As part of their January 2016 assortment, LEGO released a number of new minifig-centered battle pack sets as army builders for The Force Awakens, including 75131 Resistance Trooper Battle Pack. The set has 112 pieces, including 4 minifigs, with a price of $12.99.
There really aren’t spoilers to worry about with this review. Still, I’ve managed to write what are probably far too many words for such a small set like this, so hit the jump.
Click through to see the full review
I was a big fan of the first Ice Age movie when it came out several years ago. My favorite character was this prehistoric squirrel-thing that was constantly causing tectonic plate shifts with his prized acorn. The crazy proportions of “Scrat” would make it seem like an impossibility to recreate him effectively in LEGO (though Bruce Lowell built a LEGO Scrat a few years ago). But captainsmog seems to have captured the frenzied and furry essence flawlessly. Yet another epic use of the Mixel eyes!
Get ready to party like it’s 2009, because LEGO has finally revealed details of its April lineup of sets tied to the forthcoming Angry Birds movie. Their new LEGO Angry Birds website includes set names, box art, close-ups and breakdowns of all the play features.
The sets are as follows:
Click here to see all the entire pig-bliterating lineup!
Jon Hall has done it again – diving out of the sun to hit us with yet another fantastic sky-fi plane.
This ticks all the boxes on my “Jon Hall Building Checklist” – unusual shaping, strong color schemes, custom stickers, and cracking photo editing. There’s also some nice parts usage with binoculars in the engine, and black windscreen pieces used to create the cowling.
I want to hold this in my hand and run round the house making screaming attack dive and pew-pew noises. Great stuff.
As a predominantly character-focused builder myself, I have really enjoyed watching prolific Romanian builder Legranger Absurde develop his own distinct brand of small-scale characters over the past few months. His signature style invariably features Mixel eyes, long bangs, and curvaceous females in shoulderless outfits. But it also demonstrates some new clever limb articulation techniques, allowing for wonderful posing. And with his latest creation, the builder has even taken a crack at building a detailed scene around one of these figures:
I feel remiss in not having featured more of these delightful characters here before. So click below the fold for a gallery of previous examples of this builder’s recent work…
Now the festivities are over, the presents opened, and the New Year welcomed in, we can turn our focus to Droneuary. During the month of January Droneuary, there is a definite surge in the production of new drones within the LEGO community. These Wichtigtuer Beinenstick (lit. “busy-body beehive”) drones by our very own Simon Liu are busy with a hive task.
Simon’s winged, honey-logistic drones were developed in response to comments on the original Wichtigtuer drone, which launched a couple of days ago. The original pectacular drones came armed with an ingenious brick-built weapon, complete with ironsight. Clearly the winged drone had to drop some lower body weight to achieve the miracle of flight.
Builder Cole Blaq is fast perfecting the art of “blink and you won’t notice it’s LEGO”. For the past while he’s been creating a line of robots which he calls the ‘Titan Series” that make great use of constraction armour pieces (among many other things) to create models that really convey the feeling of cold metal.
The latest is the Titan FX.10:
My other favourites include the Titan FX.L:
And the TITAN DSX:
Check out the rest of the Titan Series on Flickr.
Builder Jarek has already proven himself to be a master of hard angles and flat planes with his incredible Star Destroyer, but now he’s shaking things up with this stunning character, named Olivia the Swordmaiden. Jarek makes excellent use of the new balloon panels and lots of curved bricks and slopes for a result that looks ripped straight from the pages of a sci-fi concept art book.
This is something of a different post. I was originally going to show off a render of a Camaro from the talented Garry, but it turns out the design here is based off two different versions from Calin. So, instead of giving you just one or the other, here’s the whole lot!
The first version from Calin:
The dragster version with some of the best shaping I’ve ever seen in a build at this scale:
Garry’s version with mostly legal connection methods:
Which is your favourite?
Rancorbait is definitely no stranger when it comes to mechs. We’ve featured the builder’s Gremlin mech in the past, and today’s entry is equally striking. It’s immediately clear who built this – Rancorbait’s styling is unmistakable. Also be sure to check out the alternate picture that uses some trickery to simulate gunfire.
Unless placing some pitiful planks on precariously low hanging branches count, I’ve never built a tree house. I’ve also never built the tree that holds up said house, nor constructed the ground beneath it. Jonas however has, with his latest creation: My Tree House
Arcadian, peaceful, and stunning, Jonas has designed a deceptively complex build that any ten year old child would love to call home–at least until it’s time for dinner.
Fans of Transformers will immediately recognise Nemesis Prime, the evil clone of the Autobot leader Optimus Prime, built by Japanese builder Moko. Brick-built Transformers have been featured before on TBB, but Moko’s build is a little bit different. Transformers originated as an animated television series in the 1980s. In the series Nemesis Prime is an evil, merciless killer …but oh my goodness, now he is super cute!
Moko has gone for the chibi feel with this build, yet manages to maintain accuracy and detail despite the diminutive stature. And as if that was not enough, his Nemesis Prime even transforms:
If you want to see detailed views, Moko has more photos of his builds of Nemesis Prime and Optimus Prime on his own blog. (Note: Moko’s blog is in Japanese, but the photographs are easily seen as thumbnails and Google roughly translates the page)