Tag Archives: Animals

Fragile beauty of the Arctic circle

Thanks to the enormous diversity of LEGO pieces it’s increasingly easier to design and assemble sturdy and robust models. But sometimes the things that inspire us are way more fragile and vulnerable than we can imagine. Chinese builder vincentkiew builds a gorgeous polar bear. Placed on a tiny piece of ice in the Arctic waters, the bear embodies the unique part of the global ecosystem, which is being damaged by humans especially hard. For me, this simple composition works great as yet another reminder that if we don’t change, LEGO fans soon won’t need a lot of bricks and plates in white to depict the dying beauty of the extreme North.

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It’s a wild, wild life with these jaw-dropping LEGO jungle animals

Travel deep into the jungle and pay a visit to its denizens with City Son‘s stunning LEGO wildlife model. Tigers, parrots, a mandrill, and even a skunk inhabit this overgrown temple.

Figural modeling has always fascinated me. I am always blown away by builders who can create organic models that really capture the essence of living creatures. This is a prime example of how to do it right. Each animal on its own would be a model worthy of notice. Combine them together with some beautiful scenery and you have something truly spectacular.

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I’m a rhinoceros hornbill. How-do-you-do!

It never fails, someone builds an animal or another and it always makes me smile. What I like is beginning to become predictable. I hope you can be as enthralled by Marco Gan’s rhinoceros hornbill as I am. The rhinoceros hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros) is the state bird of the Malaysia state of Sarawak as well as the country’s National Bird. This particular cutey is a charming female as her eye is white with red rims made from a small wheel and tire assembly and a radar dish (males would have red with black rims). My favorite part is the tongue made from a snowboard. The hanging spider acts as a reminder that in the jungle, there is always something alive needing to eat. It is clear that Marco cares deeply about the animals of Southeast Asia, as this isn’t the first time he’s delighted us with jungle creatures. Check out these tapirs of his we featured previously.

I’m a frog-mech. What are you?

If life was like the Frogger game, this frog-mech would likely run over you. Without a reference of scale, it is hard to tell if Mitsuru Nikaido intended for this to be a delicate little mech, or a kaiju behemoth capable of toppling over the mightiest of city towers. Just to be safe, I’m going to err on the side of assuming any encounter on the road would lead to a car being totaled. What is clear, however, is this mech is fully posable and the shaping is just perfect. The spool for an eye is an excellent touch.

It would seem that white animal mechs with gray, black and yellow accents are totally Mitsuru’s thing as there are several more like it in his photostream. Here are previous times we featured a crocodile, a dragonfly, a lemur and a crane and locust creature double-feature, along with another picture of the frog mech, just for good measure.

Duck duck robot

What do you do if your robot walker develops a waddle? Make it a feature rather than a bug, of course! At least, that’s what I like to think happened in the backstory for Moko‘s latest LEGO creation. This Mecha-Duck is a delight, nicely-built with some cool mechanical details, but also invested with a brilliant sense of fun and character. I’m pleased to see that, like its inspiration, the walker is also amphibious — there’s a little red propeller sitting at the rear, allowing for effective transportation on water too.

Have you had enough water today?

Dehydration is serious business. It can cause headaches, fatigue, blurred vision, brain fog, dizzy spells, seizures, bladder stones-or even cause you to totally become a sun-bleached desert skeleton like this poor animal here. While the condition is unfortunate, the execution of this piece presented by Toa Aparu is totally awesome. Nearly equal measures of Bionicle and system parts meld together to create a neat cattle skull and the sandy terrain is an excellent touch. The whole composition acts as a stark reminder to always make sure you drink plenty of water, dear readers. Also a daily dose of The Brothers Brick couldn’t hurt either.

Have carrots, will travel

Sometimes something so different comes along that you can’t help but smile. Oliver Becker calls this “The Wandering Temple of the Last Flame” but I call it the coolest mode of transportation ever. Speed, performance, practicality, safety; all are unimportant when you’re riding in this much style. This viney bit and this other leafy bit make for excellent gold filigree while the sloping roof and red and black color scheme embodies an exotic Asian feel to the traveling temple.

The pièce de ré·sis·tance, however, has to be the tortoise’s head which utilizes a Euripides Galidor torso. See, we all chuckled when the infamous Galidor sets came out but who is chuckling now? Still us, but for different reasons.

