One of our resident masters of Mecha Izzo Legostyle returns to give you the uncut fix you so desperately need. The model is based on Japanese Manga also known as “Linebarrels of Iron” that tells a boilerplate story of a bullied junior high school student who acquires super powers and a giant robot to dispense justice and one-liners while causing a great deal of mayhem. I’m not sure why, but my eye is drawn to those beefy yet precarious looking legs.
Time to go digital with a mind-blowing tank called the “Ûbârrek-Âssoi Remîv ÛâR – 57/6” by Edmonton’s own Ian MacDonald (ABS doohickies). This brutal looking war machine was inspired by the Valdor Tank Hunter from the Warhammer 40k franchise and I have little doubt that Heinz Guderian would approve of its style and features. While the vocal tribe of purists might complain that most of the parts used are not actually available in dark-tan, we try to have a wider view of things here at the big blog. I included a photo of the back-side because the level of detail and clever parts usage is simply too stunning to miss. BOOM SHAKA-LAKA!
JéRôMe has created an eye-catching monochrome minifig rainbow to brighten your weekend. I know many of you like to stick parts in your mouth while building, so go ahead…the first taste is free. For those of you interested in such things, check out Brother Andrew’s posting of the 2007 minifig rainbow for a little historical perspective.
Kristi McWii (customBRICKS) returns to the Brothership with a study in minimalism featuring everyone’s favorite cyborg law enforcer from the 1987 film RoboCop. I know some of you don’t like free-floating parts in your models but I’m confident you can look past it and appreciate this immediately recognizable silhouette. Thank you for your cooperation.
Try to avoid any unnecessary blow-back, constant reader, as you feast your bleary eyes on this 1:10 scale Street-Glide Special as featured on the biker-gang T.V. series Sons of Anarchy. The builder is one-percenter bricksonwheels who brings his signature style and skill to one of the bikes favored by protagonist Jax Teller. Now grab your ape-hangars and hit the road, we’ve got trouble with the Mayans.
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another bare-knuckle edition of Friday Night Fights! Tonight’s bout seeks to settle the timeless score between fish and amphibian. Let’s go to the tale of the tape:
Fighting out of the red corner, from the rocky cliffs of flavor country…Kyoungbae Amida Na and his “Clown Anemone“.
And fighting out of the blue corner, from the Land of the Rising Sun…LEGO DOU Moko and his “Frog“.
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this pugilistic endeavor by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the battle of the maritime maestros ended in an unprecedented draw scored 3-3 by the ringside judges. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
Once again Jon Hall proves that he is truly the master of building beautiful airplanes. He has only posted one photo so far, but I am looking forward to more shots of that gorgeous light-aqua coloured underside.
While most of my fellow Brothers were having a great time at Brickcon in Seattle, I was enjoying myself immensely at the UK’s largest LEGO-event: the Great Western Lego Show in Swindon. The show is organised by Martin Long, who is the president of the Brickish Association. The show took place on Saturday the 5th and Sunday the 6th of October at a great location: the Great Western Railway museum, a.k.a. the Steam Museum. Most of the models on show were built by members of the association, who tend to refer to the show simply as ‘Steam’.
The models were all of a very high quality, but I want to share a few highlights with you. The first is the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 jet engine build by Bright Bricks, which is a company run by Duncan Titmarsh -the UK’s only Lego Certified Professional- and Ed Diment (Lego Monster). The model is built to half scale, weighs 350 kg and was commissioned by Rolls Royce for last year’s Farnborough Air Show. It is beautifully built and by means of an electric motor the fans actually spin, which gives it certain hypnotic quality.
Another very large and impressive model was the Tigelfáh Castle layout (We featured part of this a few weeks ago). It was a collaborative build by no fewer than eight builders: James Pegrum (peggyjdb), Harry Russell (Kǻrrde), Thomas Coleman (Malravion), Luke Watkins Hutchinson (– Derfel Cadarn –), Barney Main (SlyOwl), Colin Parry (Cuahchic), Jimmy Clynche (Invicta Bricks) and Steven Snasdell (workshysteve). It was enormous, fantastically detailed and very hard to capture in a single photo! No matter from what angle you looked at this, you always spotted a nice new detail.
