David Hensel (Legonardo Davidy) has emerged in recent years as one of the best castle builders around, as evidenced by the superb techniques exemplified in this simple little cottage. The rock work both in the bedrock and the stone walls is particularly compelling.
The latest model by Nick Barrett (technicnick) shows a scene from 1956. That year, the Ecurie Ecosse (which is French for Team Scotland) with Ivor Bueb and Ninian Sanderson and their glorious Jaguar D-type racing car won the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, beating drivers such as the legendary Stirling Moss.
There’s a lot more to like about this diorama. The two race cars have beautifully sculpted bodies, that in defiance of what most of the ‘cool’ people do, boldly show lots of studs. Kudos to Nick! The reproduction of the team’s custom-built transporter has elegant brick-built letters and nice chrome frames around the windows. At a first glance, the lovely canopy looks as though it could be made out of cloth, but it is actually built largely using 1×2 bricks. Finally, the brick-built figures seem to have character somehow.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing the model at the Great Western LEGO Show (aka. Steam) in Swindon (UK) on October 5th and 6th.
Eric Druon’s (baronsat) version of the GI Joe TRANSPORTABLE TACTICAL BATTLE PLATFORM is what a playable, fun moc should be. Rather than slavishly recreating it in LEGO form, this creation focuses on play features, and is packed full of them. Note the fold-up ramp, the battle command center, the working crane, the gun turret and the missile launchers. In the ’80s, every kid wanted a toy like this. Look out Cobra, I could spend hours playing with this set! I would love to see the GI Joe Headquarters.
For your viewing pleasure on this Wednesday morning, Pēteris Sprogis brings us the Neon Monday. This is quite a cool little car model. I could believe that it’s meant to be a car of the future, or that it’s a model of a concept car from the 60s. Either way, this thing has vision. While the model is great, the builder has taken things up a notch with an abstract background, all brick-built. It makes of a very eye-catching presentation!
With SHIPtember underway, I am going to steal a quote from Tyler Clites as flickr is being inundated with photos of “long skinny technic frames”. Throughout the next month I am sure we can expect many of those long skinny technic frames to transform into wondrous spaceships of all shapes, sizes (provided they are 100+ studs long) and colours. However, for the impatient ones among us, Pascal (pasukaru76) was nice enough to whip up a little SHIP in the first day of SHIPtember for our viewing pleasure…12 hours only in fact.
With Pascal I have come expect minimalist clean styling, and the Lucky Dragon No. 7 certainly delivers on those points. But the addition of those solar sails results in a brilliant juxtaposition of organic and mechanical design features. I love it.
Sometimes life as a blogger for TBB can be frustrating. Yesterday I spent more than an hour fruitlessly pouring over my pictures of the most interesting models I saw at Brickfair, to only find that we had pretty much blogged all of them when they first appeared on-line. Then again, on other days it is easy. I did not have to think about a title for this post, for instance, because Matt Armstrong (Monsterbrick) came up with the title for his picture himself.
I never cared much for LEGO’s Super Heroes figures. To me they looked too much like kids’ stuff, with little potential for making something interesting out of them. However, this model has made me think twice. The Batman figure itself may be ‘juniorized’, but that does not mean Matt cannot build a kick-ass motorbike to go with it.
But he does have a rather stylish hat. Théo (theolego) explains that this creation will be a part of the upcoming “moving oasis” display. Here’s hoping that the rest of the display is as entertaining and intriguing as this one! It looks like a fun take on post Apoc, or possibly space survival. Either way, I’m hooked!
No Starch Press recently sent me a copy of one of their latest LEGO books, Amazing Vehicles, to review. It retails for $20 USD, though you can currently nab it over at Amazon for $15. Written by Nathanaël Kuipers and Mattia Zamboni, it’s a giant instruction manual in book form for building ten different vehicles. This is Volume 1, and the second volume is slated for release next month.
I’ve never been much interested in any of the unofficial build-it-yourself books, regardless of subject matter, because I always thought that if I’m going to build something that isn’t a set, I want to build my own model that I can claim. Additionally, I’m not much of a vehicle builder.
Nevertheless, since I wanted to give the book a proper review, I sat down to build one of the models. I chose to build number 9, the Street Rod. The book uses the same master set of parts for all of the vehicles, which are laid out on one of the first pages. If you’re just building a single model, though, like I was, you won’t need all of the pieces, and I found it annoying that each model didn’t have a page showing what parts are needed for it.
