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.

A monument to the old world

There is a strange beauty in decaying industrial architecture, with chipping paint, broken metal supports and collapsing concrete walls everywhere. Or maybe I am just nostalgic for apocalyptic LEGO creations that used to be all the rage when I discovered the online community. Whichever is the case, Exetrius has hit the nail on the head for me with this ruined communication tower.

Sand green is the perfect colour to make a creation like this, and combined with dark gray and limited splashes of colour it makes for a beautifully bleak colour scheme. This is further facilitated by great textures of disuse and weathering. The tower is 120 cenimeters tall (47 in.), a task made easy by using train tracks for its main segment. Everybody who uses train tracks in unique ways is awesome!

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An elegant weapon for a more civilized time, eh? Well, guess what? Times have changed!

If this light-up LEGO hangar looks familiar, you probably spent some time in the mid 2000s playing Star Wars Republic Commando on the Xbox. Michael K.‘s impressive diorama is a recreation of one of the iconic scene from the game: the Battle of Hangar D aboard the Acclamator-class assault ship, the Prosecutor.

This creation is packed full of clone troopers (churning out witty one-liners), droids (pew pew), and tons of intricate details built into the hangar itself. You can check out even more photos (and videos!) of Michael’s Star Wars creation on Flickr.

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag action captured in LEGO

If you sense a strange abundance of high quality Assassin’s Creed creations being blogged by us lately, it is not a coincidence. This tropical scene is Jonas Kramm‘s contribution to a larger Assassin’s Creed collaboration for German Comic Con. There is a lot going on in the scene, with pirates going about their business in between cute little raised huts, a shipwreck and, my personal favourite part, well constructed trees. The different colours of water make for a great effect too.

It looks like the kind of tropical beach where any pirate would love to rest at in between plundering adventures. We have already highlighted two other builders who took part in the collaboration, Max’s American civil war scene and Ben’s French revolution diorama.

What’s not to love about a post-apocalyptic toxic wasteland?

Bleecker Street never looked so bleak in this delightfully dreary scene built by Sanel Lukovic, part of a collaborative build presented at Bricking Bavaria in Munich with friends Robert Maier and Jonas Obermaier. Simply titled Apoca, it has a lovely rustic, decaying motif. Broken windows throughout the dilapidated building contrast with the charming copper oxide green Vespa, while overgrown weeds and cluttered wreckage cover cracks in the pavement. And nothing screams post-apocalyptic like respiratory equipment being worn by the armed and dangerous-looking dudes surveying the badlands.

The eternal struggle rages on

The Warcraft series of games has gone through so much history that it almost lost the corny cartoony nature of the original, especially with the decade of World of Warcraft expansions under its belt. A simple matter of orcs versus humans has been turned around and inside-out so many times that some times, it is just refreshing to see someone like Kalais go to the roots and throw all depth of story out the window for the sake of pure fun. I do often complain how there are not enough LEGO Warcraft creations out there for such a rich universe, but lately this void has been filled adequately.

There is so much action going on in the scene and the iconic blue roofs of the castle look nice, but my favourite part is the portal on the right-hand side of the diorama with a red mist effect on the edges and ominous statues positioned right besides it.

Iconic Luke & Vader scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back recreated perfectly in LEGO

One of the most iconic scenes from The Empire Strikes Back takes place in Cloud City, where Darth Vader reveals Luke’s parentage. Due to the sheer scale of the film’s setpiece, this memorable scene hasn’t appeared in many brick-built creations, but Caleb Watson and Carlyle Livingston have managed to pull off an incredible huge-scale build that’s appropriately and simply titled “Noooo!”

This impressive size of the central duct of Cloud City stands out, recreated perfectly though with a detailed backlit background. Although the patterned backdrop may look simple, the careful placement needed to get the textures just right isn’t easy.

Here Caleb (left) and Carlyle stand behind their masterpiece to give a sense of the scale needed to do justice to this scene in bricks.

View more details of this creation below.

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The Great Wall of Forlorn Empire

The Great Wall of China requires no special introduction, and neither does Forlorn Empire. As the great wall can bee seen from space, so can mr. Forlorn’s building skills. While this segment of the Great Wall may not be the largest we have seen in LEGO, it is surely one of the best (and frankly, keeping up this level of detail and texture on an excessively large scale would turn out to be too much for pretty much any builder) in the terms of construction quality.

As I have mentioned, it boasts a high level of details and some nice angles, but what I like best is the roofed hut on the top of the tower – the roof technique is a stroke of genius. To top it all off, the builder has added a minifig on guard duty to fill the scene with life.

Another beautiful day on Planet ABS-1139

It can be lonely manning an outpost on a new planet, but this LEGO creation by Sad Brick makes it look downright relaxing. With lots of samples to collect, and equipment to maintain, it’s important to take a moment to look around and remember how crucial your work is to the future of humanity. A helpful robot to lend a hand makes the work go smoothly.

Assassin’s Creed Unity in LEGO: Interrupting an execution

Love it or hate it, the Assassin’s Creed videogame series has brought many historical themes into the collective consciousness of the younger generations. And while LEGO builders often don’t need another incentive to look for inspiration in history, with classic LEGO themes like castle and pirates at the core of our hobby, Assassin’s Creed falls perfectly into such time frames and therefore makes a perfect subject for our beloved bricks. One of the recent builders who picked up this inspiration is Wookiewarrior, with this amazing diorama representing a scene from Assassins Creed Unity. The scene is part of a collaborative project built for the German Comic Con a project that involves some of the best builders from Germany.

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Mad for it

We’ve featured Martin Redfern‘s Alice In Wonderland LEGO creations previously, but this latest scene — the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party — is a cracker. The table features a brilliant array of teapot designs (some including fireman’s helmets as lids!), and I like the variety of chair styles on display. The surrounding scenery is great, and gives the model a real sense of place — an impression helped by the tight crop of the photo.

As ever, Martin’s work on the characters is excellent. Here’s a closer look at the Tea Party Trio…

Colonizing the wilderness

Wochenender presents the first part of a planned series of builds illustrating the colonization of a remote wilderness on a fictional island called Sølvheim. This display showcases the expertly crafted landscape which features melting snow elements — something I haven’t seen explored much by builders, making this an interesting fresh concept. The wooden port and watchtower are the only structures at the moment, but I look forward to their evolution in the upcoming dioramas.

Sometimes you just need some time for yourself. In a castle.

And I know of no better castle for this purpose than this cute “little” fort built by Marco den Besten really has everything you could want. Built in a beautiful landscape, surrounded by a picturesque village and defensible to boot!

Every singe aspect of the diorama has something unique that deserves to be talked about. The castle’s textures are great, but even more so I love the architecture and layout of it, with tightly packed towers and walls that give an impression of a very sturdy construction. The houses are mostly simple, but the new quarter-circle tiles add a really nice texture. The best part of all, though, are the trees. I have never seen the dark green root piece used for pine trees and I have no idea what the actual technique behind it is, but it just seems so obvious now that I see it.