Here is the King of the Brick Beasts, courtesy of Tom Poulsom, designer of the LEGO Ideas Birds set and author of Birds From Bricks. This magnificent lion is a masterpiece of studs-out building — just look at the shaping of the mane and little touches like the teeth-plates used for ears. The highlight for me though is that mouth… 1×1 sloped bricks have been cleverly inverted to create a noble-looking chin, which wouldn’t look out of place on Mufasa from The Lion King.
Kiki’s Delivery Service is a 1989 Japanese animated fantasy film produced, written, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The film’s protagonist Kiki is a trainee witch who has a black cat called Jiji as her best friend, and CK HO has built a fantastically cute LEGO version of Jiji the cat. Like most cats, Jiji has a lot of personality, but the English-dubbed version of the film showed Jiji with a cynical and sarcastic attitude as opposed to cautious and conscientious in the original Japanese.
We loved Jiji so much here at TBB that we asked CK to make some instructions and he very kindly obliged to allow us all to have a best friend called Jiji.
Click here to build your own Jiji!
I love how insane and magical this whale island by Delayice is. The rounded shapes, which are notoriously hard to capture with LEGO bricks, are done perfectly. What I love the most are the colourful trees peeking from behind the mountain and the waterfall flowing off of the whale. The builder does not provide any information on the inspiration, but I could easily imagine this creature in a fairytale or an anime.
Mitsuru Nikaido is clearly a fan of the sea and its inhabitants. His LEGO coral reef is as colourful and teeming with sea life as the real thing. A giant squid, sea turtle and a great white shark are relaxing and enjoying some of the reef’s bounty, which in this case appear to be a school of nervous looking clownfish.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Big Brother was spying on you if you saw Mitsuru Nikaido’s mech dragonfly whizz past. This is no ordinary insect with its cybernetic appearance and yet the builder has managed to maintain the delicate form of a real dragonfly. I particularly love those dangling legs and the repeating structures within the main body and tail.
If you like mecha insects, you will like this mecha damselfly we previously blogged. Mitsuru’s dragonfly is significantly larger than the damselfly and would definitely require a heavy duty fly swatter.
Legostrator‘s latest creation is a fabulous scene of sub-Saharan Africa — featuring wonderful brick-built elephants traversing the dusty plains.
The elephants themselves are great examples of brick-sculpting — with complex organic shapes well-rendered. However, as with all the best LEGO scenes, the central models are elevated into something special by the surrounding attention to detail. The feel of a hot, dusty plain is captured perfectly with the depiction of scrub vegetation and the color choices. The lighting for the photo adds immensely to the atmosphere as well. Great stuff.
You may be familiar with the Vitruvian Man, a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci showing the human body’s proportions, but have you seen flambo14‘s Vitruvian LEGO Cat?
According to the text of da Vinci’s original:
“if you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands enough that your extended fingers touch the line of the top of your head, know that the centre of the extended limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle”
In the case of flambo14’s cat:
“if you look cute and purr, then no one will notice that you are out of proportion”
You could be forgiven for thinking that this latest build by James Bailey was an insect to swat or perhaps a technologically advanced drone spying on your every move. In fact, it is a LEGO damselfly, admittedly looking a little more cybernetic than the real thing. The attention to detail and the clever use of parts drew my attention to this insect initially while some nice photography shows the build off well.
I have to admit that I am a massive fan of the movie director Guillermo Del Toro, and this robotic, steampunk-looking insect is reminiscent of the clockwork insect that are a trademark in many of his films.
If you’ve ever dreamed of having your own chibi menagerie, Chungpo Cheng has got just the thing for you. We’ve got practically an entire zoo here. Or, at least if the zoo focused on animals from Africa, but you get the picture. Each one has such character!
What I find particularly fantastic is that should you need to study for your African mammal anatomy test, we’ve got you covered. Check out the rib cage and internal organs on this hippo! Just fantastic.
You can further explore the whole safari on flickr. Which is your favorite?
I would like you all to appreciate the fact that I did not make a Culture Club reference in the title for this absolutely adorable pair of chameleons, brought to us by Joseph Z. This little pair of color-changing cuteness are nestled in the forest, amongst the green, chowin’ down on what looks like quite the tasty insect snack.
As clever as the chameleons are, I would love to get a better peek at that purple flower below!
I hear it’s Superb Owl weekend in the US of A. Whilst I won’t pretend to understand your peculiar Colonial holidays, I hope all our American readers enjoy the celebrations. Here’s my own little Transatlantic contribution to your festivities…
Have a great weekend folks!
This fun build by LEGO7 depicts a comical scene of some Macaque monkeys chilling out at the spa. Interestingly, this is typical macaque behaviour as they are known for spa visits in real life. The monkey faces are perfect, especially the use of lever bases for the eyes.
They are definitely making the most of the dunking pool with some banana nibbles, a warm towel on the head and …actually I’m not sure if the light grey monkey is checking herself out in the mirror, about to shave her legs or texting on her iPhone…
The monkey in the background looks a bit suspicious. Is he keen to jump in too, or just checking out the ladies?