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.

Assembled: The Battle of New York in LEGO bricks

The Battle of New York is the super-powered punch-up finale of 2012 movie The Avengers, which saw Asgardian trickster Loki attack the city with a borrowed army of bio-mechanical reptilian Chitauri soldiers. Such an epic confrontation might be an intimidating prospect for a LEGO model, but builder Ben Cossy has accepted the challenge, and this impressive diorama is the result. All the Avengers can be found amidst the city streets or on the rooftops, engaging the wall-scampering Chitauri and attempting to protect fleeing civilians and overwhelmed cops. Don’t miss the different styles of buildings on display, all featuring varying levels of battle damage alongside the architectural detailing.

You can see more of the action in this multi-angle montage, with our heroes engaged in various punch-ups and shoot-outs with the Chitauri. Check out the cracked pavement and enemies sent flying as Thor smacks Mjolnir into the ground…

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For a weary traveler, any port is a good port

Mos Eisley and Mos Espa may have the big name recognition in the Star Wars universe as the leaders of backwater ports, and recently Niima Outpost has been an up-and-comer. But there are myriad other tiny trading posts and starports throughout the universe, and LEGO builder Sam Malmberg takes us to one such unnamed frontier town with this dusty scene. The Imperials have a strong presence here, but there’s plenty of hustle and bustle with traders and merchants plying their wares.

Sam’s approach to the dry ground looks especially great, with scattered studs giving the impression of hard-packed but slightly disturbed dirt. The building facades around the back edges also give these scene a lot of depth, making it feel even larger than it is.

On reflection, the Death Star’s not so bad

Here at Brothers Brick HQ, we’ve been following the microscale LEGO Star Wars adventures of Didier Burtin with enthusiasm. Didier’s recreations of iconic scenes from the various Star Wars movies continues with this cracking build of the captured Millennium Falcon sitting in a Death Star hangar. Taking photos of LEGO creations built from predominantly black bricks is normally a complete pig of a job, with rogue reflections and shiny bits ruining the composition. Here the model’s high reflectivity is a perfect match for its inspiration, as are all the brick-built details like the wall striping, floor graphics, and the lift shaft.

A medieval hero’s welcome

There’s nothing like coming home to your family after a long journey. Perhaps in this case, a long quest or crusade. You know that feeling you have when you see your house after having been gone a while? This scene of a warrior being welcomed by his family, built by Tom Breugelman, is reminiscent of that feeling.

Of course, the real hero of this build is that cottage. The angles and rockwork are superbly done. The architecture immediately catches the eye. And all of the colors throughout the scene come together perfectly, but especially in the cottage. Now, if you’re looking for something similar, how about a house with many faces?

Space is the place for a base, of course

In the future world of Boris Schneider, the moon’s got a colony and it’s pretty rad. This mash-up of real-world-inspired design and LEGO’s famous Classic Space aesthetic makes for a fantastic extra-terrestrial outpost. The moon’s surface is made from a jumbled mix of grey plates and slopes with exposed studs, a combo that works well to recreate the scattered regolith on the impact-dotted lunar fields.

The Apollo-era lunar lander has received a serious upgrade in the form of this moon-earth transport vehicle. The printed flag and USA elements from the official Saturn V set work excellently both here and on the base to give a bit of real-world tie-in to this Classic Space scene. Continue reading →

When butterflies flutter without care, spring must be in the air

It’s been a long and bitter winter for those of us in the northern hemisphere. But the official start of spring is just a month away and signs of this most rejuvenating of seasonal changes are already in the air. Dario Minisini has an idea of what awaits us with a colorful scene featuring two of spring’s dramatis personae, the butterfly and seeding dandelion. The windborne seedlings add a sense of movement to the creation, almost photo-like in its composition. For the spring people out there, there’s no doubt this bright image will have them hankering for more.

The future is bright, colourful and apocalyptic

Maybe it’s the light blue water or maybe it’s the cheerfully bright photography of this LEGO creation by lokiloki29, but it looks almost like a postapocalyptic world would be quite the place to live. Minus the whole probably being dead thing.

