Tag Archives: Dioramas

There’s nothing like a massive LEGO diorama to prove that you’ve arrived as a LEGO builder. The LEGO dioramas we feature here span everything from realistic medieval castles to scenes from World War II, and more than a few post-apocalyptic wastelands.

The migration that gave the Romans migraines

If you like history and LEGO, Hunter Erickson is a builder you need to check out. His most recent build represents a violent slice of the late years of the ancient Roman empire. The builder gives a very detailed description on Flickr, so make sure you check it out.

Besides being very well posed in an immersive battle scene, the minifigs are quite realistic in their design. The little autumn forest on the other side of the diorama is more than just a background though — if you look closely, you can see it serves as cover for a handful of Germanic archers. And the trees are quite well built as well!

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You can’t take kids anywhere these days

Ruins are hard to do convincingly in LEGO form. I think this is partly to do with the rigid grid of the brick, which does not lend itself to organic shapes of decay, and partly to do with the visual incoherence that often results from too many shapes and colors in the same visual field. Even though we are a far cry from the primary/white/black color days at the dawn of the LEGO brick, there is still a limit to the shades and hues that can be used to differentiate areas of a build and maintain something that still makes sense to the brain. That being said, this post-apocalyptic build by Peter Ilmrud does a good job of showing buildings that look both coherent and ruined, covered with verdant vegetation, while a menacing black ship prowls air above the streets.

I’m fairly certain that nearly every botanical element produced by LEGO appears in the build somewhere, from vines to leaves to leafy vines to seaweed and more. Even the sprues from the three-leaved plants appear as vines. It is a lush city. The bad guys (you can tell they’re bad because they wear black) are aliens trying to kill the humans to harvest natural resources (like Avatar in reverse), and their ships are filled with greebles, especially ones from the Batman pack. Of course, with evil aliens on the prowl, one of the poor kids has lost his teddy bear crossing a street. Kids, I tell you what. Good thing they’re cute.

I’d like to be under the sea

If you feel a longing for vibrant colors, piece, and quite, try spending a day at Anthony Wilson‘s underwater lab. Built for fundamental marine research, this facility looks like a proper resort: huge windows, glass tunnels, and out-of-this-world species diversity right in front of you. I bet this place was engineered by those escaping anything happening above the water. It took me at least a couple of minutes to spot all the different fish captured in this build. I must admit, now I feel a lot calmer and happier.

TBB cover photo for February 2020: Taking in the sights

From the incredible detail to the creative forced perspective execution, this build from collaborative team Grant Davis, Eli Willsea, and Micah Beideman, does not disappoint. With every glance, you’ll notice something new (oooh, look at that AC unit and that awning made of 1×1 cones), which is one of the many reasons we chose it for our February cover photo. Read our original article to see how this trio used LEGO to bring a painting to life.

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Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun and games

Welcome to the jungle, it gets worser every day. You can thank Axl Rose for that grammatical abomination that is now stuck in your heads. Wait…what? He doesn’t say “worser”? “Worse here”? You mean I’m the one that has been singing it wrong all this time? Man, that is a bummer! It totally ruins my intro premise. Anyway, sukhodolov_nikita built a LEGO creation aptly called “Welcome to the jungle” and it seems almost as inhospitable as Axl’s version. First of all, that broken suspension bridge is going to be a sticky-pickle to navigate and that bright yellow frog just might present some adverse effects, especially if you lick it. While the presentation and build techniques are quite good, (the idol is especially nice) this jungle doesn’t seem particularly welcoming at all. It might be safer to just stay home and listen to me sing my favorite Elton John song. Here goes…Hold me closer, Tony Danza…

Head back to Skyrim where adventure awaits

Skyrim is the northernmost province of Tamriel, the world of the Elder Scrolls videogames. When Bethesda Game Studios launched the fifth installment of the series in 2011, Skyrim received as much praise for its Norse-themed design elements as for the immersive gameplay. Marcin Otreba clearly enjoyed the game’s styling as he’s recreated a typical Skyrim town scene in LEGO. The hut is excellent, with an appropriate blend of wooden tones, and a spot-on tiled roof constructed with triangular parts. I love the wooden palisade of spiked logs, and the forge and grinding stone are almost perfect recreations of these key elements in the game. But best of all? That fire — genius use of an inverted pearl-grey basketball net! This neat little scene makes me want to grab a sword and shield and head for Skyrim myself once more. It’s fun to wander the cold, hard streets of Whiterun. Well, at least until you take an arrow to the knee.

