Alex Hui brings us this gorgeous replica of the Temple of Heaven, a 15th-century structure in Beijing which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Alex has masterfully recreated the intricate ornamentation on the Daoist temple’s walls, helped by the massive scale he employs. Although it doesn’t look it, the base of this model is around four feet in diameter, and the temple is almost as tall. Below is a picture of Alex posing with his creation.
Mike Dung has brought Aya Shameimaru from the Touhou Project to life in LEGO. Aya Shameimaru is a character who appears as a reporter in many of the games within the Touhou Project series. Aya covers the news in the fictional realm of Gensokyo and also belongs to the Crow Tengu species, giving her a height advantage when taking photographs. Mike manages to convey character details and also the fantastical nature of the game within his build.
I have to admit that I really like all the crows, Aya’s wings, the crow seen flying just below Aya, and the clever use of the black hotdog part to show a crow flying in the background. Forced perspective is utilised particularly well in the microscale Shinto shrine that appears to lie far below Aya as she enjoys her birds-eye view of the world. The overall feeling is one of movement, distance and height, something that is not easy to achieve within a small build.
This impressive creation depicting the Ruins of St Paul’s by Alex Hui was built for the Macau X LEGO Exhibition. The model is deceptively large at nearly four feet tall.
The Ruins of St. Paul’s, located in Macao, refer to the façade of what was originally the Church of Mater Dei built in 1602-1640 and the ruins of St. Paul’s College, which stood adjacent to the Church — both destroyed by fire in 1835. The sculptured motifs of the façade include biblical images, mythological representations, Chinese characters, Japanese chrysanthemums, a Portuguese ship, several nautical motifs, Chinese lions, bronze statues and other elements that integrate influences from Europe, China and other parts of Asia.
Alex chose to build in a sufficiently grand scale to allow the carvings and sculptures to be accurately depicted in LEGO and took 6 months to complete the build. The model is approximately 1.2m high and is constructed solely in light gray and dark grey. The use of dark grey is very effective for highlighting the depth of the central sculpture and really captures so many of the fine details from the original. My own favourite part is the winged ‘Holy Spirit’ in the triangular pediment at the top, which symbolizes the ultimate state of divine ascension as seen in the zoomed image below.
Indonesian builder Dennis Qiu brings us another stellar example of the amount of character that can be captured in LEGO. This Chinese lion would fit perfectly into mythology or, because I love robots, an episode of Zoids. LEGO has been going gold-crazy lately, but the use of it here is superb.
Kosmas Santosa of the Indonesian LEGO club Bhinneka LUG is one of my favorite builders, working across numerous LEGO themes with excellent techniques and beautiful presentation. For the club’s first public display earlier this summer, they built famous landmarks and buildings in the nation’s capital. Kosmas contributed several iconic landmarks and vehicles, but my favorite is this gorgeous, incredibly detailed Hindu temple, the largest in Jakarta.
As a bonus, here’s one of the great vehicles Kosmas also built — a three-wheeled auto rickshaw called a bajaj. It’s actually quite hard to build small with LEGO, and Kosmas does it very well.
Today is Chinese New Year, and Andy Hung from Hong Kong celebrates with these Lego creations of iconic items you may see around Chinese homes such as a candy platter, a paper door decor with the “fortune” character, a bowl of narcissus, and a string of firecrackers. You can see more photos on Flickr.
This pagoda built by me will be displayed at Brickcon this week. I wanted to depict a subject of Chinese architecture not often seen in Lego. The pagoda is modeled after the Big Goose Pagoda from my hometown of Xi’an, China.
Yes, there was no Friday Night Fights last night. Sorry. Hey, we’re all very busy finishing our builds for BrickCon! But instead of going on a violent rampage, just take a deep breath and soak in this temple triple gate by Hiroshi Kataoka (片岡 ひろし). Oh, and ignore the ninja. He’s hiding. You can’t see him.
And if that creation doesn’t cause a wave of tranquility to wash over you, here is another one by the same builder that should do the trick. Unless you have cherry allergies.
Lukasz Wiktorowicz crafted a beautiful oriental diorama featuring three temples nested on a tiered landscape. Check out the innovative and realistic technique used for the roofs and the waterfall.
Tyler Halliwell is best known to our regular readers as a creator of amazing LEGO busts. So his latest work – depicting the Monkey King of Chinese mythology – is an ambitious departure in terms of its size and construction. We think you’ll agree that the attention to detail and the naturalness of this figure’s clothing and facial expression are completely mind-blowing!
We journeyed for several months across the Asian subcontinent, rescuing helpless villagers from all manner of demons along the way, to visit the mountain in which Tyler has been imprisoned for the past 500 years, so we could find out more about this creation…
BB: So how many hours and how many bricks went into this creation?
TH: That’s tough to estimate, but probably about 100 hours over the past two months, with most of it coming into shape in the past two weeks. There’s less pieces than you’d think, as it’s mostly hollow but for a technic frame. So if I had to guess, I would say around 1500 bricks.
BB: What inspired you to choose the Monkey King as the subject of your latest LEGO sculpture?
It does seem like we’re obsessed with spacecraft today, so here’s a very different kind of vessel. Hoang Dang built this Vietnamese fishing boat to raise awareness of the complex political situation happening today in what westerners typically call the “East China Sea” (even the name of the geographic area is fraught with tension, thus my quotation marks). For a change, I’ll stay out of the politics, but Hoang’s LEGO model certainly deserves plenty of attention.
Hoang has built his model at the scale of the classic Technic figure, which gives him a bit more room to play with shapes and details than if he’d built it at the typical minifig scale. He captures the curves of the hull wonderfully, and details like the sea star on the Vietnamese flag, nets, fish in barrels, and lights all add realism. But my favorite aspect of this model is the color — it’s not often you see a bright blue boat built from LEGO!
I must say this piece of junk by j¤nesy is fantastic:
I’ve actually tried to build one before, but even 4 times as big as j¤nesy’s, I wasn’t able to recreate the distinctive elegance that he has managed to capture with this creation. The use of the old Ninja Sails is nothing short of an epic technique. But it doesn’t stop there – the little details of the rolled up silks in the boat and the fantastic rolling waters just adds the this already amazing build.