David Hensel is turning towers blue with this beautiful azure magician’s tower. David based the model on an enchanting painting by artist Péah. While the entire model is filled with the sorts of complicated techniques and detailing David is accustomed to using, I particularly like the brick-built blue embellishments over the smaller building’s window. That’s a great detail many builders would have left out.
Brick to the Past is a British collective (and veritable Who’s Who of top-notch castle builders) that focuses on large historical LEGO displays. The team finally unveiled its 2015 opus at the STEAM expo this month, and it’s a real humdinger! Entitled The Wall, it’s an expansive and gorgeously detailed slice of Romano-Celtic life along both sides of Hadrian’s wall.
The Roman side features a full minifig scale fort, villa, temple, bath house, milecastle and town. Whilst the Celtic side features an Iron Age village, farmhouse and standing stones. All laid out amidst some great contoured landscaping and a long snaking section of the famous wall.
If I recall correctly, we reported on a community poll that LEGO conducted a few years ago, to gather suggestions for possible future LEGO themes. And if also I recall correctly, a large number of you cried out for a Roman theme. So while we wait and hope for LEGO to finally see the light, I thoroughly recommend you get your fix by checking out all the detailed photos of this awesome display.
I just had to share this off-kilter cottage by Christophe. I love the off-angle, and the roof. The swords on the door are a nice touch.
I encourage you to check out more of his flickr gallery, too. There are plenty of lovely examples of cottages and buildings that are just whimsical.
Castor Troy spent the past year working on this massive 6 feet tall creation depicting a fantasy guild of vampire hunters. The elaborate pillar consists of varying techniques of rock work as well as embedded structures, and on top are buildings depicting different ethnicities uniting to fight the vampires. Check out more details of this colossal creation on Flickr.
Today at the New York Comic Con, LEGO officially pulled the curtain from their newest line, Nexo Knights. A cross between Space and Castle, Nexo Knights features knights in robotic power armor riding mechanical hovering horses and driving giant vehicles. The Nexo Knights theme will be accompanied by a companion app titled Merlok 2.0, as well as a 20-episode television series chronicling the adventures of the knights. It airs in December.
While many of our viewers will no doubt be having flashbacks to Knights Kingdom II right about now, it looks like these sets will at the least feature a lot of new parts great for Space and Mecha builders. We also still haven’t seen the full set lineup, so keep your eyes out for the rest of the sets.
Read the full press release after the jump. Continue reading
Thorsten Bonsch (Xenomurphy) spent over half a year and over 11,000 pieces to build this ritualistic portal known as the Dolmen from The Elder Scrolls Online. The most intriguing part of this diorama is the mosaic of runes surrounding the anchor centerpiece. Check out the detail shots to see some close-up action.
This beautiful section of medieval wall is part of a much larger display put together by the folks over at THE BRICK TIME for the SteineWahn LEGO exhibition in Berlin earlier this month. As much as I enjoy the ‘tumble-down’ style of castle building that is very popular right now, it is kind of refreshing to stumble across a crisp piece of German engineering like this! The texturing and color palette are to die for:
Ivan Angeli builds big. Really big. His latest diorama, showing the clash of an angelic stronghold with nefarious Drow forces, measures about 12 by 6 feet. The name will be familiar to D&D Forgotten Realms aficionados, as most of Ivan’s models are based in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Shown recently at LUGS United, a fan event in Belgrade, Serbia, Ivan says this diorama includes over 1000 minifigs, and the white tower is over 6 feet tall. Impressively, Ivan says that he has only enough room at home to build about 18 by 18 inches at a time, forcing him to carefully plan so that each section will fit together when assembled at a show. As with most fans who bring builds to shows — especially large builds — Ivan has plenty of tales of woe to tell of parts not connecting properly or structures collapsing the night before the show, requiring hasty on-site reconstruction. Be sure to also check out our interview with Ivan for his previous model, which was similarly as ridiculously large.
Our next featured creation from Iron Builder veteran and history lover Letranger Absurde features lots of yummy dark brown and one particular example of nice part usage (can you spot it?).
From the builder: “This was built as a request; perfect opportunity for me to build an Arthurian themed MOC since I’ve always wanted to do one. The sword’s pretty much the same from the Witcher build I’ve done previously.”
The epic poetry of Homer’s Iliad seems ripe for LEGO inspiration, but we don’t see a lot of Homeric LEGO. Simon Schweyer corrects this with a triptych of scenes from this great work of Classical literature.
First, Paris seduces and abducts Helen of Troy, setting in motion the vengeful war led by Helen’s husband Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon. A beautiful Spartan temple dominates the scene, complete with gilded statuary in the pediment.
Next, Simon depicts the 10-year siege of Troy itself, with a disconcerted Helen atop a surprisingly detailed white wall. My favorite detail is the rubble-filled interior section of the wall.
Finally, the Greeks send the Trojans a gift horse, into whose mouth they really should have looked. Again, my eye was drawn past the wooden horse in the foreground to the temple’s pediment, with some excellent red, gold, and white mosaic work.
All the range in LEGO castles these days is the worn, weathered, somewhat ruinous look that should be familiar by now to readers of this blog. W. Navarre himself has built in that style, but the large keep he recently built looks somewhat more defensible than those ramshackle hovels. One notable decision was to build the central tower studs out, then tile the whole thing from top to bottom. W. Navarre does manage to work in substantial detail to avoid the loathed “Big Gray Wall” syndrome.
While my esteemed colleague may have been impressed by Letranger Absurde‘s hourglass, I feel no guilt in posting another one of Letranger’s remarkable LEGO creations just a day later. This amazing undead dragon incorporates numerous LEGO bone and horn pieces, proving that in some cases LEGO pieces are indeed best used as originally intended. The graveyard backdrop with a gloomy tree is also wonderful, once you can peel your eyes away from the dracolich.
