Sometimes LEGO looks good enough to eat, and this is certainly the case with Sad Brick‘s Cranberry Black Forest cake. This plastic take on the classic German desert appears to have the key ingredients of chocolate sponge, cream, kirsch, more cream and a black cherry on top. A puzzle for you: do you know which part has been used to depict the cherry?
The best part is that this cake is definitely fat-free.
Nostalgic for the “gabber” electronic dance music scene of 1990’s Netherlands, Dutch builder Chris van Vliet built this amazing three-dimensional LEGO recreation the Masters of Hardcore logo (a record label and series of EDM festivals). The sculpture – which resembles the giant goat skull that used to grace the stage at these events – is comprised almost entirely of LEGO bricks kept from that era, and has even been beautifully black-lit.
Chris also gives us a couple of extra treats in the form of detailed work in progress photos showing how the entire creation came together, and a short video of two brick-built gabber fans in action! And not satisfied with recreating just one gabber-era logo, Chris even produced this sculpture of the Thunderdome “Thunder Wizzard” logo, which when you compare it to the original is clearly spot on!
In computer graphics, a sprite is an image that represents a discrete element. Sprites are sorta like cels from animation: and some older video games swapped out sprites to simulate animation. One such game was the Super Nintendo classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In a way, the pixels in a sprite are like the 1×1 elements in a LEGO mosaic. Genius idea: build sprites with LEGO! My sprites are 3 plates tall, and don’t require baseplates. Here’s our hero Link, lifting the Master Sword.
Adventure Time, c’mon and grab your friends! We’re off to very distant lands. Lands where cute and quirky vampires like Marceline have complex relationships with Jake, Princess Bubblegum, and even the Ice King. Biczzz started this incredible mosaic as a 2D project, but then ran out of tiles. Solution: upgrade it to a 3D project! I’m glad he ran out of tiles, the depth and layering created by the cheese slopes is quite impressive.
Surely you’ve heard of Salvador Dalí, the great Spanish painter known for his vivid surrealist imagery. In 1976, he painted Gala contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at a distance of 20 meters is transformed into the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which is not totally unlike our modern “magic eye” drawings. The name may be long and unwieldly, but it’s a very literal description of the painting.
Does it work? Let’s try an experiment. Have a look at Max to the well‘s excellent representation of the painting. You can clearly see a figure standing in the middle of the model, facing away from you. That’s meant to be Gala, Dalí’s wife, staring at the sea. Now, move your chair back, away from your computer. You probably won’t be able to go 20 meters, but you can probably go 5 meters (about 16 feet). Now what do you see? Be honest, it looks a little bit like Abraham Lincoln, doesn’t it?
You may now return your seat to its regular upright position.
When I saw this sculpture by Chris Maddison, I didn’t think it was possible for all the pieces to be freestanding and connected. Even if supports were used, I couldn’t imagine how they could be Lego parts given the haphazard angles that the cubes were positioned. Even zooming on the photo and examining the gaps between the bricks revealed that each small cube is supposedly made out of a plain 2×2 brick sandwiched between a plate and tile. Just when I (and many others) thought the sculpture was impossible, Chris revealed the solution to this wonderful illusion.
Jason Allemann presents a brilliant model built by his partner Kristal — a stunning piece of kinetic sculpture designed to represent what goes on inside the mind of a LEGO engineer.
As a fully-fledged steampunk geek, you can imagine what the video of this creation in action did to me. This is absolute genius — expanding platforms, rising towers, crank-powered electric lighting. Check it out, it’s genuinely brilliant…
This fantastic minifig scale art gallery is a creation by Tyler Sky and his wife Frances. The gallery includes both LEGO depictions of actual works of art and some new creations by the builders themselves. Atop the largest floor, you can see a LEGO version of Four Boats Stranded and inside the large window the obvious red square is part of Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow. The Orca on display in the foreground is definitely one of my favourite parts of this build.
The inside of Tyler’s art gallery is worth taking a virtual stroll through. See if you can spot the white croissants used as an internal architectural feature. Don’t miss the tribute to Bob Ross on the first floor balcony; he is standing painting happy little trees.
Julius von Brunk built this amazing self-portrait bust in LEGO bricks. There’s great brickwork here, capturing the curves, planes, and lines of a head and face more accurately than you’d expect possible using plastic blocks. But for me, the main attraction is that raised eyebrow. It transforms this from being a cool technical achievement into a genuine portrait with a sense of character.
The stunningly accurate classic-rock album covers just keep coming! Following the Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd album covers we featured this month, comes W. Navarre‘s terrific LEGO version of Kansas’ Point of Know Return. Compare Navarre’s version to the original cover and you’ll see that he nailed it. I particularly love the Kansas lettering and eclipsed sun. I’m crossing my fingers that album covers will become a new LEGO building style after this bombardment of awesomeness.
Hot on the heels of the Division Bell album cover comes another amazing LEGO classic rock album cover. This time builder David Zambito created Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album (nicknamed “Zoso” or just “IV” by fans). The album is widely considered to be Zeppelin’s best (the final song is “Stairway to Heaven” after all), and looks phenomenal in brick.
Take a look at the original cover art and judge for yourself whether or not Zambito nailed the conversion into LEGO. The background looks like peeling tree bark and the hunched posture of the old man is spot on. Even better, the build appears to be about the size of a vinyl cardboard sleeve.
This famous piece of street art by Banksy depicts a little girl drifting over the controversial wall in the West Bank. Grantmasters has skillfully reproduced the detailed silhouette in LEGO, and it remains as poignant as ever.
