Tag Archives: AdNorrel

Set sail amongst the clouds

It’s a Sky Pirate’s worst nightmare when The Valvalevidan hoves into view. AdNorrel‘s massive steampunk flying vessel is a wonderful LEGO creation — beautifully detailed, and packed with functional-looking elements. The overall shape carries a faint whiff of Jabba’s Sail Barge from Return Of The Jedi, but that’s no bad thing. I love the touches of gold and the striped sails, and those lanterns on the raised rear deck are excellent.

LEGO Steampunk Airship

The airship is 80 studs in length, making for a formidable construction project which took 9 months to put together. However, all that space is put to great use with some fabulous details. Here’s a close-up view of the impressive motors which keep the ship moving when the wind drops… Continue reading

A sweet dream in LEGO

I love LEGO creations that fool the eye. When I first saw Sweet dream in the old garage by AdNorrel, I thought I was looking at a well composed photo of a real-life moment. I was scrolling through images of LEGO creations at the time, so I knew that couldn’t be right. So I took a closer look.

“Oh,” I thought, “that’s a LEGO minifigure in the center. So the garage is probably brick built. Yep. Looks like they put the build in front of their garden outside to get the background….no. Wait.”
“….”
“….wow.”

Sweet dream in the old garage

There are a lot of details partially hidden in the shadows of the garage. The tiling on the wall expertly mimics the slightly warped wood of an older building. Trophies and statuettes hint at past racing glories, blending in with the more functional aspects of the garage. Custom printing on many of the signs adds tantalizing hints of the larger world this creation inhabits. There are indications that a lot more is happening just out of sight, too, as there’s a crane to the right and the front end of a car to the left. Continue reading

Living metal encasing dying flesh

Nobody likes to die horribly at the hand of a horrifying flesh and machine amalgam, such as this Remade inspired by the criminals and other undesirables sentenced to such an existence in British author China MiĆ©ville’s Perdido Street Station. This LEGO version by AdNorrel invokes a strange kind of morbid curiosity that just will not let you look away — as long as the incomprehensible thing is not coming at us…

The Remade

There is a lot to love (or fear?) about this creation. The organic parts are very well done, using minifig arms and sausages and even a dark red scarf to create flowing rounded shapes, highlighted by blue rubber bands representing veins. If you look closely at the head, you might recognize a tiny bit of a shrub piece peeking out of a red flower element, making for a good structural part in a build with this many crazy angles. With the mechanical parts, the Remade combines gore and the fear of technology into something nobody wants to see, yet one that we’re unable to stop staring at.