The N-1 starfighter remains one of the most iconic Star Wars fighter designs since the X-Wing, with its hot-rod yellow and chrome color scheme. Al-Tair has given this fighter a bit of a McLaren Formula-1 upgrade with a black and orange color scheme paired with engine extensions. By the look of it, the N-2 also has increased firepower, with several missile launchers added on each wing. If I had to guess who is piloting this fine craft, Poe Dameron comes to mind, since he rocked a similar paint job on his X-wing fighter.
Category Archives: Models
Gourmet Taiwanese food builds in LEGO that look good enough to eat!
For the grand opening of a new LEGO Store in Tainan City, two of our favorite Taiwanese builders celebrated with delectable brick-built versions of local dishes. Hsinwei Chi, fan designer of the LEGO Ideas Jazz Quartet, created a trio of dishes. Starting from the top, we have shrimp rolls, a fried snack of shrimp, fish paste, and vegetables wrapped in tofu skin. Next, shrimp rice is an iconic bit of home cooking with shrimp, shallots, and white rice stir-fried with soy sauce and rice wine. Last is a mouth-watering bowl of danzai noodles, with roasted pork, mashed garlic, and shrimp sitting atop chewy wheat noodles in a deep, savory broth. In case you’re curious where those noodles come from, they’re yellow flex tubes exclusive to the DC Heroes Bumblebee Helicopter set.
James Zhan showed up with two dishes. First we have a pair of guan cai ban – Taiwanese “coffin bread” – in which a thick slice of white bread is hollowed out and fried and filled with a creamy stew. James employs a fun mix of parts for the stew texture, including white bananas, large clamshells, and technic ball peas.
Fittingly, our last dish is a dessert – beh teung guai, aka Taiwanese churros. The fried dough of glutinous rice flour is similar to Japanese mochi, with a chewy interior, and flavored with sugar and crushed peanuts. For both dishes, James elevates the presentation with elegant serving trays and leafy garnishes.
If these Tainan comfort foods leave you hungry for more LEGO cooking, check out our food archive for more delicious models. (Especially this street food noodle cart that seems like a great place to enjoy some of those danzai noodles!)
Putting the ‘rat’ into pirate – with clever parts use to boot
We often see collaborative projects in the LEGO community where different builders will all build within a similar theme. But it’s not often that said collab is themed around a specific builder! Steven Howad (Ghalad) and co have undertaken a “special secret collab” (his words) to celebrate LEGO designer and AFOL community stalwart Markus Rollbühler. Steven was handed five mice to get him started, but he has taken them and really ran with it – there is so much NPU here! The mice are in the beard, but we also have: octopuses and tyres for the hair; Dots wristbands for the sash and headband; lifejackets for the jacket buttons; long-haired dogs in the cheeks; and plenty more besides. But my favourite – and the most meta – are the boat hulls used for the hat and epaulettes!
Set sail for adventure from this microscale port
Many LEGO fan events and building competitions offer brick-built trophies that are works of art in and of themselves, which makes them even more treasured for those lucky recipients. This microscale scene by Isaac Snyder is such a trophy, a one-of-a-kind treasure that will make an amazing display piece for one lucky winner of this year’s Summer Joust. The little town, tucked in next to the dock, is full of great details, but I think my favorite part is the tall stone watchtower with a signal fire, like an ancient lighthouse.
Summer Joust run from June 1 through August 1 with seven categories to compete in and plenty of amazing prizes. If you’re curious about participating, you can find the details of entering the Summer Joust here.
Street art from the walls of London to the bricks of Denmark
For such an inherently 3-dimensional medium, there’s an impressive amount of 2-dimensional LEGO builds out there. Mathew Walls makes his TBB debut with one such build – and appropriately, it’s an artwork that was famously drawn on walls! Perhaps Banksy’s most famous artwork, Girl with Balloon was originally made with stencils and spray-paint – and you can’t get much more 2D than a single layer of paint. But Mathew has done a great job of replicating it here, with the help of various curved and angled tiles and plates. Even the girl’s outstretched hand is there, reaching for the balloon that has escaped this 2D frame.
This Jurassic Jeep has us jumping for joy
When Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993, the special effects changed filmmaking – and the public’s perception of dinosaurs – forever. And while those effects still hold up today, I’ve also come to respect the way the non-dino production design of the movie has endured. Take this latest build from Jerry Builds Bricks. Just a quick glance at the gray Jeep Wrangler with slight red highlights probably put the John William’s theme into your head. You don’t even need to see the logo to know this vehicle is park property. And, while LEGO has released official versions of the film’s classic vehicles, Jerry has raised the stakes with a build that packs plenty of clever technique into an 8-stud wide package. Note the inverted cheese slope wheel wells, the gentle slope on the sides of the vehicle’s hood, and the way the roll bar structure flows right into the slightly angled windshield. It might not be as impressive as cloning a dinosaur – or even rendering one in the computer – but I’d still call it movie magic.
