It’s always interesting to see minifigure-scale vehicles that can transform and look great in both modes, like James Zhan’s spaceship/mecha hybrid. I enjoy the angles throughout the fuselage and minimal greebling on the prongs, focusing on a beautiful overall profile.
Much like a Vulture Droid from Star Wars, the prongs on James’s ship fold downward as the legs of a mecha. The well-hidden arms and feet fold out, making mecha mode look just as interesting as flight mode.
Early civilizations considered the Praying Mantis to have supernatural powers. I couldn’t tell you if this mantis by takamichi irie has any powers, but it does have samurai swords and LEGO claws to serve as its raptorial forelegs! I love how the builder has used minifig hands to represent the hairs on the mid and hind legs. Takamichi has done well to capture the shape of the mighty mantis at this scale.
In the second episode of Rick and Morty (or as I like to call it “Back to the Future on acid”) Morty’s dog Snuffles is fitted with a device that boosts his intelligence, a move that (not surprisingly) escalates to Snuffles leading an army of dogs wearing robotic exoskeletons to enslave humanity. Ultimately the dogs are banished to their own world, which is envisioned here in LEGO by none other than Richard Van As, one of the show’s animators:
It’s Valentine’s today, and what better way to celebrate than with a bit of LEGO love, in the form of a an over-eager minifigure Cupid shooting heart tiles at random passersby?
The custom prints in this model are terrific, from the emotive expressions on the figures to the little hearts tiles. Interestingly, the Fabuland and Rebrick torsos are original.
I can only assume that Chris Maddison takes excellent care of his LEGO teeth because these chompers appear quite healthy! Just look at those pearly whites (modified 2×3 pentagonal tiles). Firm-looking rosy gums and not a cavity in sight! (I bet money he even flosses.)
The best part about these LEGO teeth is that they even chatter like the wind-up plastic toy Chris’s design was based on. Check out the video below to see for yourself.
Berthil van Beek loves making some of the coolest LEGO machines around. Just a few week ago we highlighted his awesome LEGO ball maze that accelerates balls to 1,000 rpm, and he’s already back having spent more than 100 hours designing another breathtaking creation. This time, it’s an undulating wave of LEGO colors featuring 38 distinct swatches from LEGO’s palette (a palette that’s changing over the years).
Like Berthil’s ball maze, this mechanism is designed to fit with the Great Ball Contraption standard, fitting end-to-end with other fans’ creations for continual movement of LEGO’s tiny soccer balls and basketballs. Berthill tells us he was inspired to create the rainbow wave machine after seeing the vibrant rainbow of colors in the official image of LEGO’s Creator XXXL Box, which he also used a source for many of the colored bricks.
The Rainbow Wave Great Ball Contraption uses about 1,150 pieces and is powered by a single motor, with each of the colored pistons sitting on an 8-tooth gear. Each piston’s gear is exactly 1 tooth offset from its neighbors, and this means the balls travel in a perfectly level line as they move across the waving surface. Berthil says this mechanism took a lot of testing and redesigning to perfect, in particular because digital prototyping with LEGO rendering programs isn’t feasible for complicated moving machinery.
This lovely modular bar, created by Chinese builder Tony Toy, has a great deal of colour and style. Tony manages to pull the dark blue, red, green and gold together into an attractive modular-style building with some lovely architectural details. I especially like the red and orange lanterns hanging on the post outside the front of the building. The little white bridge over a pond is a nice touch and love the effect created by using transparent plates overlying green plates for the water.
Interestingly, it seems that Tony designed his creation digitally first using the free Lego Digital Designer application and then built it in ‘the brick’.
Built by david zambito for the ABS Builder Challenge, this snapshot from The Hobbit is terrific. This great scene has great use of the seed piece for the lid of the treasure chest and for Smaug’s fingers reaching over piles of gold. The best part for me is the tantalizing tiled tessellations on the floor surrounded by the creatively cracked and broken floor.
The FebROVERy competition is now in high gear, and all the cool and cute rovers have to squeeze together to make room for some (damn) hot vehicles. This vibrant black beauty by Stephan Niehoff can make any planet look good by just roving a quarter-mile on it’s surface.
This rover is so smooth and stylish, it’s simply impossible to ignore its rear view. Why choose huge mission emblems or side numbers when a couple of yellow stripes is all you need?
Not content with crafting beautifully curved brick-built hulls, Felipe Avalar has clearly spent ages getting the rigging and sails perfect on these two boats — the Amberle and the Eritria. Felipe says the below-decks areas on each vessel are stuffed full of Technic gears keeping all the lines at appropriate levels of tension. Such painstaking attention to detail is the hallmark of the best LEGO scale modelling — and these craft are great examples. I marvel at the skills of builders who create brick versions of real-world vehicles and buildings. Personally, I tend to build made-up fantastical things, because then nobody can tell me they’re not accurate!
This week we were fortunate enough to track down Guy Himber. Guy has worked extensively in the film industry with credits for special effects, creature mechanics, makeup and more. He is a prolific Steampunk builder and has authored a book on the subject entitled LEGO Steampunk. He runs the Iron Builder LEGO competition and has founded his own company, CrazyBricks, which manufacturers quirky, short-run, custom pieces compatible with LEGO. Let’s dive in and raid his brain!
TBB: What can you tell our readers about how you got into building with LEGO?
Guy: Like most folks I grew up playing with LEGO as a kid. Countless were the hours I spent building and rebuilding and sorting and blowing up my favorite plastic bricks. The dark ages kicked in around middle school and I didn’t do much with the bricks until I started using them to do some mechanical prototyping for animatronics in the Film Industry (mainly Technic bricks from my old collection). When my son was old enough I got him his first LEGO set and he took to the bricks like his old man and the two us started building more and more sets and then creating massive environments and Jurassic Parks. The fateful AFOL day arrived via a special trip to BrickCon in Seattle many years ago. That was the Con that got me bit by the LEGO bug again and started me building at a serious level.
We love the art of Tyler Clites for its bold style and perky colors. The way he treats common LEGO pieces always makes his characters vivid and lively, whether it’s some Star Wars protagonists or Tintin’s space rocket. Tyler’s every build has its own mood and a story to tell. And Tyler’s latest set of busts are simply jaw-dropping. This time it’s not just skillful building with LEGO bricks, but the pairing up of characters that makes these works so outstanding…
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