There’s something appealing about the contrast of cool blue buildings against the hot lava river in this diorama by Michał Kaźmierczak. I really like the texture of the lava that gives it a glowing look without using any lights. There’s plenty more to see in the gallery on MOCpages.
Ulrik Hansen displayed this micro layout of Copenhagen at LEGO World 2014. From a glance, you see a mesmerizing array of structures typical of a microscale city. On a closer look, you’ll be impressed by the skillful techniques used to create the angled roads. The gallery on Flickr with detail shots is a must see.
Last weekend, more than a dozen members of the Brickish Association descended on the seaside town of Brighton in the Southern UK for Brighton Modelworld. This is an event for modelbuilding of all kinds, from wooden dollhouses to gasoline-powered mini tanks large enough to seat a person. This was the seventh time that Brickish had a display there and the fifth time that I attended myself. Here are a few of the highlights.
Julie Greig (Jujem71) displayed a collection of minifigs that represent various generations of Doctor Who and their assistants, which were instantly recognizable to many fans of the series.
A British TV show that is not nearly as well known outside of the UK as Doctor Who is Stingray. It showed the adventures of a submarine called Stingray, which was home-based at a town/mi;itary base called Marineville. This was built in microscale by Andrew Danieli (kaitain).
We also had a collection of rockets, including my own. Mine were completely dwarfed, however, by the moon rocket from Tintin built by Ian Greig (Bluemoose) and the space Shuttle Endeavour built by Ed Diment (Lego Monster), Annie Diment (Mrs Monster), Naomi Farr (euphonica) and Stuart Crawshaw (OptimalControl).
More pictures of these and other LEGO models at the event can be found in the Bricks at brighton flickr group. It was hard not to notice how, for instance, the train displays seem to change very little from year to year. Perhaps the (largely) elderly gentlemen who build them add a new house or a new tree every now and then, but the LEGO display is completely different every year. LEGO is so much more flexible and this makes us very popular with the visitors and the organizers alike. I’m already looking forward to next year’s display.
After the resurrection of Darth Maul with a new pair of mechanical legs, SPARKART! took inspiration and applied the same concept to Jabba the Hut. The result is way too hilarious.
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights! Tonight we end Rover month with a battle of two of the most realistic space buggies. Let’s go to the tale of the tape.
In the Mars corner we have Kosmas Santosa and his Space Exploration Rover:
In the Moon corner we have _Tiler(Calin) and his Lunar Rover:
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this bout by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the Mecha Match, Lu Sim’s brute beat out Tim’s bot by a 10-7 margin. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
Before 1974, LEGO sets were a fairly unpopulated landscape of vacant houses and empty cars. Preceding the iconic minifigure by several years, LEGO released a new kind of figure the year I was born, and some of my first LEGO sets included these figures. Paul Hetherington (Brickbaron) celebrates the 40th birthday of this lesser-known LEGO fig with a lovely double-decker bus.
Paul writes:
I wanted to create a new model that had a distinctly vintage look. My design cues came from some 1970’s Lego trade adverts. I purposely chose a model that used the colors that are incorporated in the Lego logo. In the 1970’s the Lego color palate was limited to yellow, red, blue, white, black, with small amounts of gray and green. On a personal note, I chose the British 1910 B-Type double decker bus because I was born in England and that was were I first came across these figures as a child. As well, if you look at the poster from a distance, red and white are the predominant colors which represents my Canadian upbringing.
Check out more photos on Flickr!
I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea what a Tengu was before I saw Cade Roster’s (Apocalust) delightful build.
Using the new awesome Mixle sets, Cade has recreated this Japanese creature of legend:
The face is dead on and this little guy is just pure fun!
I’m pretty sure that this diorama by Daniel Garcia Rodado (AlterEvo) and (AL13N163NA) is the first I’ve seen inspired by the movie Elysium. Regardless of what you think of the plot or script of the movie, it had some stunning visuals, and some really cool tech. I like how this display is made up of a series of vignettes, disconnected but bound together. I also think that the builders did a great job of representing the exo-skeleton worn by Matt Damon’s character, at minifig scale.
How many of you saw the LEGO movie? All of you? Excellent. Did you hear they’re doing a sequel, due in 2017? That’s pretty fantastic news to me. I’d love to go back to that world.
Art of the Title gives a really insightful walk-through of the process creating the end-credits, with all of those excellent micro-scale worlds. If you need a reminder of how awesome it really is, their article has it for you to watch and pause whenever you’d like. The article doesn’t name any fans by name, though you may recognize a couple of builds, like Bruce Lowell‘s cow skull and hot dog.
Which of the end-credit builds was your favorite?
There’s been something of a renaissance in computer rendered Lego builds lately, and leading the charge is the prolific Garry (Garry_rocks).
Using parts in colors that have never been available toes the line of what I consider cheating, but there’s no question that the results are stunning. I’m particularly fond of these two fearsome builds from the Warhammer 40k universe.
