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.

Beautiful castle of the Elves by Takeshi Itou

Japanese builder Takeshi Itou has been one of the most influential castle builders in the LEGO community, raising the bar worldwide, beginning when fans were first discovering each other online. His gorgeous castles rely largely upon older pieces and clean lines, clearly inspired by the golden age of LEGO castle lines in the 1980s. Takeshi’s latest piece is this gorgeous elven safehold.

When Takeshi began posting his castles in the early 2000s, he took the fan community by storm, and his influence still ripples down through many well-known builders today. While current trends in castle building emphasize a ramshackle aesthetic, with rough edges and extreme amounts of detail, Takeshi’s work remains in the style of the classic official sets, pushing that aesthetic to new heights. Brothers-Brick has been covering his work since the blog began 10 years ago, and one of my favorite pieces is this replica of Hikone Castle in Japan. 8 years after its creation it is still well worth checking out. Takeshi’s Volcano Tower also was enormously influential on my own building style in the early 2000s, showing me that dioramas with landscaping were possible at a time when the majority of builders still placed their structures on naked baseplates.

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Armies on the march at Waterloo

A few weeks ago, Nannan posted The Defense of La Haye Sainte Farm at the Battle of Waterloo. While impressive, this was only a small part of a much larger diorama that was unveiled at Brickfair Va., to commemorate the 200th anniversary of this historic battle.

This impressive display was a collaborative effort by Joshua Brooks, his father Gary Brooks (Gary^the^procrastinator) and Casey Mungle, Ken Rice and John Rudy, with further contributions by several more members of Wamalug. It was not only large, but also tremendously well-researched. The formations of figures and their uniforms were chosen to be period-accurate, for instance. The size of the diorama had the consequence that, when sitting at one end and looking at the other, it was impossible to focus your eyes on the whole thing at once. This made the hundreds of sometimes fairly rare minifigures really look like armies on the march. In fact, there were so many figures on this display, that this may be the very reason why some of them have become so rare!

Edit: The guys from Beyond the Brick have posted an interview with Gary at Brickfair, which is well worth checking out.

100 years of Starbucks in LEGO

WingYew takes us time traveling in an unnamed city with a MOC that spans a hundred years, from the arrival of streetcars to the proliferation of megachains. The dueling coffeeshops are replete with excellently detailed interiors and give a striking sense of how little has changed – and exactly how much has changed.

Away into the sunset, my friends

Tristan made this beautiful scene as a tribute to two friends who recently passed away. I was struck by the realism of the sun’s burning disk and the great use of forced perspective, and I think it makes a lovely memorial.

A stronghold for an empire: Fort Portugal

On the last rock in the south, there lies a great fortress. Bustling with Imperial Guards and fortified against bloodthirsty pirates, this fortress by Greg Dix stands a monument to the Imperial might flexing its power across the globe.

Actually, I don’t know what empire LEGO’s Imperial Guards are meant to represent. I’ve always thought of them as the plastic manifestation of Britain’s colonial-era power, but I’ve seen some evidence that the line grew out of LEGO’s attempt to create a Napoleonic theme, so they may be French. Greg’s title implies the setting for this bastion is Portugal, so perhaps they are Portuguese here. Provenance aside, the fort has working winches and is rigged to light up. Greg built this in March, and I’m not sure how we missed it before, but I’m happy I stumbled upon it today, because it’s lovely.

Crashed LEGO Star Destroyer from Star Wars Episode VII

I’m not ashamed to say that I’m incredibly excited for Star Wars Episode VII. The trailer is filled with amazing shots and locales, not least of which is that haunting panning shot of the crashed Star Destroyer on the planet Jakku. LEGO builder KevFett2011 was also struck by the imagery, and he’s turned out this fantastic diorama of the dune-swept spaceship.