One of the favourites of the public at the Steam show is the mosaic build. Members of the audience can fill a baseplate with 2×2 plates (in pre-arranged patterns printed out on paper), after which the plate is added to the mosaic. The mosaic gradually grows during the show and the end result is always spectacular.
For more pictures of these and other models at the show, check out the photosets by Andrew Harvey, Alec Hole and Drew Maughan. This was my 7th time at the event and it just keeps getting better. I know I am not the only builder already planning what to build for the show next year.
This Eggeater by Logan (∞CaptainInfinity∞) is pretty spot on considering how wacky of a shape this starfighter has. He has used a lot of neat techniques throughout the build, in particular I really like how he achieved the detailing along the top of the gun. And then of course there is the brilliant photo composition, the combination of brick built foreground and digitally edited background is incredibly pleasing to the eye.
So I will eat them in a box
And I will eat them with a Falkes
And I will eat them in a house.
And I will eat them with a Fledermaus.
And I will eat them here and there.
Say! I will eat them ANHYWHERE!
I do so like
green Eggeaters and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am!
Bart de Dobbelaer, the master of crazy space dioramas, strikes again with this monolithic structure of gravity defying space garbage–or whatever that is. In any case, Bart’s signature style of limited colors and great designs makes for an exceptional diorama. The all dark-brown base gives a more subdued feel to the setting than LEGO’s standard reddish brown, and I’m not sure I even want to know how Bart got all of those spikey bits to stick to the suspended sphere.
Giving a whole new meaning to “flying buttresses,” Awesome O’Saurus provides us with this stunning rendering of a Gothic-architecture inspired space battleship. After seeing dozens of space tankers and flying boxes with striping (which are cool, to be sure), this spaceship is a welcome new style. Already I want to go design my own space-worthy cathedral of doom.
As LEGO builders we each find our own style in which we create. For myself I have always concentrated on the aspects of playability, so as a result tend to sacrifice aesthetics for function in many cases. LEGO has and always will be a toy for me. I wish I could categorize myself as a LEGO artist like many builders out there, but who am I kidding, I build this stuff to play with. Another side effect of this mindset is the tendency to disregard certain pieces of inspiration if I think the resulting model would be too fragile to play with. I can now use my sons as an excuse to perpetuate this habit, but honestly they do not impact my thought process because I want to swoosh and zoom my models just as much as they do.
Which leads me to One of Pluto, a piece of Maschinen Krieger concept art that I first saw years ago while perusing the internet for all things Ma.K (shortly after first being introduced to the genre by Tim’s early Ma.K stuff). The design completely intrigued me. It was so vastly different than anything else in the universe but somehow still fit in perfectly. Like all cool pieces of concept art I immediately contemplated the possibility of building it with LEGO. However, quickly dismissed the idea due to the clearly un-LEGO friendly shape.
Well that was 6 or 7 years ago, and over that time I got up the nerve to take a crack at it. It was in fact during last Ma.Ktoberfest that I intended on building this, but real life got in the way and I never ended up starting anything. I still had my bag of dark grey boulders, which I ordered specifically for the project, set aside. So about a week ago I start fiddling with the parts. But I soon discovered that I had my mind too set within a controlled and symmetrical style of building. If I was going to be successful I had to completely change the way I normally build. Those that know me, know that my collection is in dire need of sorting, but for this project I think that fact actually helped. Because instead of going through a bin of parts looking for a specific piece, I simply rummaged through the bin and collected an assortment of pieces that I thought could work. So my starting point was a large pile of random dark grey bits and bobs (& my boulders). I knew that if I could get the general configuration of the bulbous abdomen figured out the rest would fall in place relatively easily. I experimented with several internal structures to get the right general shape with boulders, but again found myself concentrating too much on playability…I needed to admit to myself that this was going to be a display model only. Once I decided that, I quickly found a set up for the abdomen that gave me the right shape. But what totally surprised me was that once I used the assorted strings, hoses and rubber bands to add the detailing, they in fact held the boulders in place so well that it became super robust and easily swooshable. The upper ‘torso’ and head took a few tries as well, but were certainly simpler than the abdomen. I am super happy with the end result both in terms of aesthetics and playability. This will definitely be sitting on the ol’ LEGO shelf for quite some time.
In the end this build has made me realize that stepping back and looking at a project from a different perspective can be hugely beneficial. I took a fresh approach and actually ended up with familiar results.
Happy Ma.Ktoberfest everyone.
