At first glance, this diorama by Austrian builder sanellukovic might appear to be a scene from Lord of the Rings, but it’s actually an original scene built for a LEGO Castle roleplaying game called Die Neun Reiche (the Nine Kingdoms) on the German-language site Imperium der Steine. One’s eye is certainly drawn to the excellent statues in the back, along with the brick-built pair of ravens, but my favorite details are the stone walkway leading to the paved area, with its missing paving stones.
![[9 Reiche] FB1 - Kepons raven](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/24500593119_8305225b00_z.jpg)
Okay, so we’re kind of Moko fanboys round here, but this fabulous steampunk mech was too good not to feature. Wonderful shaping, brilliantly clanky and functional-looking joints, and a nice combination of colors and metallic pieces.
I love the implied heft in this model, and the vaguely-samurai feel the back flag and armor evokes. Splashes of gold from the LotR ring parts add nice highlights amongst the greens and browns, and the pilot’s headgear really stands out, drawing attention to the cockpit area. The quality building isn’t limited to the front – the model’s rear is beautifully detailed too…
Moko has also put together an accompanying group of steampunk minifigs, which just exude Victorian-adventurer chic. Look at the use of the ballerina’s tutu as underskirts! Genius. I’m going to be stealing that idea…
During the nineteen-fifties, rapid advances in aeronautical engineering meant that the top speed of fighter aircraft shot up from below supersonic to more than twice the speed of sound. For the U.S. Air Force, this huge increase in performance coincided with the introduction of a now almost legendary range of fighter aircraft, starting with the F-100 Super Sabre and ending with the F-106 Delta Dart, also known as the Century Fighters. Over the years I have built both an F-105 Thunderchief and a Delta Dart. Just after Brickfair Virginia 2013, a number of military builders including myself visited the National Air & Space Museum Udvar Hazy Center near Dulles Airport and, after seeing the museum’s Super Sabre, I wanted one, badly.
The trouble was, this is not particularly easy. I didn’t just want any old Super Sabre; I wanted one in Vietnam war era camouflage much like the one in the museum. I find the best match for the camouflage colours is dark tan, dark green (or Earth green, as LEGO calls it) and old dark grey, and the parts palette in all of these colours is limited. The jet also doesn’t have a particularly easy shape, with a slightly odd oval intake and curved fuselage sides. Then I got a bit side-tracked, building movie cars for a couple of years. However, after a lot of procrastination and head-scratching, it is finally done. The model represents an F-100D that served as a fighter-bomber aircraft with 184th Fighter Squadron, the ‘Flying Razorbacks’, of the Arkansas Air National Guard, late in the type’s operational career.
I hear it’s Superb Owl weekend in the US of A. Whilst I won’t pretend to understand your peculiar Colonial holidays, I hope all our American readers enjoy the celebrations. Here’s my own little Transatlantic contribution to your festivities…
Have a great weekend folks!
Grantmasters has recently built a scaled down version of the Playstation 4. As an extra challenge for this month, Grantmasters is using this unusual Belville shoe part in his builds. The game controller is particularly cool in this build thanks to the shaping provided by the shoe part.
Video game consoles have been represented in LEGO by a few other builders too. Chris McVeigh (powerpig) has a lovely collection of consoles, including his previously blogged Atari 2600. Chris’ Nintendo NES comes with cartridges to blow on before you insert them into the console.
If you want to see more video game consoles and handhelds constructed from LEGO, here are some others that we have featured:
I really like this steampunk airship, The Morning Mist by Ooger. The hull enjoys nice lines and great color-blocking, and those balloons are excellent. The masts between the spheres provide unobtrusive support, ensuring the balloons look like they’re genuinely holding the ship aloft, a trick many steampunk creations don’t manage to pull off convincingly.
The dragon head adds a lovely touch of the exotic, but what made this model stand out for me was the uncluttered deck area. Steampunk building often lends itself to a messy, cobbled-together feel, but sometimes it’s good to see something as sleek and clean as this creation.
The only area where I think this build could be improved is in the way the various flags and puffs of smoke are currently all blowing in different directions. It’s a tiny thing, but it undermines the sense of the ship being in motion. However, that’s nit-picking at an otherwise great piece of building. This is the sort of fancy sky-yacht I’d quite like to own myself.
Not to be outdone by Tim and his tiny choo-choo in our last post, Jonas has built this massive whale’s skeleton using the Iron Builder seed part, complete with a Museum of Natural History backdrop and guard. The whale’s skull is particularly well-built, reflecting the proportional size and shape of baleen whales like the blue whale and humpback.
Current Iron Builder competitor Tim Schwalfenberg is chugging through the competition, having already completed seven builds. His most recent creation is this delightful microscale train scene. That pin connector looks great as a tank car. But I wonder what that tiny village needs two full tanks of. Gasoline? Milk? Mountain Dew Code Red? Tim’s packed a lot of detail into this small build — my favorites, other than the train itself, include the railroad crossing sign and that glorious gorge-spanning bridge.
Following hot on the heels of the release of the Ghostbuster’s Firehouse, this morning LEGO announced a tie-in set for the upcoming Ghostbusters 3 movie. The set will feature a revised version of the Ghostbusters famous ride, called the Ecto-1&2. It will also feature the five new Ghostbusters as well as an imp. LEGO says it will be available this summer, and is slated to retail for $59.99 USD, though no word on the part count yet. Be sure to also read our review of the original LEGO Ghostbuster’s Ecto-1 so you can spot the differences in the new model.
Click through to see more photos
Destiny has an amazing diversity to the designs of its exotic tier weapons. They range from the elegance of Hawkmoon, to the futuristic sleekness of SUROS Regime. LEGO weapon builder ZaziNombies built another design further defining the varied exotic arsenal. His replica No Land Beyond, a sniper rifle inspired by the Russian rifle Mosin-Nagant in appearance and name, captures the wooden rifle body, long barrel, and iron sights well with approximately 1400 pieces. Watch him demonstrate his LEGO prop and compare it to the in-game model in this video.
How do you fight a foe with ice in his veins and the ability to call down a winter blizzard on top of your head? With this fire-spewing, bellows-powered war wagon by Jacob Nion of course! Though I’m slightly horrified that Jacob folded pleats into that fabric (Seriously, will it ever be flat again?), it resulted in completely adorable (and presumably, powerful) accordion-style bellows. Also, the dragon-shaped potbelly stove and Jacob’s iconic rat warriors round this build out into sheer awesomeness.
I know lots of people who are constantly nagging about disproportional 6-studs-wide trains from official LEGO City sets. Now I have a solid argument: a mind-blowing 1:16 scale copy of the Union Pacific EMD SD70 ACe Locomotive. When Dennis G (bricksonwheels) finally posted pictures of the finished model, I mistook them for photos of a real locomotive. Just look at this beauty!
This EMD SD70 is just the second brick-built train by Dennis, who is much more famous as the author of alluring scaled copies of trucks. This time the locomotive is more than 56 inches long (140 cm) and consists of more than 27,000 pieces.
Click through to see more of this amazing train