It turns out, this is far from the first time Oliver has made us smile or even chuckle. Be sure to check out his previously featured Donald Duck roadster and fabled stork creations for more whimsy and wonder.

Two tapirs to tickle your fancy

Animals always makes my day just a little brighter. My case in point, Marco Gan has built this pair of endangered Malayan Tapirs (Tapirus indicus) and I am tickled pink…or tickled black and white as it were. The adult looks dashing with its striking black and white piebald pattern but the baby steals my heart away with its horizontal stripes. The artist palette in green make for excellent lily pads while a nearly hidden pushbroom and paddle heads adds neat textures to the jungle flora. Marco tells us that in the Malay language, the tapir is commonly referred to as cipan, tenuk or badak tampung. No matter what you call it, this duo just might be the best thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve seen a guy in an inflated dinosaur costume bouncing on a pogo stick.

A whale of an opportunity at the Pick-a-Brick wall

If you have ever visited a LEGO store you probably would have noticed the formidable floor-to-ceiling Pick-a-Brick wall. One bin may contain thousands of flower stems and another may have a crap-ton of these pointy bits (metric crap-ton if you’re Canadian). There’s no telling what you’ll find there and you can take this stuff home by the cup loads. For me, I’m like a kid in…some kind of store. While loading cups full of LEGO bricks can be exciting, building something cohesive exclusively with what you found at the Pick-a-Brick wall can be a tricky endeavor, but Mansur Soeleman clearly saw…a whale of an opportunity.

I see plenty of white 2×2 corner plates, lots of 2×2 plates in light bluish gray and plenty of clips make up the baleen. The end result is a pretty good facsimile of a blue whale. You can say Mansur had…a whale of a good time with this. You see, brilliant puns like that is why I am the highest paid Brothers Brick contributor ever. At least that’s what they told me…or at least that’s what I understood when they said “voluntary”. Wait, what does “conditional trial period” mean?

And if you liked this cetacean built from a limited palette of bricks as much as you enjoyed my puns, we’re sure you’ll also enjoy André Pinto’s bonsai tree, also built from nothing but Pick-a-Brick parts.

Rock block box to rock your socks off

When thinking about LEGO brick built characters, a few names spring to mind and LEGO 7 is absolutely one of them. His creations seem to prove themselves, time and time again, and I find myself really looking forward to any of his new works of art. There is just so much to love about his newest build, Animal Music Box, that it’s hard to pick where to begin. This handiwork is booming with colour, expression and simulated sound. As this is an all inclusive show, the speaker stacks and attached lighting rig frame the background banner superbly, leaving the band to focus on the music. Though there is a lot going on in the main image, he has been kind enough to break it down into individual elements too.

So, lets delve into the box itself before getting onto the plethora of characters found within.

This voodoo panther is no bonehead. Or is it?

The LEGO Bionicle line may have ended in 2016, but that hasn’t stopped fans from expanding on the theme. Case in point: Alex Mertens brings us a sleek version of the Rahi beast Muaka, inspired by a deep cut of Bionicle lore. I’m a fan of the smooth curves that give this model a sense of feline grace. The splash of color from the orange hose and lime green claws adds visual interest against the blue of the Hero Factory armor and Bionicle shoulder armor plating.

Speaking of that armor, we recently featured another re-imagining of Muaka that kept the yellow highlights from the Muaka & Kane-Ra set from 2001. Alex has gone one step further, taking the blue color from a Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island prototype that likely lead to Muaka! This early prototype can be seen in Christian Faber’s demo footage.

Another shrimp for the barbie

The Penaeus monodon, otherwise known as the Tiger Prawn, is native to the Indo-Pacific region. It’s also cultivated for food consumption all over the world. Jason Cichon has done an excellent job at bringing these LEGO marine crustacea to life….Well, one of them at least. Seafood connoisseurs will recognise the orange prawn on the bottom, largely due to their understanding of what they look like after having been cooked.

His mix of modified plates and 2×1 Wedge’s in the abdomen creates smooth articulation within the build. This combination allows the pleura to sit snugly against each other. A flexible spike minifig weapon has been used for the rostrum while, further down, the leg assemblies have been topped off with small red horns. In the end, the part that brings this model into the realm of realism is the flexible hose with connection ends as the antenna. The colours employed throughout are so incredibly fitting, I’m sure Jason stood around a barbeque in the summer quite a few times.

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