Take a journey back before the launch of humans, robots, and Tesla Roadsters to space with a LEGO 1950s retro rocketship built by Jason Hlavenka. Slick transitions from the cone shape on top to the cylindrical body and quad fins at the bottom make his model pop.
The Volkswagen Golf GTi Mk1 first went on sale in Germany in June 1976 and was only available as a 3-door version. Although the Golf was meant to be a small, fuel-efficient car model, a group of VW engineers worked on the sport version in their spare time. To many, the Golf GTi Mk1 is the boy racer’s car of the 1980’s and Joe Perez has captured its distinctive form in LEGO.
Click to take a look inside Joe’s VW GTi Mk1 and under the hood
The Guardians of the Galaxy (film or comics) have brought many unique and interesting spaceship designs to light, most notably the protagonists’ personal way of transport, the Milano. LEGO has released some of its own versions of the spaceship as official sets but none to nearly the scale or amount of detail as BenFifteenTheChicken‘s recent build. The photography is top-notch, the lighting is amazing and the shadows compliment the shape very well.
The model sports more studs on its surface than is usual, which gives somewhat of a UCS kind of feel to it. Additionally, I think that the angles Ben has used would not work nearly as well if the whole creation was tiled or if he had hidden studs in a different way.
Fans of this model may also enjoy this minifigure scale Guardians of the Galaxy Milano we featured last year.
Galaxy Squad was one of my favorite space themes since the original space theme I grew up playing and building with. This pair of microfighters, created by Leonid An and Vlad Lisin , would look right at home with some of the official pairs of microfighters from the Star Wars theme. It is no simple task to re-create larger vehicles with such great detail and still built to fit a minifigure.
I hope these two microfighters spark more re-creations at this scale.
Polish builder Marcin Grabowski is no stranger to large spacecraft. We featured his DragonFLY-class dropship last year, and he’s recently completed this wonderfully angular starfighter set against the planet Mars. The heavily armed, predominantly white fighter fighter is complemented by technical components in shades of gray. The lines of yellow make the vehicle look like a racing ship, and I love it.
You can see the top and rear of the spacecraft better in this multi-angle collage.
I realize polar bears are an endangered species and killing machines, but can you blame me for wanting to pet one? Especially so after seeing this extra cute LEGO recreation by Jens Ohrndorf. The build expresses a lot of character and that is not just a consequence of using the eye tiles. The subtle angle of the neck and the shaping of the back are very characteristic for a polar bear. It is a feat of photography that Jens made the bear not blend in with the ice base under it.
The builder calls the photo on his Flickr Icebear 2.0, because it is actually a remake of an older build. The older version is well worth taking a look at, but the improvements in the updated build are quite obvious.
Though the original Lanz Bulldog wasn’t built for beauty, this model of the classic German tractor by Nikolaus Löwe truly shines. Combining SYSTEM and Technic parts, the model has some nice design touches; a brick-built seat, elegantly curved rear mud flaps built from Technic beams, a vertical exhaust pipe (for a hot bulb engine, perhaps?), even running boards. The hood and sides of the engine compartment blend Technic panels and beams for a clean look.
Click to see more views including a peek under the hood of this tractor
The term ‘cafe racer’ actually originated amongst motorcyclists from the London area in the early 1960s when bikes were used for short, quick rides between cafés. These lightweight bikes were designed for speed, agility and handling rather than comfort – hence the relatively short distance covered before the need to stop for a brew. BenFifteenTheChicken has built a LEGO version of the cafe racer owner by Marvel’s The Punisher character, it’s a fun little build with some clever techniques to capture the bike in minifigure scale.
Ben has kindly provided instructions to allow you to build your own cafe racer and the parts list is shown. Don’t worry if you do not have all the parts in the correct colours, just use the pieces you have and enjoy building a unique cafe racer for your own minifigures.
Click here for the instructions to build you own cafe racer
One of the fascinating new craft flying from the latest Star Wars film is Kylo Ren’s personal starfighter, the TIE Silencer. Mirko Soppelsa built this intimidating, TIE Interceptor-like craft in similar scale to official Ultimate Collector Series LEGO sets like the Millennium Falcon and Slave I. I’m confident Kylo Ren would be pleased with this simply amazing model.
See more photos of this large-scale LEGO TIE Silencer
This scene of a bounty hunter — either in a post-apocalyptic setting or he’s just a really weird guy in a poncho — with his motorbike seems to have everything a good LEGO creation needs: It’s built well, with obvious focus on the awesome motorbike, but it doesn’t end there. The lighting, photography and composition are all top-notch. The builder, Sad Brick obviously knows exactly what they are doing.
The different textures on the ground make for a strong contrast even though it is all the same colour. There is just enough vegetation in nearly dead colours to sell the scene as a realistic slice of desert, with a bovine skull and other details to bring it all together.
While the power of some dogs is in their incredible cuteness, other dogs — though certainly no less adorable in many ways — have been bred to meet the demanding needs of the humans that they work with. LEGO 7 follows up his amazing LEGO hot dog food truck with a trio of pooches who do amazing and important work.
Take a closer look at these LEGO working dogs
The latest LEGO Ideas model, 21313 Ship in a Bottle was released last week and some fans of the original model were sad to see the final model was smaller. Rather than build the actual set, Jme Wheeler has built a microscale version that can be displayed on even the smallest of shelves. It is not always easy to capture the essence of a larger set in a much smaller scale, but this is a fantastic little ship in a bottle. In particular, the use of 1×1 tiles held upright by the 1×1 modified clips is a great way to create the masts and sails.
It may seem that Jme Wheeler has made the smallest ship in a bottle possible, but it didn’t take long for another even tinier version to wash up. Elijah Bormann has managed to build an smaller representation of the model with his adorable single stud sized ship.
So, does anyone think that one more, even smaller version is possible?
Well after posing the questions, I had to at least have a shot at building a nanoscale version of Ship in a Bottle.
