Creating a compelling LEGO model with just 30 bricks is tougher than it sounds. Gregory Coquelz is a wiz at making every brick count. There’s so much personality packed into these micro-build dogs hawking black-market bones. Their faces come courtesy of Dots, but it’s the ears and the black bands for eyes/sunglasses that make them come alive.
Gregory has been on a roll with cartoony characters of late, including this M-rated tribute that hopefully won’t get the builder cancelled.
With the largest LEGO Star Wars playset soon hitting shelves (and wallets), we thought it would be a prime opportunity to review some of the best location builds from around the MOC galaxy. The Star Wars community is no stranger to incredible landscapes and structures, and these are some of the best that the Holonet has to offer. Whether you’re a Republic loyalist, a Rebel freedom-fighter, or sympathetic to The Resistance, there’s something here for everyone to enjoy.
Where better to start than where it all began? Our first stop is Naboo, where interstellar_bricks shows off a stunning recreation of the Duel of the Fates. The giant beam pillars here are as imposing as they are in The Phantom Menace, making this a perfect location for a Hero Showdown match in Star Wars Battlefront II.
Where to next? Engage the hyperdrive and let’s find out!
Ever since LEGO transported the Castle theme to medieval Japan in the ’90s, samurai have inspired countless LEGO builds. artist_davs pays tribute to perhaps the most famous samurai of all, Miyamoto Musashi, in an incredible LEGO vignette that looks more like a museum diorama than a model built from bricks. Musashi, the famous duelist and philosopher, is uses a minifig head and a cloth-covered brick-built body for realistic proportions.
Musashi’s armor is as impressive as the man himself, incorporating cloth and string. The tatami floor, made from profile bricks laid on their side, is artfully raised a half tile above the floor. If you’re wondering where the kanji scroll comes from, it’s a sticker from the Hanzo vs Genji set and reads “Dragon Head, Snake Tail.” I don’t think that comes from the Book of Five Rings, but it makes sense that Musashi would display it as he was famously fond of playing Overwatch.
Everything is bigger in the United States. Well, maybe not everything, but American vehicles certainly tend to be rather large. Case in point: my Peterbilt heavy haul.
I have been building minifigure scale heavy haulage vehicles for a couple of years now. They are vehicles carrying loads too large or heavy to be carried by a regular truck. Two examples are my modular truck carrying a transformer and a specialised windmill transporter. So far, all of them were European. For my next project, I wanted something different, though. I wanted an American truck.
Click here to see more of these monstrous machines
In a surprise follow-up to his Bugs of Hallownest series (see our summary here), creature builder extraordinaire Joss Ivanwood (jayfa_mocs) presents the final boss of the original Hollow Knight entry. We’re once again captivated by how well he was able to capture this character, which is also perfectly to scale with the other buggy builds. Joss shared a few unique parts easter eggs, including using fabric wing membranes from the Harry Potter thestral and a rare neon orange Bionicle mask tucked within. He also teased the potential for Silksong characters in the future, and we can’t wait to see what he builds next.
I’m in Billund this week, representing The Brothers Brick at Fan Media Days, where we’re lucky to get an inside look at what projects LEGO is cooking up for the months to come. As cool as those sneak peeks are, a highlight of this experience has been the chance to see the MOCs on display in the LEGO employee campus, especially The Great Turtle Race by Ghaniaian/Canadian artist Ekow Nimakow. I’ve admired pictures of Nimakow’s work online, with the unmistakable use of black bricks to create large-scale models embodying the spirit of Afrofuturism. Still, pictures didn’t prepare me for seeing the artist’s work in person.
The sculptures are massive, but that alone isn’t noteworthy in Billund where you’re surrounded by large-scale brick installations designed to inspire and delight. It’s the non-system elements, like the Technic plates used for the turtle shells, used at such a large scale that seamless curves emerge. Thousands of feather elements in the fins are layered to create a texture between animal scale and brush stroke. The feeling of motion in the children’s locks stirs the spirit.
more of Nimakow’s work follows
When LEGO goth queen Pernilla Johansson (legonillan) shows up with her sigfig, you know things are about to get spooky! The Swedish builder found a lot to love about the recent Beauty and the Beast Castle, but the lilac and gold simply would not do for Pernilla’s coterie of vampires and ghouls. In Extreme Makeover: LEGO Home Edition fashion, Pernilla strips the castle down to the studs and paints it black.
Of course, a project like this is too big for one minifig, so legonillan invites a few sigfig friends to help out with the remodel. Even some hitchhiking ghosts get into the spirit of things.
Pernilla matches the original castle nearly brick-for-brick, while adding additional flourishes like bats and spooky foliage. It’s a great example of the joy that comes from treating official sets as a jumping off point for creativity.
Greebles are famously the extraneous bits added to the outside of a model to add texture. Builder Aidan Webb dares to ask, what if a model were nothing but greebles? The Wasteland Strider is inspired by the mechanical wildlife of the Horizon games, with Aidan exploring what a creature might look like if its rider was constantly scavenging for parts to keep the mount functional.
A work-in-progress look at the build process reveals how precariously assembled the Strider is – a barely contained skeleton of clips and minifig arms. As fragile as the beast appears, Aidan managed to wrangle it into a rideable state for a desert nomad and their supplies. It’s an incredible amount of detail for such a compact creature.
This week, we’re throwing out the rulebook and smashing the (injection) mould. Welcome to a Wild Card edition on Minifig Monday — a glorious grab-bag of minifigure madness where demons rub shoulders with space police, and chicken hags party with cake golems. You read that right. This week’s featured builders are a masterclass in thinking outside the LEGO box. Expect surprises, odd pairings, and a whole lot of imagination.
Our first pick is this incredible shark samurai from bricksnbeasts, featuring a vintage shark head from the early 2000s Harry Potter line, but also some fantastic dynamic posing achieved with some brick-built arms. Surrounded by an impressive shiver of almost every LEGO Shark to date. Aura off the charts!
Can you smell what synthbugfigs is cooking? It is a jaw-dropping cake golem. With dripping frosting and an impressively organic-looking build, this fig certainly defies categorisation… and makes us hungry.
What other wild cards do we have up our sleeve? Click to find out!
In the United States, the fourth Saturday in September is National Public Lands Day – a day of service and celebration for the stewardship of public lands, from community gardens to national parks. It’s a day to give back as well as a chance to visit any of the county’s national parks for free. If you’re in the US, consider visiting a park this Saturday or reflecting on how to steward nature and resources for tomorrow.
Let’s also celebrate the amazing LEGO Park Ranger account, celebrating 10 years of sharing daily builds inspired by America’s parks and history.
Enjoy more highlights from the LEGO Park Ranger below
One of the only constants to The Transformers franchise is that things are going to change. Case in point, we’ve seen Ultra Magnus, the Autobot City Commander, get reinvented in all sorts of ways over the years; from reluctant leader, to pompous general, to by-the-book cop. And Shipmaster has taken a little bit from multiple iterations of the character to craft this 7,000-piece behemoth of a build. All of the trademark Ultra Magnus details are present, but there’s plenty of creative license and extra detailing that makes this version stand alone amongst Ultra Magnuses.
Inspired by their own traveling adventures, pickybrickster created this fictional forgotten temple that blends various architectural styles and inspirations to create something new in LEGO form. The outside of the temple is lush and overrun with vegetation, featuring incredibly realistically shaped trees that bend and bow with an explosion of leaves at the top.
The contrast between the overgrown wildlife on the outside and the crisp and patterned architecture of the temple itself is a beautiful touch. A journey further into the temple may seem like a foolish venture, but rumors abound that treasures untold lie within.
