Andrew Lee shows us how ingenious parts usage is to be done. I certainly would have never looked at forks and hand-mixers and thought, “Self, I should build the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland!”
Category Archives: Models
When the Fire’s Blazing, Who You Gonna Call?
If you want your fire quashed in style with a flash of chrome and a streak of red, you’ll call Nick V’s (Brickthing) Fire Brigade. Nick’s making excellent use just a few chrome parts, and those bobby helmets from the recent collectible minifig line.
STG Fighter/Bomber
The Starfighter Telephone Game has been running for coming up on 4 years this March. With 4 rounds in the works, and a 5th in the planning stages there have been 48 fighters built by builders spread across the globe. The 48th fighter built is this glorious variant by Stijn (Red Spacecat). Typically as the game progresses the fighters get larger and larger. Stijn decided to try something different and started his team off with a rather large craft. The snails paced excitement of the game is always fun to watch, but seeing this fighter has got me really excited to see this round progress.
Runaway train
Caleb Randolph has taken train dioramas to the next level with “Anastasia”: Runaway Train. The detailed, raised mountain platform and use of classic train tracks to give a continuous edge is especially masterful. And that’s ignoring the excellent snow, steam, and, of course, the locomotive itself. Brilliant work.
London in a snow globe
The professional builders from Bright Bricks have a reputation to uphold for building big things for Christmas. In 2011 their 38 ft brick-built Christmas tree dazzled travelers passing through St. Pancras Station in London and set a record for being the world’s largest LEGO tree. Last year they built the world’s largest LEGO Advent Calendar for Covent Garden. This year they’ve built a fantastic collection of London landmarks to go inside the world’s largest LEGO snow globe. It measures an impressive 3m x 3m x 3m (10ft x 10ft x 10ft). It’s quite possibly the only LEGO snow globe and neither the snow nor the globe are made of LEGO, but who cares?
Snow gets blown through the globe and it has a tunnel down the middle that visitors can walk through, to be pretty much surrounded by it and to possibly feel a bit like London mayor Boris Johnson did in Feb 2009, when one of the largest snowfalls in recent history dumped 20 cm of white flakes on his city, bringing it to a stand-still.
I had the pleasure of visiting the Bright Bricks workshop in early October, when this project had just gotten underway. It must be tempting to cut some corners (perhaps even literally) here and there when building professionally for an audience that largely consists of people who don’t build with LEGO and who may not appreciate all the intricacies, but these are high-quality models. Having seen some of the builds at an early stage, I was very impressed by the level of detail and the clever build techniques that went into them.
The snow globe is on display at Covent Garden London until early January.
A Fortunate Misfortune
Steven Erickson (Brother Steven) built this fun medieval scene and I love how the jesters are all “balanced” on top of one another. The expressions and posing of the minifigs in this scene is spot-on. The look of anticipation on the bottom-most jester, as he prepares to step up onto the ball is hysterical!
Dippy the Diplodocus
VÃctor MartÃnez Nouvilas (MolochBaal) has created a beautiful copy of the copy of Dippy, a diplodocus skeleton found in Wyoming in 1899. Plaster copies were donated to a number of Natural History Museums all over the world. VÃctor built this to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Museum of Natural Science in Madrid’s copy of Dippy, which was finished on December 1st, 1913.
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A couple of Vic Vipers
My photostream is currently flooded with Vic Vipers so I felt impelled to post two that really jumped out at me.
Christoph Monnaie’s (stenrtje) is loaded up with all sorts of awesome detail and greebly goodness.
Rodney Bistline’s (Buster®) contribution literally leaps out of the screen in this lovely homage to vintage space box art.
Chibi tank takes battlefield cuteness to a new level
Dead Frog inc. has rolled out the cutest little tank ever. Dubbed “T3f”, it incorporates are the all the essential features of a battlefield death-dealer with the drop-dead cuteness of a kitten.
Four score and seven years ago...
This 19th of November marks the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The Battle of Gettysburg, which took place several months before, was the bloodiest battle of the American civil war and many of the dead were hastily buried in temporary graves. They were subsequently reburied in what was to become the Gettysburg National Cemetery. The Address was one of several speeches that marked the official consecration of the cemetery.
Gary Brooks (Gary the Procrastinator), who is no stranger to TBB, has expertly recreated the scene of President Lincoln giving the speech. At the time, the reception of the speech was mixed, but it has gained a prominent place in the history and culture of the United States.
Battlefield taxis
For some reason, a lot of military builders choose to build their military vehicles in dark grey. I suspect that it is because more suitable colors, such as tan, dark green or olive green, are expensive and because relatively few parts are made in them. Of course, if you do want a color that is available in vast quantities, you could always opt for a United Nations color scheme. This is exactly what Project Azazel has done for two of his new vehicles: an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and a Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle (AIFV).
The M113 was developed in the mid-fifties, when the US Army needed a new Armored Personnel Carrier. It had to be smaller and lighter than existing vehicles, so that it could be transported aboard the then-new C-130 Hercules airlifter. The key to keeping the weight of the M113 down was a new welding technique that allowed using aluminum for the armor instead of steel. It first entered production in the 60s and is still in use with the US Army and many export customers all over the world. It also spawned many different versions, including the AIFV. This was a more modern and more heavily armed version. It wasn’t adopted by the US Army, but was further developed for export customers, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and South Korea.
One thing I like about the model vehicles, besides their refreshing white paint scheme, is that they don’t appear to be ridiculously large.
1980 BMW E21…wonderfully chibi
Considering this car is built on a 4×7 stud footprint and is still instantly recognizable is quite the feat. I am not even a huge car guy and I immediately knew what it was. But should we expect much else from Raphy Granas?