Massive power loader takes on enormous Xenomorph in LEGO sci-fi battle of the ages
Alien creations appear to be like London buses. You wait ages for some great LEGO creations, and then two come along within a few days of each other! We featured a wonderful Miniland scale power loader earlier this week (along with an excellent title, I may add). But one-time LEGO Masters Australia winner Henry Pinto has upped the load-rating on the power loader, and then some! He’s made a truly titanic take on Ellen Ripley’s yellow ride. But that’s not the only big build here. After all, what’s a power loader without a Xenomorph to chuck around the USS Sulaco’s lower decks?
Click here to take a closer look at these phenomenal creations!
A picture-perfect portrait parody
If you were going to take set 31213 Mona Lisa and turn it into anything else, what better subject than the artist known for taking someone else’s art and turning it into something else? And that’s what Trevor Pearson-Jones has done with this fabulous rendering of the king of parodies, “Weird Al” Yankovic. Trevor has made fantastic use of tiles and wedges to capture Al’s trademark curly locks and wardrobe. And he’s set a few piano keys into the frame as a nod to Al’s musical career. Not to mention that two accordions flying over Al’s shoulders, one with angel’s wings and one with a demon’s. I imagine the angel accordion is all, “Make this song about food” and the demon accordion is like, “No, make this song about reality TV.”
The Ridgeback Racer is ready to launch!
LEGO phenom David Roberts has mastered the art of building oddball little spaceships, each with baffling complex shapes and striking color schemes. That this Ridgeback, for example. The adjustable stand makes it clear you can launch this ship in a bevy of angles from straight up over the moon to right through your neighbor’s window.
The craft is hard to define from just one angle but this rear view image makes it clear it’s sort of a three-pronged shuttlecock. (Tee hee!) The engine and greebling is pretty sweet.
This short video of the builder disassembling this model is way more captivating than I thought it would be. Hidden deep within the ship’s core is a cockpit. Or should I say -shuttlecockpit? Sorry, I’ll just see myself out. In the meantime, watch the video and check out our David Roberts archives.
Take me home, country roads
No stranger to The Brothers Brick, Andrew Tate showcases this terrific LEGO build of an old-timey truck with a vignette that is the very picture of rural life. While I don’t believe this is meant to be any specific make or model, Andrew’s use of the 2×6 train windscreen element is an absolutely perfect choice for capturing the character of a truck of this vintage. For me, the whole scene is reminiscent of the nostalgic mid-century pre-war “when and where is this exactly?” idealized look of a Studio Ghibli film, and I’m really digging it. I’d love to get a behind the scenes look at a couple areas of this build, especially the supports of those beautifully spaced fence pickets, and those lovely wheel hubs.
You want the tooth? You can’t handle the tooth!
The internet’s best Bionicle-based building bonanza, the Bio-Cup, got up and running last week with its preliminary rounds. Margit has busted out her LEGO constraction pieces and is getting in on the action, too, with a tooth fairy! I’m sure we can expect some bright colours, clever contouring with some armour elements, and… Oh. Well, I guess it’s true that no-one’s ever seen the tooth fairy, so who’s to say this isn’t what it looks like? I do like the Visorak leg skirt, and the tooth-filled wings are clever too, using inverted clear dishes to keep the illusion of transparent membranes. I still wouldn’t want it coming anywhere near my pillow though.
Don’t lose sleep trying to count these electronic sheep
If you thought Blade Runner was a visionary mind trip, it’s positively prosaic compared to the novel its based on: Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Philip K. Dick. Builder Pierthviv pays tribute to the master of consciousness-questioning sci-fi with a book cover built from a truly eclectic mix of LEGO elements. While not directly referencing any cover I’m aware of, Pierthviv draws on very Dickian iconography, from the eyes in the machine, to the syringes in the cyber background, to the lenses upon lenses of the Voigt-Kampff machine.
A wider angle lets us better appreciate the builder’s craft. The constraction-style figure seamlessly blends organic musculature with cybernetic elements in a way that feels straight out of and 70s pulp sci-fi art. The Dreamzzz brain, exposed as a robot claw lifts of the top of the skull, is especially chilling. The sheep in the monitor is the only source of color and escape in this dystopian vignette, matching the theme of the novel.
Pierthviv created this chilling model for the first round of the 2025 Bio-Cup with the theme “Dreams.”