The second half (see part 1 here) of my Forms of Gotham collection includes many of the staple Batman characters. The dark knight himself finally makes an appearance, as does his arch-nemesis the Joker. Building such a large group with wide-ranging styles and colors was particularly fun, as was bringing to life some of the most famous faces in comic book history.
Click to see the rest of the characters
Sergeant Chipmunk is the master of texture. First, it was insanely beautiful, jagged rockwork. Then, a sleek and stylish castle of ice. Now, it’s a deceptively simple castle with extra-blocky crenellation surrounded by autumn-time trees. The new texture? Well, Chipmunk put a handful of 1×1 round tiles to great use by carefully stacking them into dragonscale-like textured walls for his castle. I can’t imagine the zen-like patience this man must have.
A good solid door. On any space station, it’s the only thing standing between you and the dark, dangerous, cold of hard vacuum. Sad Brick‘s latest model focuses in on this essential part of any space facility — and this door certainly looks like it can take the pressure.
The vehicle and the little droid are cool, and I like the details and texture on the walls. But the door itself is the undoubted star of this show, with huge hinges and the use of slope bricks suggesting an appropriate heft. This is clearly a serious portal — not for casual opening.
Justin Winn‘s spacemen have been tirelessly going about their day-to-day jobs and even studying for advanced space degrees. So it’s good to see these hard-working minifigs take down their hair and have fun from time to time. Justin spacified Set 10196: The Grand Carousel and his new version is awesome. It has a ton of spacey details but my favorite bits are those custom printed space logo sails that form the carousel roof. They’d look pretty sweet on a space ship too, right?
Christopher Hoffman brings us an excellent Tech West stagecoach robbery scene. I’m a big fan of the Tech West idea — the mix of steampunk, dieselpunk, space, and cowboys ticks all of my boxes at once. And this creation is a great example of what’s good about the theme — the model is immediately recognisable as a stagecoach, with figures that totally look the part, yet it’s got beefy podracer-style engines which somehow don’t look out of place. Great work y’all.
If you follow the latest trends in LEGO mecha design, you’ll know that four-legged machines are very popular right now. We already covered the Lego Junkie’s version of Mack from the upcoming game ReCore. And now Simon Liu suprises us with his own vision of the cute yellow robot. I love it for its larger scale and great amount of greebling on the legs. And bonus points for the beautiful building solution used to make the blue core: a clear sphere filled with transparent blue pieces.
Meanwhile, it looks like there’s nothing that can stop Gamabomb from churning out similar quadrupedal masterpieces right now. His transport mech is very on-trend, but isn’t mainstream at all. And it has everthing you like, even that old orange hockey helmet.
The Palace of Culture and Science is the tallest building in Poland and dominates the skyline of the Polish capital, Warsaw. Łukasz Libuszewski has not only recreated the building in LEGO but has also managed to capture his creation in a beautifully atmospheric photograph.
The building’s art deco style is achieved with clean lines, grille tiles for the tall windows and some lovely detailing using texture bricks. I particularly like the seemingly simple parts used by the builder to represent the decorative masonry atop the walls, the original architect purposefully copied this from Renaissance houses and palaces of Kraków and Zamośćthat – a tile with clip and technic gear rack.
The full sets of photographs and views of the Palace of Culture and Science can be seen on Flickr.
The new 2016 Ghostbusters movie is due to hit cinemas in the next few days, with the Hollywood première on Saturday. As I mentioned in my review of LEGO’s new Ecto-1 set a few weeks ago, I was not impressed by the movie trailers, but I do quite like that the main characters in the reboot are women and I also like the new version of Ecto-1.
It will be no surprise then that I’ve built my own version as a new addition to my movie vehicle collection. Among fans of the original movie there has been a backlash against the female leads, but having built more than 50 movie vehicles and the actors in the last few years, I think it’s a bit staggering to see how so few movies seem to have female characters as anything other than sidekicks or eye candy. I also know that some fans of the original movies don’t like the idea of a reboot, but from poring over pictures of the new car, I think it’s obvious that whoever designed the car at least is a fan of the original movies too. Sure, it is an eighties Cadillac rather than a classic big-finned 1959 model, but nowadays a 1959 model is exceedingly rare while an eighties car isn’t worth much. It is pretty much the perfect choice. Its roof-mounted equipment also owes a lot to Dan Aykroyd’s ideas for Ghostbusting technology used in the original movies. I don’t have a vested interest in whether the movie is any good, but the car is cool and I loved building mine and the figures to go with it.
As a reminder, if you’d like a chance at getting your own copy of the LEGO set for free, you can still enter our giveaway.
Despite being named after the ship where it all began, much of the action in hit British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf actually takes place on the much smaller scout ship Starbug (in fact two entire seasons take place on board the cramped green spacecraft, while the show’s incompetent heroes try to figure out how they misplaced their original mothership). So it makes perfect sense that total smeghead Patrick Gregory would choose to recreate Starbug rather than Red Dwarf in LEGO, despite it’s more challenging spherical features.
But not only did Patrick model the ship’s exterior, he also built in a fully playable interior, spread over three decks, featuring many locations and props from the show! If you study the closeup pictures you’ll see the flight deck, medical bay, AR computer room, cargo bay and even a scutter or two.
Click here to order your portable walrus polishing kit and see more photos
Considering the depths of the oceans, there are practically countless species of fish to inspire new LEGO creations, such as this particularly dangerous-looking Needlemouth by Serbian builder Djordje. No doubt this is one fishy fellow you wouldn’t want to antagonize!
Tyler Clites does it again. One of our favourite builders’ latest model is a fantastic scene of a Soviet moon lander. The spacecraft itself is pretty smart, with some lovely believable-looking greebles around the legs, and tiny details like the attitude thrusters up top. But the photo-editing is something else, with the addition of a subtle grain effect to create a real old-school space feel. All-round retro lunar goodness.
As a minifig-scale creation, this beautiful Medieval church by Croatian builder Franko Komljenovic is relatively small, yet packs in an amazing amount of architectural detail. The variation of roof tile colors and liberal mixing of ‘old’ and ‘new’ grey bricks throughout also give the building a sense of age.
