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
It’s been nearly a century since World War I, but the echoes of that horrific conflict still echo across the years. Each November 11, people all across the world pause to remember all those who died in the war. Here in the States, Veterans Day honors everyone who’s served in the armed forces.
Jason Allemann has built this gorgeous scene “to honour all those who have fought for freedom in the world.”
They say you’re not a real LEGO Space builder until you’ve built a SHIP — a “Significantly Huge Investment in Parts” — that’s at least 100 studs long. As tempting as it was to take on that challenge, I was having so much fun with my little microscale fleet that I decided I wanted to stay within a size that was a reasonable addition to the carrier, cruiser, destroyer, and other little ships I’d built before BrickCon.
Spurred by a rival fleet Mike Yoder built, I set out to add a battleship. Thus was born UES Vanguard, the flagship of the United Earth Federation interstellar fleet.
Despite limiting myself to 55-60 studs, I still struggled with the engineering problems of creating something that wasn’t just built from bricks and slopes stacked on top of each other — something I know regular LEGO Space builders solved years ago. By the end, Vanguard was basically built as a “normal” LEGO (SYSTEM) skin enclosing a Technic latticework. That makes it strong enough, though, that I can hold it with one hand near the back and swoosh it around the living room. Sweet!
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
Looking like it’s straight off the track at Nürburgring, this elegant supercar by flickr user L@go is a wonderful example of the beauty that can be achieved in minifig scale.
But, you say, this little scene by Gabriel Thomson (whose more recent LEGO version of the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site we blogged a week ago) is a Star Trek scene! What’s with the Monty Python reference, Andrew?
Wait, what’s that on the viewscreen? And who’s that in the fez?
Egads! It’s the Crimson Permanent Assurance!
I suspect the crew of the Enterprise will be completely fine in the face of marauding financiers. They do, after all, have a certain Time Lord on board…
Via The Living Brick, my favorite minifig-centric blog.
Brickshelf user tkh has some brilliant manga/hobby characters in his galleries. His latest, one Melissa Seraphy, is particularly amazing.
It’s not often that a diorama completely defies my expectations. When I saw this brown, tan, and gray scene by Gabriel Thomson (qi_tah), I dutifully clicked through expecting something post-apocalyptic. Instead, I found something far, far more interesting — the monumental architecture of Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic archaeological site in Turkey from 11,000 years ago that predates agriculture.
Gabriel has faithfully recreated details like the stone walls between the standing stones and even the “bench” that encircles the structure. I also love that it’s a mid-process excavation he’s chosen to illustrate in LEGO, complete with a grad student (my assumption) documenting each strata with a camera as it emerges from the dusty earth.
Nick Jensen finished his most ambitious LEGO Halo project yet of building the Sniper Rifle System 99 Anti-Matériel (commonly known as the Halo sniper rifle) for his arsenal of brick-built Halo weapons. I asked the builder to share the process of making the SR99 from inspiration to the finished model. Here is his response.
How It Started
The graphics of Halo: Reach blew me away when I first played it. Textures, environments, and character designs all impressed me, but as a LEGO gun builder, I was most impressed with the detail of all the guns. Since then, I built the pistol and combat knife from Halo: Reach. I wanted to build more weapons from Halo: Reach and I was debating between the shotgun and the sniper rifle. I had the parts and money to make one of them. I went with the shotgun but got really frustrated when I couldn’t find a way to make the pump slide back and forth in the front. So I gave up and started the sniper rifle.
I captured many close-up screenshots of the sniper rifle in Halo: Reach’s theater mode, looked up information about the gun on halopedian.com, used the Halo: Reach action figures from McFarlane, and looked at Perry B.’s version as references. I wanted to include as many details as I possibly can squeeze in. I wanted the final MOC to be perfect.
The Build Process
One of the first things I worried about when I decided on building the sniper rifle was the length. It seemed that I would never build something that was going to be 5.5ft long. I thought about the project from another perspective: building the sniper rifle is like building the assault rifle but with a really long barrel. Breaking the project down into three simple parts (body, barrel, and scope) really eased some doubts I had. The sniper rifle in Halo: Reach is approximately 5.5ft long, so a tape measure locked at 5.5ft was always around for reference. I built the body of the sniper the same way I built the assault rifle, SMG, and pistol: Start from the front and build my way to the back. The barrel was easy and I had a plan in mind from the start. I would cover a supporting rod with 2×2 quarter cylinder bricks. So the only difficult tasks were the body and scope.
Problems
I did drop the gun once during the WIP stage. I got impatient and wanted to hold it as if it were finished, and it fell to the ground. There was another time later on where the front grip collapsed because of its weight.
Facts
Length: 63 inches (1.6 meters)
Weight: Approximately 10.5 pounds
Non-LEGO used: dowel rod, custom waterslide decals
Features: Removable magazine, sliding bolt, moving safety
Time spent building: about 4 months
Piece count: uhh…?
I’m still not satisfied with my indoor, winter/rain/Seattle photo setup, so I’ve been playing around quite a bit with post-processing to make up for the less-than-optimal lighting in my recent LEGO photos. After I finally posted my completed microscale Tokyo that I’d built a year earlier, I went a little wild with this next photo. I ended up turning it into a 1960s postcard, inspired by Godzilla battling some sort of kaiju as a visiting King Kong looks on.
The scale varies within the scene, and is wildly incorrect for the Micropolis standard I used as the base, but my tiny Tokyo has everything I remember from the time I spent there in the 70’s and 80’s — old-style bullet trains and neon-hued commuter trains, brightly colored advertising cubes atop buildings in Ginza and Shinjuku, the ever-expanding industry around Tokyo Harbor, Meiji Shrine, the National Diet, and the iconic red and white of Tokyo Tower.
After I posted my little fleet of microscale spaceships in September, I kept tinkering with the design of the ships, and when I got bored, built new ones. By BrickCon, I had added a new cruiser and hospital ship.
The cruiser is based on the same keel as the carrier, but the most notable improvements overall are the little bits of light gray, red, and yellow, plus the decals. Exo-Force sets provide a remarkable diversity of military/industrial designs on clear sticker sheets that add cool details to a finished model.
Since I had all that gray greebly LEGO lying around, I tried building a Silverback from Gears of War 3,
For the minifigs, I’m trying out the new Gears-inspired armor and weapons from BrickWarriors. Their lineup doesn’t currently include a non-retro Lancer rifle or Gnasher shotgun, so I’m using the old Amazing Armory versions.
(I’m also experimenting with a new indoor photo setup and post-processing, which explains the difference in the same light bluish gray between the two photos.)
