Demons stalk the night. Or at least they do in Jayfa‘s world. This LEGO Bionicle creation is a wonderfully dark and brooding character, put together using a prototype mask and custom-designed wing membranes. The pose is excellent, powerful and intimidating, and the colour scheme is spot-on — those splashes of trans-blue work brilliantly with the pearl gold against all the black. Inexperienced warlocks beware, this probably wasn’t the low-level denizen of the Netherworld you meant to summon…
It is safe to say that most builds featured here on The Brothers Brick are large. Not all of them are massive dioramas that take up a kitchen table, but they usually require at least hundreds, if not many thousands, of pieces. This build by alego alego is an exception. I count no more than 15 or 16 elements used in the whole build! However, it perfectly captures the essence of a small hut surrounded by stony paths and grass, a water feature, bridge, and blossoming cherry tree. Nothing is out of place, nothing is extraneous. Each element is chosen for its job with precision.
The base is a shield from the Knights Kingdom II Sir Rascus constraction figure, which most builders have probably set aside in a box as unusable for any future build due to its awkward size and shape (I know I have a few of the KKII shields gathering dust somewhere, never used — picked up on a whim from BrickLink). The printing on the hut looks even better than it did as part of an ice cream cone, and the conical hat is the perfect roof; a sausage makes a lovely curved bridge, too. Leaving the flowers still on the sprue was a nice touch to give the tree a more spreading foliage. I’d love to sit by the water for a while, eyes closed, sleep–, er, “meditating”.
When building with LEGO bricks, most people opt for recreating something that mirrors our experiences. We draw inspiration from the real world — maybe we look to movies, literature, or some other media, but our creations look like things that exist…or could possibly exist…in our reality. What, then, should we make of the artistic abstractions of Crimso Giger? Even though they exist as physical models, these spaces are like nothing we’d expect to encounter. Crimso has combined geometric abstraction with sculpture, leading us into an unfamiliar world without giving us a roadmap.
Sure, you can try and make sense of these images by trying to force some sort of logic onto them. Take Abstract – Yellow Grey Black, for example. The choice of colors and shapes reminds me of the interior of a computer, or a cityscape that’s been bent like a scene from Inception or Doctor Strange. But that’s just my perspective – maybe this is something else entirely.
Abstract – White Black Red makes me think of gaming. The red and black tiles seem to form a checkerboard, and the black and white groupings remind me of backgammon boards and dice. But what is that construction in the center? Is the “x” shape in the 1x6x5 rectangular girder a call out to Tic-Tac-Toe? Have I completely missed the point? I just don’t know!
Builder Frost takes us to a forbidden planet where the plants have a mind of their own. We’ve featured some of his terrific space builds here in the past and he doesn’t disappoint in this latest offering. While this couldn’t be considered “Classic Space” in the LEGO sense, it exudes a wonderfully vintage vibe.
I’m a big fan of old science fiction pulp novels. Their covers, painted in lurid colors, have a certain take on weird fantasy visuals that doesn’t really exist anymore. This model really captures the feeling of those old covers with its oversized alien-looking, tentacled plants. I appreciate the thoughtful use of transparent pieces that really help sell the bizarreness of the landscape. In particular, I’m quite fond of the blue and purple lighting pieces and the pink half domes. The decision to use the Flash Gordon style suits on the space travelers further drives home the whole 1940s look.
Not satisfied with a purely stationary LEGO creation, Frost has built animation into it and as an added bonus, the large green egg-like centers glow under blacklight. As you can see in this video, the large tentacled plants move and sway, beckoning our heroes ever closer to what may be a gruesome fate.
Large spaceships get the geeky type quite excited, and we LEGO builders are some of the geekiest. Over the decades, this has lead to a standardized criteria of what qualifies as a large space ship – 100 studs in length. While I do love every large spaceship out there (as the especially geeky type of person I am), I wonder if this criteria has started to impede creativity. With an annual celebration of large LEGO spaceships (also known as SHIPs) every September, the bricks of the world have been concentrated to bring us many elongated spacecraft that quite often measure exactly or just over 100 LEGO studs long. What about bulkier 90 or 80-stud spaceships that so rarely get made? On the other side of the coin, this cultural phenomenon has been a great source of inspiration to builders who may not have otherwise built a big hunk of space metal, not even a medium sized one! Another point is that this common perception of what qualifies as “large” is a uniting factor in the community.
The third side of this (apparently three-sided) coin are builds that are basically the definition of an elongated spaceship, but still manage to impress immensely! Anthony Wilson brings us a creation that has some amazing textures, negative space and colour blocking. What I love most about Anthony’s Pelicon-3 is the bridge area, with windows on either side, revealing a busy interior filled with trophy minifigures.
Most Western-themed LEGO creations take their architectural inspiration from the single-street towns of the Gold Rush — clapperboard buildings, usually saloons and general stores. It makes for a pleasant change to see something a little more Southwestern in tone with Andrea Lattanzio‘s build of a classic whitewashed adobe flat-roofed house. And even better, there’s not a gunfighter in sight; instead, we’re treated to a mariachi band arriving in their wagon to serenade the farmer’s beautiful daughter. The house is a visual treat, covered with nice details, from the use of printed 1×1 round tiles on the protruding ends of the logs to the plant-covered arbors that provide shady spots on the flat roof. The use of woodgrain tiles above the windows and doors adds some welcome texture amongst the white. Bien hecho, Andrea!
