensive the overmolding process is. Nevertheless, some of the overmolded items are available for sale from BrickArms resellers.
KG2.5 – ARC Omelet starfighter
I’ve been avoiding blogging this for days now, as I expected one of the space bloggers to pick this up, but I can’t let it go by… I’m not exactly sure what dirt Gold Member has on Ryan Wood (Lights), but it has to be something juicy to make Ryan build this for him:
The curved bits wrapped around the ‘yolk’ is just fantastic, and just enough greeble to satisfy the eye. And of course probably the best use of stretcher I’ve seen (look closely!).
British Rail Class 27
When I think LEGO customization I think of minifigs, but there’s an amazing subset of train builders that go to a whole new level. Case in point, Carl Greatrix (bricktrix) has built this wonderful diesel locomotive from Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company (BRCW):
Not only is the build stunning, but the sticker work, lighting system and built in DCC is nothing short of brilliant. If you aren’t squeamish – Carl has posted a picture of the inside guts of his Class 27 train.
Benny builds a Bat-Tank
Whether you’ve seen The LEGO Movie yet or not (and if you haven’t, what’s wrong with you?), this is a spoiler-free joke that you’ll appreciate once you’ve been to the theater. Without further comment, here’s a Classic Space Bat-Tank by Yul Burman Karel (yo3l).
SD Command Gundam by Moko
Growing up in Japan in the 80’s, one of my favorite toys (other than LEGO, of course) was little plastic models of the SD Gundam characters. Moko (Flickr) might be a bit younger than I am, but we do share a love of these adorable little mecha.
Don’t be deceived by the diminutive source material — this is a substantial model with an amazing amount of detail. Just look at the subtle grooves around Gundam’s mouth!
The full load-out is also impressive:
See more pictures on Flickr, along with break-down shots on Moko’s blog.
3...2...1...Launch!
In little more than a week, I’ll be joining more than a dozen other members of the Brickish Association at Brighton Modelworld in the UK. This is a show for scale models of just about any kind imaginable. In the last years it has seen an ever-growing contingent of LEGO builders displaying their models to a discerning audience. Brighton is a wonderful town and the show is always huge fun. Expect a report in due time. At Brighton, among other things, we’ll be displaying a collection of rockets and missiles, including the whopping minifig scale rocket from Tintin built by Ian Greig (bluemoose). This idea prompted me to have a go at a few of the military models that have been on my to-do-list for months.
The first is a Patriot missile Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL), as used by the Dutch military. Patriot is an American surface-to-air missile system intended against aircraft and ballistic missiles. A single system consists of a number of trucks with a radar, command post, generator and communications equipment, coupled to a number of launchers. In the Dutch military, these launchers are mounted on trailers pulled by DAF YAZ-2300 tractor units. Dutch, American and German Patriot units are currently deployed to Southern Turkey, to defend against Syrian ballistic missiles.
My second model is a ballistic missile on its TEL. The (in)famous R-17 Elbrus, better known as the Scud, was developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely exported to Soviet allies, including several Warsaw-pact countries as well as various counties in the Middle East, such as Syria, Libya and Iraq. Scud missiles also found their way to North Korea, which developed its own versions and in turn exported those to Iran. My model represents an Iranian missile, known locally as the Shahab-2, on its Russian-built MAZ-543 TEL.
Ballistic missile defense is a fascinating high-tech and high-stakes business. A typical short-range ballistic missile, such as the Scud, travels through the upper reaches of the atmosphere and plummets down towards its target at about five times the speed of sound. To intercept it far enough from its target, the interceptor missile travels at a similar speed. The intercept has also been described as hitting a bullet with a bullet.
The models were interesting to build, because they have lots of details and things that hinge, but also because of their camouflage. Camouflage is designed to break up the contours of an object and to allow it to blend into the background. The colours tend to be arranged in patches. Randomly throwing bits with different colours together doesn’t give you the right look. I tend to use the following guidelines:
1) the border between colours should ideally never be a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long before it changes direction.
2) once a border has changed direction once, it should change direction again quickly
Of course, this gets progressively more difficult as the number of colours in the scheme increases and as you move to smaller scales. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t finally gotten my hands on decent numbers of small dark green plates.
And the winners of the 75th LUGnuts challenge are
About four weeks ago, I announced the 75th build challenge organised by LUGNuts, the online group for LEGO car nuts. There normally are no prizes for the challenges, but because this was our 75th we decided to add a little extra incentive. Members could build a car, obviously, but with other members assigning the car in question. The builders of the winning cars get prizes, but also the members who suggested them. The judges had a hard time choosing, but after I tallied up all the votes, we reached a conclusion. Without further ado, here are the winners of the 75th LUGnuts challenge. The comments below the images, written in italic script, are by Lino Martins ( Lino M), who, for lack of a better word, serves as LUGNuts’ ringleader.
In first place:
Pēteris Sproģis shows us all how its done with his stunning1967 Ford GT500. He could have stopped at just building the car, but he sets the scene and tells a story with an entire diorama of a Mustang car pulling a Mustang horse.
In second place:
What happens when Lamborghini turns 50 and has a midlife crisis? The Egoista, as built by Curtis D. Collins (curtydc). Trophy brides half your age will forgive a guy’s pot belly and comb-over if he owned this baby. But you can’t take her with you as its only a one-seater. Awesome job, Curty!
In third place:
Lego Junkie. lives up to his name with his totally awesome Ford RS-200. (…) Good show, Junkie. May you never seek recovery for your addiction.
The winning cars were assigned by Raphael Granas (r a p h y ), Rolands Kirpis (Rolic) and Dylan Denton (/>ylan/>.), respectively.
We post contest announcements on TBB fairly regularly, but I realise that we don’t actually always show the outcome. If it is this good, however, that’s a big omission. Congratulations guys!
Friday Night Fights (Round 35)
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another awesome round of Friday Night Fights! I was going to pick some Movie related builds to square off tonight, but much like Benny, I got distracted by spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIPS!!!
In the red corner, we have Bob DeQuatre with his Zenith SPACESHIP:
In the blue corner, we have iomedes and his Nodens SPACESHIP:
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this bout by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the horse race was a bit of a no show with Schfio winning by a score of 3-1. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
The LEGO Movie, now playing at a theater near you!
The LEGO Movie is out today, and since you’re reading this blog you’re probably making plans to go see it in the near future! Unlike Andrew, I’d been hyped to see this movie ever since the first trailer, and somehow the final product managed to exceed my lofty expectations.
Nick (DarthNick) built this diorama as part of a display for the Toronto premiere, and I think the build (background included) does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of the film.