Raising the Bar(bell) of LEGO creations

OK, so I admit I mostly just wanted to make a cheesy pun in the title, but Matt De Lanoy is currently engaged in another round of Iron Builder, that contest where two excellent builders are pitted against each other and every creation must contain one or more of a specific piece. Matt’s opponent is Tim Schwalfenberg, whose brilliant creation is featured in the previous post about the Isles of Aura. The seed part, as my title cleverly alludes, is the barbell. Here are a few of Matt’s sweet builds so far:

This is the house that Alanboar built

This week Hong Kong hosted its gigantic annual fan convention Ani-Com, an event that makes San Diego Comic Con look like a book club meeting at a Starbucks. Local builder Alanboar Cheung was a finalist in the show’s LEGO building contest, with this delightful and very stylish “Dream House”:

This thing is packed to overflowing with awesome details – the closeups are definitely worth a look.

This event always produces some stellar MOCs, but information is a bit hard to come by. We’ll show you more of them as they come across our radars.

Defense of La Haye Sainte Farm at the Battle of Waterloo

Gary^The^Procrastinator captured a defining moment in the Battle of Waterloo in this scene depicting the defense of La Haye Sainte Farm where 400 British and German troops held against overwhelming waves of French forces. Check out more photos on Flickr and see this diorama in person as part of the Battle of Waterloo collaboration that will be on display at Brickfair Virginia in August.

The Little House on the Prairie

In 1869, the Ingalls family left Wisconsin and went west, eventually settling in Kansas near what is now Independence, Missouri. Like many families moving west, the journey and new settlement was full of adventure and danger. Eventually the family went back to Wisconsin, then west again.

Laura Ingalls Wilder turned her experiences into the Little House on the Prairie, cementing herself into literary history.

SeigneurFett brings us this gorgeous diorama depicting Plum Creek from the books and TV series, which captured the hearts and minds of viewers of all ages.

I encourage you to explore the diorama and get lost again in the story!

Have a smurfy day!

Despite more comebacks and fewer female characters than the Star Wars franchise, the Smurfs are still wildly popular today, almost 60 years after their first appearance as a Belgian comic strip. With two new Smurf movies behind us and another one in the works, it was only a matter of time before fans got tired waiting for LEGO to get in on the action, and took matters into their own hands. Which is exactly what Lee Jones and a team of builders did at BrickWorld Chicago did last month!

This huge diorama depicts the Smurf village, complete with forest landscaping, mushroom houses, and a forced-perspective version of Gargamel’s castle. All beautifully rounded off with the giant intruding faces of Gargamel and Azrael (courtesy of Tyler Halliwell and Kevin Lauer).

But the most remarkable part of this display have to be the Smurf minifigs. No, you’re not seeing things… Those aren’t shoddy clone brand figures. And no, LEGO didn’t secretly launch a line of collectible Smurf figs when no-one was looking. These are 100% custom manufactured! Lee’s team worked with BrickForge and Brick Fortress to design and produce custom components (heads, tails, even rotatable arms) all to “LEGO quality”. The results speak for themselves. Our pals at Beyond the Brick talked to Lee at BrickWorld and got the low-down…

Around the World in 80 Days

One of the great joys of Brickworld is to see the massive collaborations that take place, and this year’s most ambitious and massive feat of LEGO engineering was VirtuaLUG’s Around the World in 80 Days:

Based off the movie and book, written by Jules Verne, it tells the story of the misadventures of Mr. Phileas Fogg, his manservant Passepartout and Inspector Fixx. Much like the Fogg, the tale of this group build stretches all around the world, with 25 contributors, bricks were sent from all over the United States, Canada, Belgium and even New Zealand to complete this masterpiece.

This build was an amazing 10 feet by 20 feet in size and a whole year of planning, organizing and building, not just LEGO bricks, but custom table and supports for the series of mosaics chronicling the 80 day adventure. It is made up of of 224x 32×32 stud baseplates littered with both minifgure-scale and micro-scale builds, several operating trains, and one big world – with spinning sign.

Our friends at Beyond the Brick take us through an in depth interview with the Project Leader Heath Flor about this layout:

You can see more details photos of this display in the Flickr Group