Needz moar boompowderz

For such a small model, there’s lots to love in Ayrlego‘s diorama of an Imperial Armoury receiving a gunpowder delivery. The colour scheme is excellent, with the building’s walls offering a smart contrast to both foliage and water. But a closer look is also rewarded, with lots of nice building techniques on display. Don’t miss the weathering in the walls, the subtle change in colour where the water laps against the quay, and the construction of the small cannon on the roof. I particularly like the hanging lantern, with lever parts providing thin bars around the light — a technique I’ll be stealing with pride in any future Pirate-themed creations of my own!

Check out this incredibly huge and detailed LEGO diorama of the Eternal City, Rome

It is rare for a LEGO build to make my jaw drop and leave me drooling on my keyboard, but that is just what this stunning layout of Imperial Rome by Rocco Buttliere did. I have a Master’s degree in Classics, primarily in the Latin language, and so anything and everything Roman is right up my via, but there is a lot of great information to learn in the descriptions of the photos, even for one with an advanced degree in a tangential field. In fact, I could spend hours looking through all the pictures, and have already spent the better part of one skimming through the descriptions. It is fascinating stuff. And the build! It is huge, about 1×2 meters in size, with 66,000 bricks going into its construction. And not one is wasted or superfluous. So let’s take a brief tour of the Eternal City, shall we?

See more of this masterpiece of LEGO architecture

She’s got it where it counts, kid

Is there a spaceship as universally beloved as the Millennium Falcon? Maybe the Enterprise is close, but then you get into a debate about which Enterprise is beloved, since numerous ships have held the moniker. But there is only one Falcon (even if it’s had a few changes). Maybe it’s the way it looks like a pile of garbage, or a rusty bucket of bolts, the kind of ship that leaves you saying, “Hear me, baby, hold together” whenever you hit a bump, just like the first car you bought in high school. It’s even got those stupid dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and you gotta believe Han’s got a few of those pine tree-shaped air fresheners hung up around the ship. Seeing her fly, somehow, despite being anti-aerodynamic, through the atmosphere, trailing a pretty blue jetstream – magic. Andreas Lenander captures a bit of that feel with his latest LEGO build, showing the Millennium Falcon blasting out of some hive of scum and villainy or other.

It is at a smaller scale, so naturally quite a bit of detail is lost, like the proper number and positioning of the heat exhaust vents on the back or the exposed access hatches on the front mandibles. But who cares when the glowing blue trail is so perfect? The greebles are nicely executed, with a nice assortment of parts, including handcuffs and stickers from one of the official sets. And the city down below looks appropriate for the universe without being tied down to any particular locale. I love the use of the microfighter Falcon’s cockpit cone for a building’s windows. But that LED-lit blue trail is the highlight, fit for the fastest ship in the galaxy, capable of making 0.5 past light speed.

Star Wars action in the Senate ambush

No plan goes perfectly, especially if you were planning on ambushing several Galactic Republic senators. In this highly detailed build by Hypolite Bricks, you can see the bounty hunters swing into action as they pounce on the fleeing senators.

This isn’t the first time Hypolite Bricks has been featured on The Brothers Brick. His Star Wars creations, such as the Republic Gunship, are packed with excitement and life, placing you into the scene and watching it play out before your eyes. Here, the use of many textures on the tower make this seem like a scene taken right out of a Clone Wars episode. The clear bricks are put into great effect in making it seem like the bounty hunter and probe droids are flying. You can almost hear the jetpack roar and the speeder accelerate in its escape.

Goblins and dwelfs, oh my!

Most adult builders looked at the little goblin figures from LEGO’s Elves theme with some distaste. I suspect this was due to the bright colors and limited elements that make them up. I know I felt that way. They are difficult to fit into a build, even a fantasy one, because they are too cartoonish to be taken seriously. Given the right setting, though, perhaps they could be useful. Take, for instance, this build by John Snyder. Bright colors, like lime green grass and a purple wagon roof, tie the goblins and their garish hues into the overall build. The layout itself is unique, with large brick-built tomes bookending the multi-level scene. Plus, as always with a Snyder build, there are play functions. The small dwarf-elf (or dwelf, as the cover implies) is in trouble, about to fall through a trapdoor into the subterranean lair of the goblins. Could anything be worse than being captured by those almost-useless rainbow-colored creatures?

Meet me down by the shipyard for some good old antifouling!

Having spent a few years at sea, KMBricklab has stirred my olfactory bulb and amygdala with this shipyard diorama. Those are the two parts of the brain responsible for nostalgia, and mine are tingling something fierce with memories of briny air, seagulls squalling, and a quick welder’s spark. Dry dock is the only time to see a vessel in it’s full glory and often it can seem both mighty and vulnerable. This old fishing cutter is getting some much needed antifouling of its hull.

Click to see more of this detailed maritime scene.