Maybe you were trying to jailbreak your iPhone, or maybe you were rooting your new Samsung. Or, if you’re clever like Ordo, “bricking” your phone means something entirely different—something a whole lot more fun. This artful still life looks like the real deal at a glance, but inspect more closely and you’ll see that not only is the phone LEGO, but the charger, outlet and even the countertop are too.
High heels, white evening gloves, a red corset with black laces, a dark red cushion and an intriguing posture… This must be the exact definition of a goddess. Eero Okkonen sculpted the most thrilling character out of a handful of bricks and we are left to admire his talent and her beauty.
NASA Engineer and LEGO fan Nicholas Mastramico has brought us a most excellent follow up to the shuttle, launch pad, and SLS rocket we featured last week. Nicholas’s microscale version is eye-catching with the great detail he’s packed into such a small model. What makes his version particularly special is his relationship with the rocket: Nicholas is a structural design engineer for NASA, and is currently working on the real SLS rocket.
This means his micro-SLS has a unique opportunity to stand in the shadows of its ancestors, like the Saturn V rocket pictured here.
Nicholas says he’s always been a huge sci-fi fan – but it was the early pictures of Mars from Sojourner that truly hooked him on space travel. He decided then he would build rockets for NASA one day, and that goal guided him through school to where he is now. He was recently involved in a test with a weather balloon, for which he provided a passenger. The experiment took the minifig up to 120,000 feet!
There are more shots of some of the features of the mobile launch platform and payload capsules, as well as an itty-bitty adorable crawler!
Not content with wowing us with his fantastic LEGO recreations of record company labels, Chris van Vliet has knocked it out of the park with this brick mural celebrating the heroes and villains of ThunderCats.
Here’s a close-up of Lion-O…
But what is a hero without his nemesis? Cue the arrival of Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living…
While the Halo license for building bricks is, unfortunately, in the hands of Mega Bloks at the moment, that doesn’t mean that Halo and LEGO fans haven’t been building iconic creations from the series in the superior brand. Proving that point today is Velocites with the HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL Mark IX Armor Defense System… or UNSC Mantis to save time. While it uses only official pieces (save for the bullet chain), this isn’t a purist build as the military olive colour here is done with paint.
In the interest of comparison, here is the Mega Bloks Mantis. For a $33 set, we must admit that Mega Bloks actually did a good job, but this LEGO version blows it out of the water.
Michał Kaźmierczak has built a stunning spaceship — the Spectre. Whilst the model is decked out in Classic Space blue and gray, it’s anything but a retro throwback, making use of new parts and modern building techniques to deliver a creation so packed full of detail it’s a delight to zoom in on the photo and look around. Kudos for the opening hatches and the packed interior — excellent stuff.
And if the model itself isn’t cool enough for you, Michał has used his photo-editing skills to fantastic effect on this hero-shot of the Spectre touching down on an asteroid. Cracking photography and editing show off the ship in all its glory. I’m getting a total Chris Foss vibe off this picture, and that’s about the highest praise I can offer on a creation like this. Beautiful.
If you’re going to be stuck in a lamp for a millennium, you might as well make it a nice lamp. LEGO 7 understands this, and has designed his version of the Genie’s lamp from Aladdin with an elegant twist — it’s now a high flying magical machine!
On the flip side however, you might just rue the day until you can escape from your lamp to get revenge on all your enemies. Cid Hsiao has built a depiction of just that, the scene in which the evil genie Jafar, set free from his lamp-imprisonment, tries to destroy Aladdin once again.
The Deathly Halliwell isn’t just bringing you great LEGO renditions of Warhammer 40K models, but also an invitation to join in on the fun — the builder is working with Conner Lill to build a Warhammer 40K layout for BrickWorld Chicago. If your 40K knowledge isn’t up to scrap, what you’re looking at here is a Great Unclean One (which looks like Scabeiathrax), Plague Drones, and a Herald of Nurgle.
Check out this fantastic Piper Super Cub by Norweasel. The overall shaping is lovely, and there’s some smart parts usage going on—particularly the use of “useless” rubber spike pieces for the tail of the floats. I’m not 100% convinced by the swords as props, but that’s a small grumble at an otherwise excellent model.
And to top it all, the builder has posted a detailed breakdown of how the model is built so you can have a go yourself.
The asymmetrical ships and bold colors of Homeworld continue to inspire LEGO builders year after year, and Tim Schwalfenberg is no exception. Tim is working on another large fleet for BrickWorld Chicago in a couple of weeks, but teased us with this Corvette from the Vaygr faction (duplicated on a cool deep space backdrop). While I certainly love seeing (and building) large fleets of microscale spaceships, it’s often easy to overlook the great building techniques that go into the smaller vessels, overshadowed as they often are by the large capital ship at the center of the fleet. Despite their relatively small size, the Corvette is packed full of detail, from the greebly sensors to the cannon.
Tim says he included a number of custom pieces that he 3D-printed himself. Can you spot them? What do you think about 3D printing pieces to include in LEGO creations?
Otto Blees built a follow-up to his LRV3 Javelin with Birth of History, another Guardian jumpship from Destiny. His LEGO rendition of this chunky craft looks fantastic and accurate to the in-game ship, but with a more vibrant color scheme. The subtle angles on the fuselage and detailing inside and outside of the massive thrusters are the standout features to me here.
Whether it’s from dropping pesky Spiny Eggs to slow your progress on World 4-1, fishing your kart out of the water on Banshee Boardwalk, or carrying the third-person camera though Peach’s Castle, Super Mario Bros players will recognize this LEGO Lakitu built by Cecilie Fritzvold. Some clever use of parts make Cecilie’s Lakitu come to life, like the mudguard piece for the cloud’s smile and a rubber band around Lakitu’s eyes for his goggles.