The overall scene looks mostly simple, combining few large monochromatic sections like the water, the grass, and the containers. The real details are hidden inside the containers and around them in the shape of a little tree, a very well made gradient of the oozing toxic waste, and a cute shelter inside the upper container.

Godzilla mech Rex through the town

What’s the only way to make a T-Rex more fearsome? Place him at the controls of a giant Godzilla-esque mechanoid! If you take a close look at the pilot’s cockpit of Simon Liu‘s impressive LEGO technobeast, you’ll spot Rex from Toy Story at the helm. You don’t need to get this little joke to be impressed by this creation and its wrecked-city diorama surroundings, but it’s details and touches of humour like this which elevate the best LEGO models into something special. The texture and mechanical-looking greebles prevent the central robot from just being a big mass of grey (always a danger with a one-colour model), and the ruined buildings are brilliantly done, creating an appropriate sense of urban destruction. The addition of Buzz Lightyear facing down Rex’s new toy, along with a bunch of fleeing claw-machine aliens, adds some welcome splashes of colour amidst the rubble.

The cruise missile that ended the Cold War?

At the moment I am building models from the Cold War for a collaboration with my friends at BrickFair Virginia. I already presented my Soviet SS-20 “Saber” about a week ago. That missile platform was seen as a direct threat to Western Europe. Whilst I was buying parts for that, I was already planning to build one of the weapons systems that NATO fielded in Europe: the BGM-109G Gryphon ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM). Or, more precisely, the vehicle used to transport and launch them.

It consisted of a large German-built MAN truck that pulled a semi-trailer with the launcher. This housed up to four cruise missiles in a box that was elevated to an angle of 45 degrees before launch. I built the vehicle to a scale of 1/43, making it roughly 53 studs long. Building its four-tone camouflage scheme (with dark green, dark tan, tan and black) was a challenge, especially on such a small vehicle.

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A full service station for all your LEGO automotive needs

Growing up in and around automotive repair shops, I feel some nostalgia anytime I catch the scent of fresh engine oil or hear the whirring of an impact gun. So naturally, Chris Rozek’s charming vintage car garage caught my attention. It’s an atmospheric scene thanks to the lighting and little details scattered around the shop.

You know, actually working on old cars isn’t too much different than building with LEGO. Sometimes you follow the instructions. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just give up entirely and never return. Also, opportunities for creativity can be as unlimited as the most vulgar of vocabularies. There is one rather important difference, however, of which my wife constantly reminds me — compared to fixing up old cars, LEGO has the rare honor of being the cheaper hobby.

Set your sights on this Scandinavian sea house

Certain builders have a distinct flavor running through their models, certain ingredients that make every build a masterpiece. Sarah Beyer is one of those crafty LEGO creators who I’m really starting to enjoy for the tranquility imbued in each of her models. Take a look back at her Lilium eco-house, the Vanilla House, or even the Jungle Cottage: there’s a clean simplicity in the homes she’s built, and a bit of a running theme of how each unique abode is connected to the natural environment it’s been built in. Now, compare her previous models to her latest production, a Scandinavian retreat by the sea.

See more of this beautiful Scandinavian home

The SS-20 “Saber” is a sinister Cold War relic

A little more than forty years ago, with the Cold War still in full swing, the Soviet Union introduced a new ballistic missile: the RSD-10 “Pioneer”. NATO code-named it the SS-20 “Saber”. It had a range of 500-5500 km and carried three nuclear warheads, each of which was roughly ten times as powerful as the bomb used against Hiroshima. It seemed purpose-built to threaten Western Europe. The missile’s short flight time, of roughly 15 minutes, left very little warning. Furthermore, it was mobile, which made it even harder to counter. A large six-axle MAZ-547 transporter erector launcher carried the missile, housed inside a large cannister, to dispersed launch sites.

My diorama shows the launcher at a snow-covered launch site, with the missile cannister raised upright for launch. On the model it is almost solid, so there is no actual missile inside, but you can just see the tips of the three warheads. Unlike most of my models, it is minifig-scaled (I picked 1/43) and built mostly without visible studs. I built it for a Cold War themed collaborative build for BrickFair Virginia, in the coming August.
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