Here is the King of the Brick Beasts, courtesy of Tom Poulsom, designer of the LEGO Ideas Birds set and author of Birds From Bricks. This magnificent lion is a masterpiece of studs-out building — just look at the shaping of the mane and little touches like the teeth-plates used for ears. The highlight for me though is that mouth… 1×1 sloped bricks have been cleverly inverted to create a noble-looking chin, which wouldn’t look out of place on Mufasa from The Lion King.
Like many Destiny players, I have spent many hours grinding out XP slaying Fallen in Old Russia’s Cosmodrome. Without even reading the title of this build from Nick Della Mora, I knew it was specifically The Divide region of the Cosmodrome. That particular group of buildings are recognizable, as many Dregs and Shanks have been sniped from atop them.
But for me, the highlight of the build is the Fallen Walker. It is not only accurate in its aesthetics; it waddles like the one in game, and the head slides out, exposing and illuminating the weak spot. Watch these functions, and an overview of the whole scene, in the following video.
After his interesting take on a methane-powered moon rover, Jon Blackford turns his attention to a more traditional interpretation of the future of space travel. This twin-seater spacecraft is a wonderful riff on LEGO’s Classic Space theme, with all the key elements of the checklist in place. Blue and gray color scheme? Check. Trans-yellow canopy? Check. Green and red navigation lights? Check. Black and yellow stripes? Check.
But what separates this creation from so many other Classic Space models is the wonderful level of depth and texture Jon has got into those wing panels. This is LEGO Space building at its finest. Couple the quality of the model with some excellent photography and you’ve got a memorable creation, despite the familiarity of its styling. Don’t miss this image of the spaceship coming into land, revealing more of the detailing…
Sariel has long since been a regular feature on this site with impressive Technic and Power Functions builds such as a motorised Kaneda’s bike from Akira and a remote controlled Batpod.
Now the builder’s newest creation — an RC car modeled after the Pagani Huayra — is sure to make petrol heads like myself happy. While it may not be a purist build (it uses 3D printed covers to simulate a new rim design as well as aftermarket chromed pieces) it’s still an amazing model and all the functioning and structural bits are LEGO.
Particularly impressive are the awesome features of the build such as the “aero flaps” which flip up in unison with the front steering as well as the rear wheel drive propulsion with a transmission. Sariel gives a lot more information on how he built this car, including pictures of partial breakdowns on his website.
Retail giant Amazon has published images of the new LEGO sets for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, which hits theaters May 5. As with previous films in the Marvel cinematic universe, LEGO will release a small wave of sets prior to the film’s opening, and in this case the sets are slated for release April 25. We don’t have word yet on the US prices, but expect them to run just slightly less than the Pound and Euro prices.
How do you recreate a video game using LEGO? You could build the game’s characters, or even a 3D version of a level. But that doesn’t capture the movement videogames have. Or you could do what Jason Cichon has done, and take the term “side-scrolling platformer” quite literally by turning the classic Mario Bros into a moving diorama.
The various pieces of the level are attached to a conveyor belt out of sight, and a crank on the diorama’s side scrolls the level past the viewing screen, duplicating in 3-dimensional bricks the feeling of moving through the level.
Even though this medieval store by Isaac Snyder uses textures and techniques we see very often in medieval builds lately, it still manages to look unique; first by its complex layout and secondly by its use of dark gray as the stone bricks, which is for some reason rather uncommon. While the model is called Sigurd’s General Goods and is not a direct recreation, it is obviously inspired by the Bits and Pieces general store in Solitude, from Skyrim.
Isaac’s shop even has a full interior.
See more of this delightful Skyrim building
The friendliest looking starfighter you’ve ever seen has made the leap from LEGO Digital Designer to the real world. BobDeQuatre designed this ship three years ago in LDD and has made excellent use of several new bricks to take the design from “cool” to “really something else” during its translation to physical form.
The soft, bubbly white curves stand out against the blackness of space with flashy spectral pink and purple highlights, so at first you might miss the pair of giant, black-armored cannons on the front.
Take a moment to compare this ship to its original digital incarnation, since they’re very much similar ships built with very different styles.
I imagine making any car instantly recognizable at minifigure scale would be difficult, and George Panteleon does it beautifully with his LEGO Lamborghini Countach. He made great part choices for the windscreen and the headlights, and the lines of the sports car are captured rather well in a 7-stud-wide package.
See more of George’s minifigure-scaled vehicles on his Flickr.
Hot on the heels of his smart little LEGO TIE Fighter, Tim Goddard is at it again with a nice microscale rendition of Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor. The model captures the shape and styling of the Eta-2 fighter brilliantly, but the undoubted highlight is the teeny tiny R2D2 — all set to take care of any nano-sized Buzz Droids.
Kiki’s Delivery Service is a 1989 Japanese animated fantasy film produced, written, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The film’s protagonist Kiki is a trainee witch who has a black cat called Jiji as her best friend, and CK HO has built a fantastically cute LEGO version of Jiji the cat. Like most cats, Jiji has a lot of personality, but the English-dubbed version of the film showed Jiji with a cynical and sarcastic attitude as opposed to cautious and conscientious in the original Japanese.
We loved Jiji so much here at TBB that we asked CK to make some instructions and he very kindly obliged to allow us all to have a best friend called Jiji.
Click here to build your own Jiji!
I’m not fan of rats, cockroaches, and alien critters skittering around my spaceship, but I’m also not sure I’d like to have Djokson‘s character around either. He’s stocky, he’s menacing, he has a big gun and probably leaves a trail of aliens to match.
There is a lot of excellent color contrast in this build, with a few bright-colored pieces popping against the black armor and background. The blue hose caught my eye first, but then you look up and see the dark red eyes of the mask and suddenly the exterminator seems a lot less friendly. And be sure to keep four eyes out for some really excellent parts use on his alien trophy.