I am a big Avatar: The Last Airbender fan. Of the three glorious seasons, it’s the final Agni Kai between Zuko and Azula that sticks with me the most. I feel it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of animation I’ve seen, and the music gives me chills. NeverEnoughLEGO built a mini-land scale version of Zuko and Azula, locked in their final battle.
Click through to see more photos of this LEGO Avatar: The Last Airbender model
I still remember reading the action-packed and intensely emotional scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Harry and his friends battle the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries in front of the unsettling archway known as the veil. This fantastic little build by Wookieewarrior brought all of those emotions back to the surface for me. The archway design here is quite lovely and I love the asymmetry of the build. Best of all, Wookiee was able to create a stunning shimmery effect of the veil using nothing other than a LEGO plastic bag. That’s LEGO purism and innovation at it’s finest.
Admittedly power plants are not a common subject for LEGO builders, so seeing one is always fun. WHBRICKS gives us this adorable tiny nuclear plant, which is lovely in its simplicity. It’s highly recognizable and barely 12 studs long. The billowing steam is particularly nice and adds to the overall look and feel of the tiny build. This would be an excellent addition to any microscale layout!
Alexis Dos Santos has you and your cargo covered with his steampunk skyboat to ferry it all across the skies. This multi-layered blimp is the first of its kind that I’ve seen that’s also excellently crafted and presented. The sand-green cabin is a nice touch to break the earth-toned colors.
This LEGO Star Trek bridge by Guy Smiley is remarkable. Just look at all those panels, screens, lights, and switches! Guy managed to capture the tense emotion of the opening scene of the newest movie in the franchise, Star Trek Beyond, and at the same time, he also captured some of the swanky 70s-style pizzaz of the original series. Seriously, is that a Chris Pine minifig or a William Shatner one?
We’ve seen a number of official LEGO Star Wars AT-ATs over the years, but they’ve all shared one fatal flaw: They’re just not as enormous as the menacing, walking beasts that first strode across the screen in The Empire Strikes Back. Mechanical engineering student Noah has built a properly scaled, 5,000-piece LEGO AT-AT that — at 2 feet tall — towers over minifig Snowtroopers and Hoth Rebel troops alike.
Noah tells The Brothers Brick that it took him about a year to build his AT-AT — a bit longer than it might have taken if he hadn’t been at school.
You can see a walk-around video that Noah posted on his YouTube channel, where he also has in-progress videos showing the internal structure.
We asked Noah whether his schooling in mechanical engineering helped him build such a large model. He tells us that the AT-AT’s head is particularly heavy, causing a moment of force, with the head extending far out from the AT-AT’s main body and affecting its center of gravity, which he solved by integrating Technic beams into the neck.
Click through to see more photos of this huge LEGO AT-AT
Two weeks ago I had the good fortune to attend Brickfair Virginia. As always, I had a great time talking to other builders and seeing their excellent models in real life. I also got to show off my own Tomcat model. I know that a fair few builders dread the public days on Saturday and Sunday, but despite having to answer the same questions over and over again, I love chatting to the public. One of the more commonly asked questions is: “How did you build that?”. I can’t give a satisfactory reply in a single sentence, but thanks to Brickfair, I now have two somewhat more complete replies to share with you.
Inspired by a great talk on building landscapes I saw at Brickfair last year, this year I gave my own talk on how to build military aircraft. Without me talking you through them, the slides don’t tell the whole story, of course, but I was also interviewed by the delightful Matthew Kay from Beyond the Brick. In the interview, I got to show off some of the Tomcat’s features and got to talk about the building process.
I hope you’ll agree that both of these are more satisfying than my default answer: “by sticking one part to another and repeating this until the model is finished.”
I never quite understood the appeal of the Smurfs. Growing up in the 80’s surrounded by an entirely different cultural tradition, the poorly animated, cutesy TV show just wasn’t interesting. But the wonderful thing about the world of LEGO is that I can appreciate a fantastic build even if I have negative interest in the subject matter. Koen is taking a break from building a large LEGO spaceship to build something using a bunch of the rare medium blue parts in his collection — from minifig helmets for his nose and tail to a plate for his ear.
I love Koen’s description: “The Smurfs are blue humanoids who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.” This smurf seems to be as surprised by his own existence as I am.
Igor Stravinsky is easily my favorite Classical composer, and I grew up hopping around to The Rite of Spring pretending to be a ballerina, after seeing the Soviet-era Bolshoi troupe perform in 1979 when they toured Japan. Stravinsky’s earlier The Firebird is no less beautiful for being less wildly innovative. In Russian folklore, the Firebird (Жар-пти́ца) is a creature who can aid or doom those who encounter it. In this gorgeous LEGO version built by VSefrem for Russian LEGO forum Bricker.ru, pearl-gold and shades of transparent orange and red add to the underlying yellow for a stunning effect. Particularly noteworthy are the 1×1 round tiles layered on the bird’s neck with clips.
While it’s easy to be distracted by the creature alighted on its branch, the tree uses some interesting techniques to create an aged, twisted look — a perfect contrast for the stunning Firebird.
As we start wrapping up our coverage of the various LEGO Castle creations that were part of the Ye Old Merry Battleground collaboration by “InnovaLug” at Brickfair VA, we would be remiss in our duties if we failed to highlight this beautiful village by TBB alum Mark Erickson. Mark’s village includes two half-timbered houses and an excellent church in unconventional tan (sandstone, I presume). The church has sculptures in the same color as the structure — though in fact these would likely have been painted garishly when carved originally in the Medieval era — as well as a graveyard and a red roof with some subtle texturing.
Mark’s extra pieces of rounded landscaping that sort of “drip” off of his main diorama illustrate the interesting approach that the InnovaLug team took to their collaborative display. Rather than integrating the various contributions on a single underlying brick-built landscape (as we did with our Battle of Bricksburg display), the team used white space between the builds to highlight each build separately. We tried this approach with TBB’s “ChronoCon” display at BrickCon a couple of years ago, and it’s not generally a style of collaborative display that I think works all that well — though InnovaLug seems to have pulled it off quite well by spanning the open space with little details like the smaller landscaping pieces here. What do you think of this display style?
legopthalmos has a strong eye for historic scenes, as he demonstrates with this excellent LEGO recreation of the iconic “Alexander Mosaic” in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. In the Battle of Issus in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), Alexander the Great personally led his Macedonian army against Darius III and his Persian army. Alexander defeated Darius, further enabling Alexander’s conquest of Asia. This LEGO scene includes all the details of the historic mosaic, from Alexander astride his war horse to Darius in his chariot. Both the horses and minifigs are posed well, with artistic angling of the Persian lances balanced by the denuded tree on the Macedonian side.
Here’s a closeup of some of the great action in this diorama.
Jme Wheeler has created a brilliant vignette featuring Maleficent and the fearsome dragon she transforms into at the end of Sleeping Beauty [ oops, spoiler alert! ]. I love everything about this scene — from the impressive billowing smoke effect, through the fabulous sculpting of the dragon’s neck and head, to the touches of gold on the base. But it’s the shaping and coloring of that dragon’s eye that makes the model for me — an instantly recognisable detail that’s perfectly-captured.
If you’ve ever seen the Phantasmic show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park then this model will instantly grab your attention. It reminded me of the massive version of Maleficent in full “dragon mode” which ends up rearing over the entire stadium. Great stuff.