Instead, I gathered all of the parts for it the slow way, by manually going through each instruction step and finding the necessary pieces in my collection. While a lot of the parts are pretty common, unless you buy a lot of creator sets, chances are you won’t have all of the necessary pieces in the right colors. The book is quick to encourage builders to find substitutes, though. I found all but one red curved slope 2x4x2/3, which I substituted with a 1×4 tile and some cheese slopes (it goes on the rear bumper).
The book is high quality, printed on heavy paper, and the instructions are crisp and clear.
The black pieces (notoriously hard to make out) were even easy to see. I did find the difference between white and tan to be frustratingly hard to see, and honestly I’m not even sure why the models need any tan: the entire book only calls for 3 pieces in tan, and they are mostly used in hidden places.
So I began building the car, and it started off pretty much the way you would expect a Creator-type car to start: some long plates for the base that you build up from. Immediately, though, I was surprised to find that the plates are actually facing upside down, and the entire car chassis is built studs-down. The direction reverses part-way up, and the hood and trunk are studs up.
The engine area was filled with a nifty bit of Studs Not On Top (SNOT) work, and some clever half-stud offsetting. The final model is a snappy looking little roadster, similar in size to the 150-200 piece official Creator vehicles. It’s definitely a lot larger than minifig scale, being 8 studs wide, although I don’t think minifigs would look terribly out of place in it (although, sadly, there’s no legroom for them). I was very impressed with the overall build quality, and I hope the rest of the vehicles in the book hold up to this standard. Seasoned LEGO builders who are used to working with SNOT techniques won’t find anything new here, but for someone who is just getting into using more advanced building techniques, there’s a lot to learn here. This book would have been a goldmine if I’d had it when I was a teenage builder.
It’s time to check in for an extended stay with our friends in digital space, constant reader to find out what’s new (and in some cases not so new) in their world. The genres are as diverse as the builders surveyed so grab your favorite beverage and get ready for some real refreshment.
I want to grab the attention of readers who are not usually fans of digital builds and this image by Nachapon Sintateeyakorn is sure to lure in the unwary with visions of rare gold minifigs. You covet the gold, don’t you?
Next we’ll take to the skies of old with Brian Fitzimmons and his B-17 Flying Fortress.
For those of you who like your aircraft modern, or perhaps just a little bit futuristic, enjoy the Mi-54 “Oleni” VTOL gunship by Matthew SylvanO. It also fits nicely into TBB’s well known Olive Conspiracy.
More Digital-pure action after the jump!
Ever seen a 6-wide train naked? No? Well now’s your chance thanks to TBB rookie Alexander (narrow_gauge) who brings some fresh blood to the genre. Alexander quietly goes about his business with calm precision so common to his tribe of builders:
“Power comes from two PF large motors each mounted in a carriage. In between them another carriage carries a battery and IR receiver. With the motors geared down, top speed is a little slow, but reasonable for narrow gauge. There are two designs: one has the motor on its side which reduces the amount of room each side but leaves room to put a 12V train weight above the motor. Tow ball couplings are used between the motor cars – with a simple pivot coupling they tended to derail.
Alexander isn’t averse to showing off his work to the great unwashed masses either, as evidenced by this gorgeous photo from the recent Caulfield Train Show 2013 in Australia. There is some decent video from the event here, although only a small portion of it is LEGO related.
*Edit: Although I’m a fan of the genre, you could fill a teacup with my actual knowledge of Train related action. The stock is actually 6-wide, so my initial posting didn’t make much sense.
As someone who only saw the trailer for Elysium, I recognize this HDF bot by Ethan (MrMαcy). It’s pretty accurate compared to the reference, and now we just need a decal expert to take it to the next level.
Alex Jones (Orion Pax) called on the Power of Grayskull and finished his custom series of Masters of the Universe creations. His updated Castle Grayskull is rock solid and packed with tons of details. The rock foundations and crumbling brickwork are excellent. He also built HE-MAN’s Power Sword and Axe in all of their full-scale glory. Alex says that the series is now complete and will be displayed at GRAYSKULL CON 2013. This has been quite an impressive series. Whether or not you are a MOTU fan, the builds have been superior and the customized figs are done nearly to perfection. Check out Alex’s website for more photographs and information!
