TBB perennial favorite Jason Allemann is at it again with a gorgeous brick-built book. This book can feature different scenes, all showing different parts of your favorite story. When you’re ready to put it away, the whole closes up and would fit snugly on your shelf.
Last summer, British publisher DK added to its extensive collection of LEGO books with the Build Your Own Adventure series, starting with a pair of Ninjago and Friends themed adventures. This summer, the series continues with two new volumes that explore the themes of City and Star Wars.
LEGO Star Wars: Build Your Own Adventure is an 80-page hard cover book that comes with an exclusive 73 piece LEGO set and minifgure. It follows the exploits of Rebel pilot Zin Evalon as he journeys through familiar locations from the Star Wars universe, on a mission to recover a set of lost data cubes.
Following the established BYOA format, the book’s pictoral story is spread over several chapters, each covering a different location including Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor. The environments and vehicles in the story are illustrated using over 50 ‘inspirational’ LEGO models that were the work of fan builder (and Brothers Brick editor) Rod Gilles.
Every week this month, we’re giving away a signed copy of the new LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure. Every model in the book was designed by our own Rod Gillies! To enter the second copy we’re giving away in August, click here.
We’ll also send each winner a snazzy TBB T-shirt and other cool swag, but thanks in particular to Rod and our friends at DK for the books!
Proving that we can only go so long without giving away something Star Wars-related (with a break in August to give away the new Ghostbusters Ecto-1), this month we’re delighted to be giving away four copies of the new LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure. This is a particularly special giveaway, since TBB’s own Rod Gillies created all the models in the book, and will be signing each of the books you can win! To enter, click here.
We’ll also send each winner a snazzy TBB T-shirt and other cool swag, but thanks in particular to Rod and our friends at DK for the books!
The book will be available on August 2nd, and we’ll do our best to set aside our love of Rod to bring you a balanced review soon.
Following on from the introduction of the Build Your Own Adventure books last year, August 2016 sees the launch of two new titles in the series: Build Your Own City Adventure, and Build Your Own Star Wars Adventure.
The Build Your Own Adventure series is different from most other LEGO books in that it comes with an exclusive LEGO set. The book features set instructions followed by a story illustrated with models created by builders from the LEGO fan community. The Brothers Brick’s very own Rod Gillies worked on the Star Wars book and we pestered him into giving us a sneak peek before the book is officially released.
The model in the set is very cool — a microscale Y-Wing fighter, built in a “chibi” style similar to the Microfighter range of collectable sets. The spaceship is piloted by Zin, a Rebel pilot and the hero of the book’s story. The tale sees Zin traverse the galaxy on a secret mission, visiting famous Star Wars planets and locations.
After taking a flick through the pages, we arranged to ask Rod a few questions about the book, the building process, and getting to work with the LEGO Star Wars designers…
Click through to read the interview and see more images from the book
LEGO builder Omar Ovalle has spent the last two years working on and off recreating the iconic house sigils from Game of Thrones, from House Stark’s iconic wolf of Winterfell, to House Lannister’s majestic lion of Casterly Rock, and on to some of the lesser known sigils such as House Baelish’s mockingbird. The collection is still a work in progress, but Omar has also taken some time to build a few cool LEGO busts of characters from the series, including the ever-faithful Hodor. Check them all out below!
House Stark
Hodor
Moby Dick is one of those novels that requires real commitment to get through, with its lengthy diversions and deep symbolism, but rewards careful reading and sticks with you for decades afterward. It also makes for great LEGO inspiration, as Ryan Rubino’s white whale battling a giant squid from back in 2009 certainly proves. Letranger Absurde enters the fray with Captain Ahab entangled by the line from his own harpoon, hauled to his doom in the dark deeps of the sea. The sperm whale itself steals the spotlight in this build, with what appears to be a surfboard for a tongue, but don’t miss the excellent sea floor, complete with conch shell, brain coral, and even a treasure chest.
A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin takes his rightful place in the Red Keep atop the infamous Iron Throne, from whence he will cast judgment and pronounce life or death upon the world’s inhabitants (mostly death). This magnificent entourage of LEGO characters by Callum brings many of your favorite characters to brick form, from Eddard Stark and Jon Snow, to Jaime and Tyrion, and Daenerys and Khal Drogo.
The quote above is from The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and it’s the epigraph for The Ideal Order, a recently published novel written by Christoph Bartneck. (You can find my review of this book on Goodreads.) The story is centered around the life of a troubled AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) named Rob, who, like all builders before him, eventually realizes that his LEGO collection is virtually useless when stored in one big cardboard box and thus sets out on a quest to find (you guessed it) “the ideal order” for sorting his LEGO collection. (Spoiler alert! No such order truly exists.) I sympathize with Rob’s predicament, because I’ve been there. There’s nothing worse than trying to build an old set by fishing pieces out of the rainbow-colored abyss of plastic that is an unsorted box of LEGO. So we sort.
Builder Marcel V. is on a mission to picture Harry Potter’s life one little slice at a time. These terrific vignettes take us from 4 Privet Drive, to Platform 9 and 3/4, Ollivander’s, and right on to Hogwarts’ Sorting Hat and the Gryffindor Common Room. Marcel tells us he’s planning a rather lengthy series, so we’ll check back in as he continues to create these brick snapshots. For now, though, check out the first five scenes in Harry’s life:
And some adventures lead us to our destiny. Dwalin Forkbeard built the iconic wardrobe from the Chronicles of Narnia that leads to the magical land of Narnia. Though the professor’s home on the back side of this build could use some more furniture and maybe a rug, I’m in love with the Narnia scene and the wardrobe itself. The snowy landscape and those coniferous trees are stunning and the new LEGO satyr makes for a perfect Mr. Tumnus.
Dwalin captured a beautiful, out-of-focus-foreground photo of the wardrobe and beyond, presumably depicting the Pevensie children’s first glimpse of Narnia. He also built an 8 by 8 vignette version of this build for a sweet contest over on Eurobricks where you can win an entire set of the new Series 15 Collectible Minifigures, including the Satyr and (everyone’s favorite) Left Shark! The contest ends on March 10th so there’s still time for you to follow Dwalin’s lead and submit an entry or two of your own!
Markus Rollbühler opens up a new page on LEGO building by presenting Grimm’s Fairy Tales in book form. We’ve seen literature depicted in LEGO through an artistic representation of a book before, but I here I particularly love Markus’ use of the pages forming gnarled tree silhouettes to add depth to the scenes. Markus says that there are references to six of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales depicted here: see if you can spot them all.
