We’ve see plenty of LEGO mosaics before, but this one has a twist. James Pegrum used LEGO to capture the archaeological discovery of a Roman floor mosaic. This is a teaser for a Romano-Celtic themed collaboration by British building collective Bricks to the Past, due to be unveiled at STEAM next month. Can’t wait to see what other gems are unearthed when the full display is revealed!
Disproving my assertion last week that LEGO models inspired by Classical literature are rare, the talented and prolific Letranger Absurde has just posted a microscale scene from the Iliad in which Greek ships stand offshore as their horse rolls up to the gates of Troy. While one’s eye is drawn to the red-roofed temple, don’t miss the Greek ships, whose bows and sterns are chocolate frogs! The whole scene is set on sideways bricks, enabling the builder to create some excellent waves with white wedge plates.
The upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens LEGO sets may be getting all the attention these days, but the original trilogy and even prequel trilogy continue to provide inspiration for many LEGO builders. AdNorrel has posted a Venator-class Star Destroyer from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in the style of the large UCS LEGO sets. Built from about 2,000 LEGO elements, the Star Destroyer took about 20 days to create.
Antique trams scurry along the streets of Porto, carrying visitors to Portugal’s second-largest city hither and yon. rupilego has built one in Coca-Cola livery, complete with a cobblestone street for a base. The rounded cab and little windows on top of the roof are lovely details.
See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.
We post a lot of LEGO mecha here on The Brothers Brick, and even though I’m the main culprit I’ll admit that most of them are bipedal, humanoid contraptions that all blend together after a while — the style inspired by anime shows like Evangelion and Gundam. But Moko takes a very different approach with his latest mecha, built for an event in Japan, which is more of a hardsuit or exoskeleton than a true mecha.
Moko himself says that it was inspired more by military helicopters than “Japanese style” robots. A minifig operates the exoskeleton, and I love the jet engines and helicopter blades on the shoulders. You can see more photos on Moko’s blog.
Longtime readers of the blog will be aware that the Mercedes Unimog is one of my favorite vehicles. While rare here in the US, they’re ubiquitous across Europe. Polish builder Damian Z. doesn’t disappoint with his Unimog crane truck in high-visibility orange.
Scruffy-looking son of a nerfherder umamen has been continuing his series of Star Wars themed character builds. But unlike his 8″ tall Chewbacca and Stormtrooper figures, this latest series are a mere 5″ tall – practically action figure sized. So if you showed up a bit late to the stores on Force Friday, maybe you can take a leaf out of his book and craft your own instead! The level of detail, clever part usage, and pose-ability in these is quite amazing…
Over the last few months, Irwan Prabowo has been posting a series of microscale LEGO dioramas inspired by all of the Star Wars movies, including the upcoming The Force Awakens.
My favorite is the crashed Star Destroyer seen in the trailer for the new movie. An X-wing and TIE fighter in the sands add some additional visual interest to a scene that might otherwise be a bit more plain at this scale.
Here are all of the mini-dioramas together, including the Death Star trench run, AT-AT assault on Hoth, and Sarlacc pit:
To see all of them in detail, plus some more not in the group shot above (like Owen & Beru’s moisture farm with a Jawa sandcrawler) check out Irwan’s photostream on Flickr.
Maybe it’s that I’m just noticing more LEGO Star Wars models as excitement has been building about the new The Force Awakens LEGO sets, but it seems like there have been a lot of pretty great Star Wars models popping up online over the last few weeks. de-marco brings us a scene from Tatooine with a cool green land speeder pulling up to a junk dealer’s shack. The builder doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, but I can imagine this scene happening in the same time frame as the crashed Star Destroyer in Episode VII.
de-marco has only included his TIE fighter wing in this one scene, but I’d be interested in seeing his take on a complete fighter.
As the grandson of an American World War II veteran who was born and raised in Japan, I have a rather complicated relationship with the Pacific War in World War II. From Nanjing to Bataan, there’s no denying the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese military against both the peoples of fellow Asian nations as well as Allied prisoners of war, and yet I feel deep sympathy for the genuine suffering that the people of Japan experienced themselves — from the firebombing of my hometown Tokyo to burning Okinawan civilians alive as they hid in caves. The end of World War II could not come soon enough, and Japan’s surrender ensured that my GI grandfather did did not get shipped from Hawaii across the Pacific to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands.
To commemorate this important event 70 years ago today, Dan Siskind has built the American battleship USS Missouri, which was the venue in Tokyo Harbor for Japan’s surrender. At 26 feet long, Dan’s “Mighty Mo” is the largest LEGO warship ever made (four feet longer than Jumpei Mitsui’s Yamato).
This giant LEGO battleship dwarfs the room it’s currently housed in at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
You can see more photos, including lots of work-in-progress shots, in Dan’s “USS Missouri Project” photoset on Flickr.
August has ended, and that means the latest bout of Iron Builder is now in the hands of the judges. We saw an exciting month long build-off between American title holder Matt De Lanoy and young Canadian challenger Tim Schwalfenberg. The fight produced some epic creations, many of which we’ve been covering along the way. So while we wait to see who emerges victorious, let’s enjoy some more of the entries, starting in this post with Matt’s…
Last month’s TBB header photo winner Andrea Lattanzio has been posting images of awesome LEGO models in awesome LEGO garages for a while, and his latest is a beautiful 1932 Ford roadster with a really excellent engine hoist. Andrea has used this backdrop before, but if you haven’t spent time yet poring over all the accessories and other details, you owe it to yourself to do so now.
