Tag Archives: Characters

We love builds with character! Creating characters from LEGO elements, whether traditional System bricks or using elements from Bionicle and Constraction themes, is an amazing way to showcase your building skills. Brining out emotion and personality in bricks is an art!

Meet the ultra-cute Shinheadz and Blackheadz

LEGO recently released a new series of sets called Brickheadz, cute brick-built characters that seem to be the LEGO equivalent to Funko’s Pop Vinyls. And it’s no surprise that fans are responding with their own characters in this style. Tokoyo Tag Team have two couples to share the limelight. Firstly we have Shin Hayata, the lead character in the Japanese TV show Ultraman, and one of the monsters he fights, namely Gyango, who appears in an episode gloriously translated as The Rascal from Outer Space. Ultraman’s helmet has the perfect retro-futuristic vibe of a 1960’s sfi-fi television show.

Next up we have King Joe Black from the television series Ultraseven, a follow up to Ultraman. The slug-like creature next to him is Twin-Tail, a 15 kiloton prehistoric monster from the Return of Ultraman series. What a cutie!

Capturing characters in this chibi style is a great way to hone your character building skills by picking out the key features with bricks. I’m sure there will be lots more of these fan-built Brickheadz to come.

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I am not an AI, I am a living thinking entity

Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cybernetic human employed in law-enforcement in the Japanese manga, anime, and forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster, Ghost in the Shell — 50% cyborg-intelligence, 50% human, 100% LEGO. Builder Grant Masters uses an old Belville figure with coat of paint to show how the protagonist hooks up to a network of systems. The twisted tubing provides a suitably cyberpunk backdrop to the scene, and it’s all enhanced with some nice uplighting.

A conversation with Swedish superbuilder LegoJalex [Interview]

We recently had the chance to sit down with Johan Alexanderson (LegoJalex) to discuss his building style and approach to the hobby. A part-time web developer, as well as a free-lance illustrator and comic book artist, Johan is 35 years old and lives in Sweden. Come with us as we explore the mind of a builder!

TBB: So how did you get into LEGO building?

LegoJalex: I started building about 5 years ago, after a “dark age” of about 15 years. I had a stressful time then and I really needed something to relax with, so naturally I started to build again. Building with LEGO has so many great memories for me and I really like the creativity involved. I think there are similarities with my interest in drawing and illustrating, where in both you have to think in a creative and artistic way.

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Start getting emotional with the Inside Out family

With LEGO’s introduction of BrickHeadz, we’re starting to see fan builders apply their creativity to featuring their favourite characters in this new form. Mark Gotidoc captures the essence of these five Pixar characters’ emotions cleverly with just the right tones and elements, but with one difference from LEGO sets: no printed body parts. The only parts which are printed are the eyes, which truly convey the expressions of each individual. The rest are cleverly fashioned in minimal parts but with maximum effect.

I particularly like how some of the fists are fashioned with “lamp holder” pieces, instead of the expected plate holders (which to me look like hooks more than anything else).

The future of television is 3D ...but not in the way you think

It all started a few days ago when I saw a TV remote by Primož Mlakar‘s in my Flickr feed, with the description saying “I couldn’t imagine a TV without one :)”. I thought nothing more of it, only to be surprised later by teaser shots revealing the television set that needed the remote.

The TV’s general shaping is spot on, and nostalgic for anyone growing up with these old-school TVs. The antenna, the little channel display screen, and Sony logo are just perfect. The forced perspective Back to the Future II scene demands closer inspection. Primož tells us in the description that the layout was the starting point and was intended as a minifig scale diorama, but as he encountered some problems with scale, he decided to make a forced perspective build. Turning it into a television set was just the next logical step.

“How is it possible to power a weapon of this size?”

What, you thought I’d just go with “It’s a trap!”? That’d just be lazy. (Also, repetitive.) Admiral Ackbar may not have had the most memorable line in The Force Awakens, but his presence at the Resistance base marked another point in the movie that reminded us we were watching a true Star Wars film again. Master character builder Eero Okkonen captures the essence of the Mon Calamari admiral with a variety of slopes, vehicle fenders, reins, and other sundry bits.

A few pieces of brown lend subtle texture to what would otherwise be a mass of dark red. His expressive eyes are built from a black 2×2 boat stud layered over a round 2×2 yellow tile.

You gotta kill a lotta frogs to find your prince

The late Carrie Fisher had been scheduled to appear next month at Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con, so I decided to make a Leia tribute for the convention’s Brick Nation display. We’ve already seen LEGO tributes showing a demure Princess Leia shoving a floppy disk into some poor hapless droid, but I wanted to recreate a moment from the original trilogy that captured Fisher’s feisty character! Jabba’s death scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi seemed appropriate (…ignoring for a moment the fact that this is basically a PG-rated movie that features a brutal and drawn-out murder scene)

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Adorable brick superheroes get supersized

LEGO’s new BrickHeadz may the latest fad, but French builder Jimmy Fortel is showing us they don’t have the market cornered for adorable superhero characters made of bricks. The Chibz characters, designed by Jimmy, are a bit larger than BrickHeadz and can incorporate great brick-built expressions into the faces as well as more detail on the bodies. Jimmy’s started off with 3 each from Marvel and DC, and has more planned.

Hope you didn’t plan on sleeping well tonight

Forget the chainsaw dripping with blood — everything in the face of this creepy clown built by LegoOzp is unsettling. The printed eye tiles, the colorful 4×4 dishes on the cheeks, the menacing grin — it’s enough to make someone like me with no fear of clowns a tad uncomfortable.

Sometimes love is black and white

Valentine’s Day was yesterday, but we couldn’t pass on highlighting this amazing LEGO portrait of a silhouetted couple built by Letranger Absurde. Look closely, because while those black shapes with smoothly curving edges may look simple, they’re actually a complicated conglomeration of plates and slopes facing all directions. The creation is also much larger than it appears at first glance, standing around two feet tall.

And don’t miss our recent interview with the builder, where we discuss his inspiration and unique style.

You shall call me Snowball, because my fur is pretty and white

In the second episode of Rick and Morty (or as I like to call it “Back to the Future on acid”) Morty’s dog Snuffles is fitted with a device that boosts his intelligence, a move that (not surprisingly) escalates to Snuffles leading an army of dogs wearing robotic exoskeletons to enslave humanity. Ultimately the dogs are banished to their own world, which is envisioned here in LEGO by none other than Richard Van As, one of the show’s animators:

It’s elementary: uncanny character busts from Tyler Clites

We love the art of Tyler Clites for its bold style and perky colors. The way he treats common LEGO pieces always makes his characters vivid and lively, whether it’s some Star Wars protagonists or Tintin’s space rocket. Tyler’s every build has its own mood and a story to tell. And Tyler’s latest set of busts are simply jaw-dropping. This time it’s not just skillful building with LEGO bricks, but the pairing up of characters that makes these works so outstanding…

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