When talented stars collide, masterpieces arise. I hate to be so cliche, but it is what it is. This artwork is the result of a collaborative effort between Grant Davis, Eli Willsea, and Micah Biedeman. It was the product of hanging out in Grant’s home last year, 3 weeks worth of cumulative effort, and somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 LEGO bricks (who’s got time to count when you’re oozing with inspiration and art?). Both Grant and Eli should need no introduction, as neither are new to the world of making large scale builds and focusing on a single aspect of wonder. In 2018, they walked away with The Brothers Brick Creation of the Year award, and now they’re back with another stunning creation.
Category Archives: Models
Remain calm! Chunky Transformers are here to help
If you like LEGO and chunky transforming robots, there is definitely more to these first-responders by Sam.C (S2 Toys Studios) than meets the eye. (See what I did there?) Both Autobots feature angled faces and anime-inspired helmet details that look like they transformed right out of a comic book, or 1980s-something Saturday morning cartoon.
Aside from the amazing pose-ability and blocky limbs, my favorite hard-to-spot part is the light gray 1×1 round plate with ball joint (most commonly found in yellow as the hands of the brick-built LEGO System figures) used here for the perfect connection in many of the bots’ joints.
Oh, truck yeah!
Some LEGO builds look like they are made from tiny studded pieces of plastic. That’s appropriate, because that is what they are. However, some builds are done so sleekly that nary a stud is showing, save for representation of a specific detail. These builds cause the viewer to do a double take, and this author has been known to utter a muffled “holy bleep, that’s LEGO” from time to time when seeing them. This truck by Dennis Bosman is one such build. It’s a refrigerated Volvo F12 truck, branded for the Stie’s Termo Transport company from Norway. It is way too big for minifigs (it’s 1:13 scale, as opposed to roughly 1:25-1:42 for minifigs, depending on the relevant dimensions), and scaling it that way allowed Bosman to include mind-boggling details. The cab lifts open to reveal a fully equipped engine, the cab is plushly furnished, the trailers are studded both inside and out, and even the refrigeration units on the trailers have motors inside them.
Click to see this truck in greater detail
Make 2020 the Year of the Guinea Pig
Chinese New Year is little more than a week away and, according to the Chinese zodiac, we are entering the Year of the Rat. When it comes to heavenly rodents, Ian Hoy has another cute critter in mind. Of course, I’m talking about the guinea pig! This little guy is beautifully sculpted with angled and curved slopes to capture the adorable chunkiness of domestic itty-bitty piggies. The facial expression is priceless. As for that bit of yellow in his hands, if you thought it might be a morsel of cheese, you would be sadly mistaken. It’s actually yuanbao, a gold ingot that was used as a form of currency in China from the Qin Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty. I wouldn’t mind dropping a few yuanbao myself if it meant this little fellow could join the colorful cast of zodiac animals.
It’s...wait for it...a trap!
Useful or not, some folks have a special talent, a gift, if you will, that is unique to them. Maybe they were even born with it and don’t know of their uncanny abilities until it happens. Some folks can wiggle their ears, some have really bendy thumbs. My talent; I write sensitive poetry about the man from Nantucket. I should recite some for you sometime. Okay Yaramanoglu built this stylized Admiral Akbar and his talent is to alert anyone within earshot that something is a trap. Whether it be a mousetrap, bear trap, or in this case, a deadly game of cat and mouse sprung by a ruling Empire against a Rebel Alliance, Admiral Ackbar is the gravelly voice of authority. Identifying traps probably earned him the admiral position. In every case so far, however, he’s been quite adept at identifying traps after they have sprung, not before. Some foreknowledge could prove helpful in many cases, Admiral.
Bulid your own Shaun the sheep! Meh! [Instructions]
If you ever have problems sleeping, perhaps instead of counting sheep, maybe, build sheep? Well, if nothing else works, maybe you can give it a go? You can thank Tiago Catarino for providing the pieces needed and video instructions to go along and guide you into a mundane repetitive task. You may want to grab a few extra eye elements or pick some other fancy ones for variety and fun. Let us know what count you got to before dozing off. Meh! Meh!
Video with pieces required and step by step guide here:
https://youtu.be/M9D33ijFWA4
Check out the eyes of this tiger
Before the internet was blessed with our Lord and Savior Baby Yoda, we were something of a cat worshiping culture. And though we’ve perhaps mostly moved on, there are still adherents to the old ways out there, paying tribute to the former deities of the web, like this Tiger by Herbert Lee (Tigers are the best kind of cats too). I’ve always thought that tiger paws looked big and blocky, and now I get to see them made out of plastic blocks. The use of black horn/tail pieces used here is impressive, both in obvious places, like the tigers claws, and less obvious, like the stripes transversing the white and orange pieces that sculpt the body. Two other impressive details are the minifigure hands as eyes and tooth plates to form an unmistakable cat snout. It makes me believe those pieces were designed for this model.
