The dark primeval swamps of a fantasy world are always a place to be on your guard. They may be silent, too silent perhaps, but the heavy air laden with motes belies the danger of Tirrell Brown‘s bog. This great little vignette has some amazing fen flora made of classic LEGO bushes turned upside down and capped with 4×4 domes. The glowing Galaxy Squad alien eggs add to the mystery and otherworldliness of this everglade.
“Elaborate” and “enchanting.” As simply as that, these two words define Japanese culture for me. Surprisingly, this pair of words perfectly suits these two LEGO creations below.
Andrew JN charms us with this tiny diorama. It is hardly bigger than a medium Creator set, but take your time to choose what exactly you’re going to behold first: an astonishing roof, some charming usage of color in trees or river water calmly flowing by.
Gzu Bricks presents us another tiny vignette featuring one of the giant bonshō bells. I especially love that both creations are of the same concept — Japanese architecture surrounded by Japanese flora — but look how different building techniques are! Gzu Bricks’ build might look a little simpler, but I can’t imagine anything that could make it more complete.
Bricks magazine issue 16 is now available, and this month the main theme is LEGO Castles, with some added Steampunk for flavour, and a little VW Beetle action for variety.
The 124-page magazine has a range of exclusive articles and fan built creations, including a delve inside the magical walls of LEGO’s new 71040 The Disney Castle, and a dangerous encounter for the LEGO Elves as they try to save the baby Princess dragon egg in 41180 Ragana’s Magic Shadow Castle. The magazine explores Michael Kalkwarf’s modular castle system, while James Pegrum illustrates how to build circular towers in his builder’s masterclass. Whilst not medieval but definitely within the realm of fantasy, Rod Gillies explains the Victorian-inspired alternate universe of Steampunk with steampunk-style Ultra Agents MOCs and a look at LEGO’s own take on this genre.
Bricks is available in both digital and print format at a cost of £4.99 or US$6.60 (approx. due to variable exchange rates). Shipping and packaging costs for the print version are £1.50 for the UK, £4.25 for the rest of the world.
Click here for the full press release and sample pages
Grant Davis has built this spectacular little microscale castle. Like most LEGO microscale creations, it’s awash in terrific creativity, with lots of unusual pieces used in new ways, and the finished product belies its complexity. Fortunately for all of us curious viewers, Grant made a short video that shows some of the techniques he employed as he walks us through the disassembly of the model.
French builder Kloou. creates a detailed and technically advanced model of Rapunzel’s tower using tiles for the round tower. If you look closely, you can see Rapunzel’s hair is an actually braided piece of yarn. The builder certainly has not spared a strand of detail.
Just as stunning is the textured roof made of flag clips to imitate the individual shingles.
Tirrell Brown says he was inspired by architecture from the exotic subcontinent of India for his most recent LEGO build; the Qar Riwa Fortress. The castle itself is splendid with lots of eye-catching texture, but I really love the billowy desert sands and the lush oasis-like vegetation along the river. Tirrell chose to forgo the standard black frame around the outside of his build and the resulting effect is fantastic! In particular, I really appreciate that the exposed cut-away edge of the build shows the depth of the river and the darker layer of sand underneath.
LEGO’s Nexo Knights line has brought us some great new pieces and some cool recolored parts, but aside from a few isolated examples, the theme hasn’t sparked a wave of fan-built creations. This recon outpost model from Henry F. stood out as a result. This scene captures all the elements which excite me about Nexo — a perfect blend of medieval castle and hi-tech, the bright color scheme, and the robots. I like the asymmetry of the base, with the composition balanced out around the shield at the center, giving the image a focal point.
The texture in the castle wall is really well done, with attractive splashes of blue to break up all that light grey. It contrasts nicely with the brown and green of the terrain. Where the contrast isn’t working quite as well is with the figures — they’re a little lost in amongst that stonework. Maybe next time the minfigs should be some of the non-grey ones?
A few weeks back, Graham Gidman wowed us with his LEGO barrel-riding scene from The Hobbit. Now he brings us this wonderful little diorama. The stonework on the cottage walls is fabulous, and the curved roof with its spattering of studs makes for a lovely shape.
The smooth flow of the roof is reflected in the curve of the fence, and the whole thing sits on a nicely-built landscape base making effective use of multiple shades of green and earth tones. There’s some lovely touches of detail on show too — check out the little log pile under the cottage’s eaves. The only thing which doesn’t quite work for me is the continuation of the round stonework up into the chimneystack. However, that’s nit-picking — overall, this is a cracking piece of building.
This mythical scene by Henry F. evokes cold dead lands, riven with streams of smoking rock, populated only by those too unlucky or too cursed to be elsewhere. Here, a mighty beast lurks, and a band of hellish warriors surrounds it, hoping to catch a prize? Or perhaps unwisely seeking to tame it. Whatever their intentions, I cannot think this will go well for them.
Look closely at the stonework, for it is masterfully done, with just the right amount of profile “brick” bricks sprinkled with other pieces to create a crumbling edifice. The uneven base, which doesn’t sit flat, also lends to this vignette’s otherworldliness.
Fresh from wowing us with his banana-roofed treehouse, alego alego has been building a range of microscale castles. This one is my favorite — a wonderful fantasy castle with soaring spires, surrounded by a crystal clear moat and a pleasant greenwood. This fortress wouldn’t look out of place in Hyrule, or the Magic Kingdom for that matter. Very nice use of the new “weapon spear tip with fins” part from Nexo Knights for the tower roofs too…
I’d recommend checking out alego alego’s photostream for more microscale castle goodness, like this one fit for any prince or princess.
As we start wrapping up our coverage of the various LEGO Castle creations that were part of the Ye Old Merry Battleground collaboration by “InnovaLug” at Brickfair VA, we would be remiss in our duties if we failed to highlight this beautiful village by TBB alum Mark Erickson. Mark’s village includes two half-timbered houses and an excellent church in unconventional tan (sandstone, I presume). The church has sculptures in the same color as the structure — though in fact these would likely have been painted garishly when carved originally in the Medieval era — as well as a graveyard and a red roof with some subtle texturing.
Mark’s extra pieces of rounded landscaping that sort of “drip” off of his main diorama illustrate the interesting approach that the InnovaLug team took to their collaborative display. Rather than integrating the various contributions on a single underlying brick-built landscape (as we did with our Battle of Bricksburg display), the team used white space between the builds to highlight each build separately. We tried this approach with TBB’s “ChronoCon” display at BrickCon a couple of years ago, and it’s not generally a style of collaborative display that I think works all that well — though InnovaLug seems to have pulled it off quite well by spanning the open space with little details like the smaller landscaping pieces here. What do you think of this display style?
It’s time to make all of your Disney dreams come true: 71040 The Disney Castle is now available to LEGO VIP members. The set has 4,080 pieces, 5 minifigures, and costs $349 USD.
The set will be available to the general public beginning September 1, but the LEGO VIP Program is free to join, so you can just join and then order the set immediately to earn 349 points. That’s $15 toward a future LEGO order, and 49 points toward the next 100-point threshold for another $5.