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!

All the droids you’re looking for

It’s just over one week to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (a bunch of the TBB crew are seeing it Thursday night), so expect another spike in LEGO Star Wars creations here over the next while. Daniel Stoeffler has built C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 from The Force Awakens to the same scale. This size lets Daniel show off a wealth of details, such as the actuators on Threepio’s neck.

As a bonus mashup, here’s the Star Wars trio with another pair of robots with winning personalities, Wall-E and EVE.

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Think with your feet...and run!

TBB has encountered a new species of alien thanks to Jake RF and they seem to come well equipped with breathing apparatuses, radios, weapons and leg pouches filled with…well, let’s just say that I don’t think it’s snacks and a can of soda…

Jake has maximised poseability by using Mixel ‘ball and socket’ components for the main body joints (shoulder, elbow, hip, knee). The Aliens’ feet are created using Star Wars Battle Droid heads and torsos. Their hands use the Battle Droid torso and arms while their head also utilise the droid’s head and torso. The side view shows the strange functionality of using droid heads to form feet — I bet they can scale walls better than Spiderman! I love the added breathing apparatus attached to the “mouth” area: it is clear that these aliens are not from our World.

Maybe they come in peace…

The wandering stranger

thisisnothingatall brings us this eerie humanoid nomad. The creator doesn’t provide a backstory, but it’s easy to imagine eons of history in this sculpture. It reminds me a bit of Tali, one of the more intriguing characters in Mass Effect.

The Shinigami Ryuk from Death Note manga

In the Death Note manga series by Tsugumi Ohba, the character Ryuk is a shinigami or “death god” who meddles in human affairs by giving a young man named Light a notebook that enables him to kill anybody at will. While not particularly my style of manga, I can certainly appreciate this LEGO bust of Ryuk by Ilia. Ryuk’s hair and wings (?) blend into the dark background Ilia uses, making his eyes and teeth jump out even more. The character’s iconic apple makes another contrasting splash of color.

A room with real character

This pair of figures and room by Simon Pickard is a cracking piece of work. The scale was initially unclear on my first look, requiring a zoom in at the details for me to understand this model is actually pretty big…

The figures are good (although this “no-eyes” style always gives me the heebie-jeebies), and the floor is well executed, but as ever it’s the details which make a creation pop: the use of a minifig for a photograph, the fishbowl in the corner, and best of all, those plug sockets. All of these show creative parts-use and a good eye for what works at this scale. Nicely done Simon.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...”

In the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, there have been a lot knee-jerk reactions from politicians and leaders regarding the refugee policies of their respective states. Satirical Swedish building duo SuckMyBrick decided to add a little LEGO-colored commentary on the debate, that should serve to remind us here in the US that Europe’s refugee situation is considerably more dire and complicated than our own.

In the builders’ own words: “Europe is struggling to accept more refugees every day and is partially doing a good job at it. But from the refugees standpoint, it’s hard to understand a closed door when what they are running from is so much worse than the problems that arise for us by helping them.”

Avatar: The Last Airbender takes to the sky in LEGO form

Cast your mind back to 2005-08 and you may remember an American animated television series called Avatar: The Last Airbender, on Nickelodeon. Firstly we have John Moffat bringing the main characters from the series to life in LEGO form.

The Avatar animation series was set in a fantasy world in which some people are able to manipulate the basic elements of air, water, fire and earth by use of psychokinetic variants of Chinese martial arts, known as “bending”. Aang, the twelve-year-old, fun-loving, airbending protagonist of the series can be seen in more detail below… The body positioning with martial art poses is fantastic for these small characters.

In addition, Jme Wheeler brings one of the faithful companions, Appa the loyal sky bison of Aang, to life once more in LEGO form.

Jme Wheeler captures the character of Appa with a very accurate colour palette with studs to show “shaggy ” fur, and great use of part 49668 (1×1 plate with tooth). The positioning is a classic bison head down. Look at that nose and those strong legs ready to charge — the only slight difference being…this bison can fly!

The color of magic: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld characters in LEGO

It’s time to travel to Discworld and enjoy this fantastic series of characters from the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, brought to us by Eero Okkonen (Pate-keetongu). Eero started these shortly after the death of Pratchett in March this year. His first build was a large-scale creation of his favourite Discworld character, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully (back-row, far left in the photo below).

The Ones Who Meddle With The Fabric Of Reality

The Archchancellor, Professor of Unusual and Cruel Geography, Dean, Librarian and The Luggage.

If you’re not familiar with Terry Pratchett, he was the author of a series of 41 comic fantasy books that take place in the Discworld, a flat circular world that rests on the backs of four elephants who are standing on the back of a turtle.

I simply must point out a few of my favourite parts, although it is hard to narrow this down to only my top three. In no particular order: the Archchancellor’s ‘winged’ beard; bananas used to represent the peeled banana skin held by the Librarian; and the dark red windscreen used as the Luggage’s tongue! Well one more… look below, Commander Vimes toes are minifigure legs!

Commander Vimes

Susan Sto Helit, Granddaughter of Death

Now that Finnish builder Eero “Pate-keetongu” Okkonen has completed his LEGO Discworld characters (well, completed them for the moment, he happily admits), TBB asked him a few questions about the experience:

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NERDvember 2015: All your contest are belong to us

For LEGO builders with a competitive streak November is a busy month, with the Colossal Castle, Vic Viper and our own Pimp Rey’s Speeder contests now in full swing. But if castles and spacecraft are not your cup of tea, you do have another option: NERDvember, brought to you by our pal Tommy Williamson over at the BrickNerd!

Indonesian builder Kosmos Santosa tried to keep things classy with his interpretation of Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring. But then not surprisingly things got a bit Star Warsy, as you can see from this R2-N2 by Palixa And The Bricks and NERDcrawler by captainsmog:

On second thoughts make that very Star Warsy. Behold, Jabba the Nerd by Gregory Coquelz…

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He’s Popeye the LEGO Man!

Very few characters lend themselves to being made out of solid, usually rectangular bricks without some amount of artistic interpretation. But Popeye, with his cartoonish proportions, actually lends himself to being made in brick. Eh, it must be the spinach.

Kosmas Santosa brings the character to life with a faithful build that manages to nail every aspect of the famous design of the sailor. Some custom stickers give the spinach cans their labels and that massive forearm an anchor tattoo, but the rest is straight LEGO and all Popeye.

Cosmik Roger and Xub

I always appreciate it when my interest in LEGO introduces me to something I’ve never heard of before. And that’s exactly what happened here with ledukeniko‘s recent character build. Please meet my new acquaintance, Cosmik Roger, the main character in a French comic book series that ran from 2002 to 2013. From what I can tell, with my limited knowledge of the French language, Roger travels space looking for booze, women, and a new home for the doomed human race.

Ledukeniko translated the incredible art style of the comic into a very pose-able and lovable-looking LEGO build. Roger’s signature messy hair and oversize nose looks fantastic! But ledukeniko didn’t stop with the main character. He also built, Xub, an alien bartender from the comics who apparently buys his clothes from the same stores as Han Solo. You can check out all of ledukeniko’s fantastic builds here.

Make LEGO, not war

Far out! This copacetic creation by French cat Jimmy Fortel makes me wanna turn on, tune in and drop out. Can you dig the narly design of this dude’s mellow face, the totally tubular outfit, and groovy fingers? Radical. Peace out, man!

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