Not to make this all about me, but I’m an artist who enjoys illustrating book covers. My work is heavily influenced by old pulps, spy novels, game manuals, serial horrors, children’s mysteries such as Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and anything involving elements of danger, intrigue, lush colors, and provocative titles. The point to telling you this is with a spooky castle, and a dense forest, this LEGO creation immediately resonated with me. The title, “Treasure of the Snake Queen” evoked a sense of danger and exotic adventure. Already this was something I was excited to write about. You can imagine my delight when I then learned that this piece was built by our own Brothers Brick contributor Flynn DeMarco and his partner Richard Board. Together they comprise a cohesive building team who goes by the name of Tricky Bricks.
See more of this massive model, including a video of it in action!
When men get older, skin becomes a bit thinner and gravity affects and elongates certain features of the body like ears, jowls and…other things. This wreaked havoc in the old days when outhouses were all the rage. A fella would walk out to the pit latrine in the dead of night, have a seat, then promptly get a spider bite right in the dangly bits! Thankfully deadly spider bites have steeply declined in the US since the 1950s, according to records kept by national poison control centers. Changes in how people live have helped as the switch to indoor plumbing sharply decreased black widow bites. (And you were worried I was going to crack a litany of poop jokes with this.) Despite my delivery on the matter, you have to appreciate when someone like Chris Goddard has the gumption to…boldly go where not many LEGO builders have gone before.
Weathered details abound with the use of reddish brown and the similar-but-not-quite-the-same dark red. Corrugated bricks here and there offer up some texture while round plates denote knotholes or perhaps where termites have chewed through the wood. Traditional folk art such as the animal skull and the crescent moon cutout completes the rustic feel. What’s the story with the moon? Legend has it that it dates back to when the general populace was quite illiterate and the moon shape denoted that ladies were welcome while a sun or star signified a loo for the gentlemen. Having two separate outhouses often proved to be impractical and difficult to maintain, so many properties went with only one and the traditional moon shape remained. And now you are (ahem)…privy to information you may not have had before. Aren’t you glad you dropped by? You ought to celebrate your new-found knowledge by lighting a match before you leave.
If you’re not familiar with the term, greebles are small details that make a simple object appear more complex. In LEGO building, that term is often applied to all those little textural elements you see on LEGO mechs and spaceships. (Don’t forget that you can check out this and many other LEGO-related terms in the TBB glossary.) Redbirch takes the greebling concept one step further with Mechannibal – a mechanical monster that appears to be all greeble.
Redbirch started building with an idea for the feet — minifigure torsos with jet packs. The rest of the monster is built over a core Mixel-joint skeleton, resulting in great articulation. Each move requires a lot of fiddly adjustments, though, as the surface detailing has to be tweaked to close any newly visible gaps. All that effort is worth it, as Mechannibal looks great (and menacing) from every angle.
Now we just need some clever builder to do a similar creation, but with all those Friends accessories that keep piling up…
I suspect that any self-respecting mycologist would eschew chewing on any purple mushrooms; a bright color like that probably screams “I’m poisonous!” That’s not to say a purple mushroom is not edible. All mushrooms are edible, after all; it’s just that some can be eaten only once. This purple mushroom mansion built by Jaap Bijl can be viewed as many times as you like but, like a real purple mushroom, I would not recommend eating it – ABS plastic doesn’t go down easy. Built for the Parts Festival hosted by our friends at New Elementary, there is an abundance of lovely parts usage, as well as plenty of Jaap’s favorite color, purple.
In particular, the new projectile launchers make for nice columns to flank the stairs. You’ll also find some stars, hearts, and splats for flowers and archways, and who doesn’t like some clever carrots in builds? The large flowers to either side give the scene some scale; either the house is small, or the flowers are huge! I like to imagine that there are little imps or faeries about. There seems to be a budding theme of tiny fantastic creatures growing, with some recent examples here and here, and I am a big fan.
When I was a kid, pirate ships (as I called all boats with sails) were one of my favourite things to build with LEGO bricks. While I thought mine were OK, I wish I’d been able to jump forward in time and see some of Gerard Joosten’s ships, especially his HMS White Card.
While childhood me and adult Gerard’s ships are similar in that they start at the bottom with boat hull pieces, that’s where the similarities end. Though we’ve featured his builds before, Gerard pushed himself to take his shipbuilding to another level with this one and it shows. The two aspects that jump out the most to me are the shaping of the hull and the intricate rigging. Those large sails, coupled with small details like the brick built wooden stock on the anchor cement the HMS White Card as quite the stunning ship.
If there’s one thing that sets today’s LEGO elements apart from those of the past, it’s the wide range of bright colors found in modern sets; they expand upon the original LEGO primary color palette with stunning diversity. Many of these colors are only available for a limited assortment of parts. This digital model by Pau Padrós uses some great new parts like this brick with a half arch first released in 71043 Hogwarts Castle, and this rounded brick in colors LEGO has not released yet, but we can hope that maybe someday, they will. The model features an angled facade and plenty of unconventional construction that orients the LEGO stud in several directions within a single structure.
