Paul Hetherington is one of the most skilled builders for building a diorama and bringing it to life with animated elements. His Joker’s Funhouse display is not only impressive to look at, but it features many ingenious moving elements that make me scratch my head and wonder how it’s done. Check out the video below and see for yourself. It’s no surprise that this creation won Best in Show at this year’s BrickCon.
Blake Baer and Jack Bittner showcased their third castle collaboration at BrickFair earlier this year, and now they have taken photos of the display for everyone to enjoy. The creation uses around 80,000 pieces and stands 4’8″ tall. It features a colorful marketplace, a beautiful wooded area and of course, the gate of Erebor. You can see the entire gallery on Flickr along with a video and a shot with the builders for scale. If you want to see construction photos, check out more on MOCpages.
Nick V. (Brickthing) builds at 9 o’clock, if you judge by the stately grandfather clock in the corner of this room of inspiration. Meant to represent all the different places Nick draws inspiration, the room is packed full of references to online communities and fellow fans who focus Nick’s creativity. Look closely, and you’ll notice that even the landscape outside the window is brick-built – something on which it would be incredibly easy to take a shortcut.
Now here’s a cult I might join: a place where bacon is revered and cooked tenderly to a delicious crisp. Builder Rifiröfi has an active imagination and the building chops to really bring home the bacon.
![[LCC] Wolfgang's Dream 3/3](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/11058511684_1d01bd7f27_z.jpg)
Caleb Randolph has taken train dioramas to the next level with “Anastasia”: Runaway Train. The detailed, raised mountain platform and use of classic train tracks to give a continuous edge is especially masterful. And that’s ignoring the excellent snow, steam, and, of course, the locomotive itself. Brilliant work.
The professional builders from Bright Bricks have a reputation to uphold for building big things for Christmas. In 2011 their 38 ft brick-built Christmas tree dazzled travelers passing through St. Pancras Station in London and set a record for being the world’s largest LEGO tree. Last year they built the world’s largest LEGO Advent Calendar for Covent Garden. This year they’ve built a fantastic collection of London landmarks to go inside the world’s largest LEGO snow globe. It measures an impressive 3m x 3m x 3m (10ft x 10ft x 10ft). It’s quite possibly the only LEGO snow globe and neither the snow nor the globe are made of LEGO, but who cares?
Snow gets blown through the globe and it has a tunnel down the middle that visitors can walk through, to be pretty much surrounded by it and to possibly feel a bit like London mayor Boris Johnson did in Feb 2009, when one of the largest snowfalls in recent history dumped 20 cm of white flakes on his city, bringing it to a stand-still.
I had the pleasure of visiting the Bright Bricks workshop in early October, when this project had just gotten underway. It must be tempting to cut some corners (perhaps even literally) here and there when building professionally for an audience that largely consists of people who don’t build with LEGO and who may not appreciate all the intricacies, but these are high-quality models. Having seen some of the builds at an early stage, I was very impressed by the level of detail and the clever build techniques that went into them.
The snow globe is on display at Covent Garden London until early January.
Grab some candy-corn and your hockey mask; it’s time for some spooky action to get you psyched for All Hallows’ Eve. These eye popping scenes were designed by Kiwi Millie McKenzie (Leda Kat) who has a real talent (even without the ghosts) for taking the mundane and turning it into something spectacular. Although the photos will lead you to the collection of scenes on Flickr, you can only get the full sequence with its accompanying story over on MOCpages.
My latest creation, which I hastily whipped together last night, is a rendition of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. The book and water base I already had from a previous creation, which I hope to eventually photograph. It was great fun matching the figures to the painting, though now in the light of day with a more critical eye I see that I made a few mistakes, such as Washington being positioned too far back in the boat. The trickiest bit of the endeavor was figuring out the flag–I don’t think my poor white capes will ever be the same again.
As nice as the individual models that we blog are, I think there’s often something really special about collaborative builds. The collaborative display by Pennlug at Brickfair, for instance, was one of my favourite things on show and Bricksboro Beach, built by members of Brickish, was probably the nicest display I have ever personally been involved with.
Last weekend, Legoworld took place in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Even though it is the public event closest to where I live and the largest LEGO-event in the Netherlands, I could not make it there myself. This is unfortunate for a variety of reasons, including because I would have loved to see the collaborative city display by lowlug-members Erik Smit (عʈ¡ – ʇıɯs ıʇə ʞıɹə), Tijger-San, Thomassio, Mockingbird, Arjan Oude Kotte (Konajra), Neverroads, Ruben Ras (workfromtheheart) and JeroenD (in random order).
The individual elements, such as the cafe-corner compatible buildings (such as the ones by Tijger-San pictured above) are nice, but the whole display is one of those ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ kind of things. You could walk around this and would keep noticing new things. If you want to get an impression of what it must looked like to members of the audience, check out Erik’s video.
It’s likely not what builder Paul (Disco86) had in mind, but this scene reminds me of all the random encounters in the Elder Scrolls games (or the vastly under-rated Two Worlds games). It’s really a great little diorama, and I like the stonework ground under the orc camp. The blackened patch around the firepit is a nice touch, and the barricade looks convincingly ramshackle.
I told myself I wasn’t going to blog any Ma.Ktoberfest 2013 offerings this year because like some of you I find the whole end of the year sci-fi themed months to be a little overwhelming and Brother Tripod has that particular beat covered. However, my love of a great diorama overrides any such petty concerns and it is my pleasure to share with you “Super Jerry” by Logan (∞CaptainInfinity∞) that has just the right mix of detailed vehicles, understated landscaping and good photography from a builder who knows how to frame a shot. The tree isn’t too shabby either.
The popular Guilds of Historica fan-theme features outstanding models from a variety of builders who participate in a connected world of five distinct Guilds, each with their own territory, history, and geography. The latest eye-catching build comes to us from Australian builder and TBB regular Gabriel Thomson who presents Petraea University – Grand lecture theatre and debating hall.
As you can see, the structure uses a cutaway presentation, with equal attention to detail both inside and out. Although I love a little bit of the old ultra-violence as much as the next droog, it is refreshing to see a castle diorama that doesn’t involve some kind of boilerplate siege or marching troops. At the center of this brick-built story is the presentation of an honorary degree to some sort of political figure; a celebration of brains over brawn. If you follow the links to both the builder’s photostream or the GoH headquarters, you will encounter as much back-story as you can handle and an opportunity to get in on the action yourself.
