Just a reminder that the annual speeder bike contest, run by the good folks over at the LEGO Speeder Bikes Flickr group, is drawing to close at the end of the month. We’ve seen some great entries so far but there is still time to get your rear in gear and build some awesome bikes! There are great prizes up for grabs, donated by The Brothers Brick, as well as all sorts of other swag!
If you don’t have a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend on your own 1963 Porsche 911, you can always build one in LEGO. Michael Jasper has built a lovely 911 in black, reflecting all the iconic bulges and curves of the original. Much of the car’s sides are built studs forward, while the curves on the fully detailed underside are built studs down.
How do we know so much about the car’s interior structure? Because Michael has posted this (literal) cut-away view highlighting the complex techniques he used to achieve the vintage vehicle’s shaping.
This week there are several deals on LEGO Star Wars, Ninjago, Technic, Chima and LEGO Elves. There are also still great deals on LEGO Dimensions Packs!
LEGO Ninjago Temple of Airjitzu is 20% off, currently listed at $159.99.
For the past 6 years, The Brothers Brick has joined with several LEGO clubs in the Pacific Northwest to put on a huge display of pop culture-themed creations at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, which will be taking place at the Washington State Convention Center next week, March 2-5.
Most ECCC tickets are sold out at this point, but if you’re among the tens of thousands of people who’ll be there over the course of the 4-day event, be sure to check out Brick Nation located the lower level across the street from the main WSCC entrance, featuring creations by many of your favorite TBB contributors. The Brick Nation display will be bigger than ever this year, with over 3,000 square feet of LEGO creations, other LEGO-themed activities, life-sized Star Wars sculptures and more.
The late Carrie Fisher had been scheduled to appear next month at Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con, so I decided to make a Leia tribute for the convention’s Brick Nation display. We’ve already seen LEGO tributes showing a demure Princess Leia shoving a floppy disk into some poor hapless droid, but I wanted to recreate a moment from the original trilogy that captured Fisher’s feisty character! Jabba’s death scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi seemed appropriate (…ignoring for a moment the fact that this is basically a PG-rated movie that features a brutal and drawn-out murder scene)
When we last checked in with Tim Schwalfenberg, he’d just completed his massive LEGO diorama of The Last of Us. While considerably smaller, this crumbling statue of a horse and rider — both their heads knocked off ages ago — is no less atmospheric. Although Tim considers this a small build, it still feels like a monumental sculpture that evokes the glory of a long-gone era. The brown sign also adds an air of mystery — what does it mean? Is this in the distant past or a terrifying future?
The maths involved here are simple: (LEGO + T-Rex) * Mech = AWESOME. Mitsuru Nikaido knocks it out of the park with this amazing mechanical menace. The white cladding gives just enough structure and shaping to the model, whilst still leaving plenty of room for the greebly details to show through beneath. The restrained colour scheme works well, the dark grey mechanical gubbins offering sharp contrast to the panels. This could have been enhanced further with a different colour of backdrop for the photography, but that’s a small gripe at an otherwise excellent creation.
There’s so much good work on display in this model, but the highlight for me is the use of minifig chainsaw pieces for the jaws — simply perfect.
Tyler Sky has been thinking about Friends minidolls and the retired LEGO Exo-Force theme, and perhaps eating a little too much cheese before bed. “What if Exo-Force continued to evolve, and then got assimilated by Friends?” These six Exo-Friends were the result. The minidolls look very cute with their new hair styles even if some of their exosuits are rather more intimidating.
We have an eye-catching lime exosuit, loosely-based on the alternate build suggestion for 7712 Supernova. Those clawed toes look very flexible and give the impression this Exo-Friends character is not limited by gravity and can climb any obstacle.
It’s not often a small LEGO creation manages to look HEAVY, but takamichi irie‘s wonderful Styracosaur carries enough heft that you can imagine the ground shaking as it passes by. The use of bow plate curves across the build creates a real sense of muscles and sinews beneath the skin, and the colour choices are excellent — muted and natural-looking, but not bland. There’s good parts choice for the “beak” at the front of the mouth too.
I don’t care if Styracosaurus was a herbivore, and that those horns were probably for display rather than protection, I’m not getting within a hundred yards of this behemoth. Check out the close-up look and tell me you feel any different.
This neon netrunner by Carter Baldwin is one part nostalgic 80s racing video game (think Out Run), one part Blade Runner, and one part experiment in color theory. Mix that all up and you’ve got one sweet LEGO speed machine. While the speeder bike itself is quite good, what at really makes this build pop is the background. I love the glowing, misting water, the ombre-effect wall, the exposed beams, and that trans-blue palm tree.
We’re giving away 10 pairs of tickets to see The LEGO Batman Movie, and the contest ends tonight at midnight PST! Entry is simple: just click on the image below and leave a comment on that post telling us what you think Batman’s favorite LEGO set is. We’ll be randomly selecting 10 winners from the eligible entries (US readers only). Click below for entry and full rules.
French builder Anthony Séjourné has captured exactly how I imagine an architect’s office — drawers full of supplies, shelves with inspirational books, and a well-lit, comfortable work area in which to imagine the next great monument, home, or skyscraper. Given all that loose paper, though, I’m vaguely concerned about that black fan…
Anthony has built a substantial series of excellent LEGO furniture and accessories. The coffee machine on the rolling shelves looks ready to dispense some much-needed caffeine to keep the inspiration flowing.
