The recent BrickCon 2017, which took place in Seattle just a month ago, gathered the best Back to Old School creations — some of the most awesome remakes and remixes of old LEGO themes and sets. Galaktek‘s color refinery is an adorable reflection upon old concepts when designs were simple and the color palette is limited by several basic colors. That’s why you’ll never find here pieces in dark purple of Maersk blue; it was a beautiful time of yellow castles and blue and grey spaceships!
Roanoke Handybuck has built Sandyman’s Old Mill from The Lord of the Rings, which you may briefly recall from The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton by crossing the bridge. The sculpted look of the bridge and landscape adds an organic, rustic feel to the scene.
You can see some work in progress shots on MOCPages.
A builder that goes by the name Classical Bricks (Timothy Shortell) would probably find it challenging to choose a more appropriate theme to build in – there are few things more Classical than the Renaissance in western culture, which Timothy is a part of. His creation, built for the Time Isles collaboration at BrickCon, represents Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance.
The scene is bursting with the style and characteristics of the depicted time and place; the buildings are packed tightly to give an impression of an old city, but the buildings themselves are obviously screaming Renaissance too. Arches, ornate decoration and colours show us a rich city that was instrumental in bringing western culture to where it is today.
LEGO builder Greg Dlx continues to explore large-scale recreations of exotic architecture. Following from last year’s desert fortress, here’s a beautiful Persian Palace. The white and gold domes grab all the immediate attention, but it’s the arches with their fabulous purple touches and the surrounding greenery which draw you in further. The vines snaking across the elaborate facade are well done, and there’s lots of nice tilework on the floors. The surrounding gardens look beautiful and Greg has filled the grounds with a veritable menagerie of animal life. However, it’s perhaps a shame there aren’t some appropriate minifigures lending a little more action to the scene.
Four young builders join forces to bring us this extensive medieval village diorama. While I often complain about lack of variety in top-end castle-themed LEGO builds, there is a very bright side to this; if I had not known this creation was a collaboration, I would never have figured it out. The main image is hosted by Timothy Shortell, but the others involved are Micah the fire-breathing hobbit, Mountain hobbit and Cole Blood.
There are many details to see all over the diorama; the market has many interesting elemets, houses are all exceptionally done with interesting textures and angles everywhere, and the plant life facilitates the time and place where this diorama is set up – dried grass, autumn leaves and pine trees show us a cold but habitable place.
The LEGO Elves theme has some of the most unique sets of recent years, but we rarely see any custom creations inspired by this official theme. There are exceptions, of course, and the exception we are looking at today is Sean Mayo‘s Fairy Tree House. This build was set on display in the LEGO House’s Masterpiece Gallery, which may shed some light on the choice of theme. Indeed, if I had to choose builders to showcase their work in the LEGO House, Sean Mayo would be very near the top of the list.
The focal point is obviously the tree with a quaint little house at the top, both crafted masterfully. The surrounding deserves some attention too; the overgrowth is exploding with imagination (The ferns are made out of grill tiles!) and the rocks, while simplistic in technique, work really well – it really shows how a top builder can make any technique look good. My favourite part is the little boat, though. There are so many curves all over that give it a whimsical and organic look.
What better way to break up a featureless brick wall than with a bunch of hammers? Letranger Absurde (aka Vitroleum, aka Pacurar Andrei) will have all the LEGO Castle builders sobbing into their mead with this neat wall technique — a texture-tastic fortress constructed from Thor hammers! However, it’s not just the tool use which makes this model stand out — don’t miss the ingots on top of the crenelations, and the shaping of the rockwork around the wall’s ends. This is small enough that I’m going to call it a nice little “proof of concept”. I now insist on seeing a full-scale castle creation using this technique.
The Castle theme remains a perennial favourite amongst LEGO building genres. This lovely model by Brick Knight shows why. The diorama has a classic colour scheme, with grey stone walls, a brown and tan wooden structure, and the obligatory red roofing. However, the wonderful details across the walls reveal this as a modern Castle creation rather than something from days of yore. Whilst older techniques like stacked upside-down 1×2 panel pieces contribute to the depth and texture, and decorated shields provide a link to the past, there’s excellent use of the modern “masonry” brick, and a nicely-judged scattering of hinges and 1×1 round plates to offer weathering effects. I particularly like the use of cheese slopes to create the arrow slits, and the lovely work on the stained-glass windows.
The castle sits in a nicely-realised environment, with a stream and enough trees to suggest a larger world worth exploring beyond the diorama’s boundary. The mounted knight is surely setting out on quest to do exactly that…
There are fun details to be found all over the scene. It’s worth zooming in for a closer look. I particularly liked this guard, taking a bath in the stream, his jerkin lying on the bank behind him…
This creepy and distorted castle by Ryxe is quite a mind-bender. The walls meet at unusual angles to form a fortress that only a madman would call home. Even the pieces used for the building consist of a hodgepodge of bricks, tiles, wedges, plates, tiles and more — all scrambled to create a chaotic texture.
Check out more photos of the creation from different angles on Flickr and see how the structure looks different with each view.
Built for the #Summer Memories Contest on the Brickly app, this scene titled “Summer Beach” by Mark E. is a beautiful representation of an idyllic visit to the beach. I love the visual of the waves breaking and foaming on the beach, with the dark greens highlighting the ocean. Illustrating fond memories of building sand castles with friends and siblings, the only thing more certain than a fun afternoon in the sand was the incoming tide sure to level all your hard work.
If you have a spare five minutes I would thoroughly recommend watching the mesmerizing time-lapse of Mark’s build on YouTube.
The master of Bionicle character builds Djokson is consistently churning out such great creations that one would feel like he can’t surprise any more, but somehow he does just that, with every new build he posts. So it is with this powerful-looking Viking warrior named Asmund the Banisher, who the builder says was chosen by Odin to wield magical steel to banish those corrupted by darkness. If I were in the All-Father’s place, my choice would probably be similar.
The figure has lots of character, with the Chima lion head as a beard and some simple yet effective limbs. There is a perfect balance of system and Bionicle characteristic for Djordje, who keeps making great characters with this subtle skill.
Inspired by some of the submerged ruins found in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Joseph Z. has made imaginative use of a pane of glass to create an excellent LEGO scene — a wandering traveller taking a moment’s rest by a tranquil pool. The ruined stonework is nicely put-together, with a depth of texture suggesting both weathering and antiquity, but it’s the use of dark grey below the waterline vs the lighter grey above which caught my eye. I also like the way the grass stalks placed under the water-lilies suggest the plants’ continuation beneath the surface — it ties the above and below-water elements together, making this more than simply two different models separated by the glass. Perhaps a fish or two wouldn’t have gone amiss, but that’s nitpicking at an otherwise lovely piece of work.