London children’s hospital built in 60,000 LEGO bricks
Hospitals have been a mainstay of the LEGO City theme since its very beginnings, but there’s never been an official set on the scale of Gary Davis‘ huge model of the Evelina Children’s Hospital in London. Gary knows the real building well, having visited it many times as a volunteer with Fairy Bricks — the charity which provides LEGO sets for children in hospital. He and Kev Gascoigne (‘Chief Fairy’ at Fairy Bricks) came up with the idea to build the model to celebrate the Evelina’s 150th anniversary.
The model took two months to design, a process which saw Gary poring over photographs and architects’ drawings, and given tours by staff of back-of-house areas to ensure the details would be correct. It took 60,000 bricks, and three months worth of building to put the model together — and somehow Gary also managed to move house during this time! The model is quite an achievement, managing to capture the distinctive shape of the real-world building, and stuff a detailed interior with minifigure action spread across examination rooms, offices, intensive care units, staff rest areas, and the atrium coffee shop and play area.
Take a look at more photos of this wonderful model
I love ewe
I’d feel sheepish about highlighting this creation if it weren’t so darn cute. Sarah Beyer built this tiny puff of cloud with eyes. It’s so fluffy!
This tiny creature uses a minimalist Lowell sphere for a body, Mixel tiles for eyes, and 1×1 tooth plates for ears. Add in a touch of vegetation and you have a simple, yet charismatic, creation. Sometimes that’s all you need to say.
Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need.
Every now and again, the LEGO community will be overtaken with a slew of builds in a common theme. The Baby Yoda builds are slowing down a little, but you can usually count on a new take on a Batmobile to surface every week or two. That’s understandable, what with the hype around LEGO’s UCS version of the 1989 Tim Burton design. I’m no different; I love the Batmobile in all its myriad designs. I didn’t think I could bring anything particularly new or interesting to the already amazing fan-builds that we’ve seen, though. So I took things a different (some may say “wacky”) direction. It’s probably safe to say you haven’t seen a Batmobile like this one before…
Yeah, I mashed the Burton Batmobile with the Unikitty! theme. It just seemed like the right thing to do. My first intention wasn’t to build this scale. In fact I had somewhat bigger plans. But, for now, I have both a minifigure and microscale version to share.
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Just milling around
When I think back to the LEGO sets I loved most as a kid, two come to mind: 6075 Wolfpack Tower and 6048 Majisto’s Magical Workshop. What made them special? Well, perhaps it was the opening functions they both had, so that I could have both a fully-enclosed building and a fully-accessible interior for my characters to live in. That, and I loved both wolves and dragons, so they had cool shields. Some castle builders (myself included) generally just build an interior room or exterior tower or wall from a particular angle, with a rainbow of parts behind the scenes. It saves time and bricks to do so. But when Isaac Snyder constructs a building out of LEGO, 99 times out of 100 it includes a full interior. Every part of the build is playable, accessible, and carefully thought through. It is like the sets of my childhood, only a billion times cooler and more detailed.
I adore roofs made from cheese slopes, and surprisingly for someone as prolific in the castle genre as Isaac, this is his first use of the technique. The chairs on the waterwheel look perfect, and everything has the polished Snyderian look one expects from Isaac; nothing seems out of place. Inside the structure, several things stand out, the first being that every level is accessible via a ladder or stair, with specific holes in the floor to move minifigures around. Kid me would have had a heyday making characters go up and down the stairs, falling through the holes, and so on. Second, there are beds and other practical furniture, which castle sets seldom had. Friends sets do, but not castle. Third, and perhaps most excitingly, the mill really spins! The gears connect to the grindstone, so you can make your very own ABS flour. Play functions and aesthetics. What more could one want?
Disney Deep Cut: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
These days it’s pretty impossible to escape exposure to a Disney product. They own the lion’s share of today’s biggest themes and properties. (Was that an oblique Lion King joke? You bet it was.) But, before they owned Marvel…and Star Wars…and everything else, Disney created their own in-house characters, too. Like Mickey Mouse. You’ve heard of him, right? Cool. But how about Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?
…Yeah, that one stumped me too. It turns out Oswald starred in 27 animated shorts back in 1927 or so. He made a return in 2010’s Epic Mickey video game. Still managed to fly under my radar, though. Luckily, Bruce Lowell didn’t overlook Oswald. And, as a result, we get an amazing LEGO recreation of this possibly-not-quite-iconic character. The expert use of rounded tiles recreates the distinctive facial styling. Even if you don’t know the character, you know this guy has to be part of the Mickey Mouse Club.
Bruce was inspired by Paul Lee’s 2010 Mickey Mouse build. Paul was inspired in that build by Bruce’s sphere technique. What goes around comes around! (Get it? Round? Like a sphere? Oh, nevermind…)