Tag Archives: Eli Willsea

Vignweek Day 2: Color us impressed with these monochrome creations [Feature]

Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. Just 24 hours to turn around a build with no rest days! It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. We rounded up our favorites from day 1’s “Archaeology” theme here. For day 2, the theme is “Monochrome,” challenging builders to make a vignette using just one LEGO color. Here’s just a sampling of the amazing creativity born from this challenging constraint.

Jakub Kozina gets his greebling on with a tribute to the knobby little bits that space and machine builders so adore. Excellent glue and modeling scissors too!

Sydrarian offers a microscale scene of a tower in the clouds. There are so many impressive curves in this lovely composition. The builder also gets a bonus color through use of negative space to give the tower windows that pop.

NikiFilik‘s creation may be red, but I’m feeling green with envy at the skillful technique on display.

More monochrome creations await

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Capturing Nolan’s Batman in Bricks: Behind the Scenes with RebelLUG’s Dark Knight collaboration

What happens when seven outstanding builders bring their LEGO skills to bear on one of the most beloved films of the modern era? You get a LEGO collaboration that is nothing short of cinematic. Now screening on The Brothers Brick: RebelLUG’s Dark Knight collaboration, with behind-the-scenes commentary from organizer Tom Studs and builder Eli Willsea!

But before we jump to the interview, let’s review the series of images, starting with the film’s iconic poster, recreated by collab organizer Tom Studs. At a glance, you might think the only thing LEGO about this pic is the minifigure, but every building and the fiery bat logo are all brick-built.

Why so serious? Relax and enjoy the rest of the Dark Knight tributes and making-of insights

Holy Week collaboration is a testament to creativity and faith

From Byzantine icons to Michelangelo murals to swords-and-sandals epics, the New Testament gospels have been a source of artistic inspiration for nearly 2000 years. During the lead up to Easter, RebelLUG members Kevin Wanner, Eli Willsea, Chris Roberts, and James Libby collaborated on a series of 8 builds corresponding with Holy Week. Regardless of one’s faith, the series is an inspiring use of LEGO as a storytelling medium and a showcase of amazing talent in the community.

Kevin contributes the first entry, an immersive scene that depicts Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, the origins of Palm Sunday.

Read on for the full holy week collaboration

Collaborative LEGO builds lead to the best views

With the powers of eight LEGO builders are combined, some truly spectacular creations can come into being. For instance, the amazing team of jnj_bricks, Eli Willsea, Carter Witz, Joel Tyer, Micah Beideman, Roanoke Handybuck, Davis Brown, and J2_Bricks all came together to show Omar a world worth exploring. There is some phenomenal forced perspective at play, with darling rockwork, bridgework, and tower-work(?) all coming together into something magical. I am just wishing that Omar will take me along on his next voyage.

Shortlist announced for TBB Creation of the Year 2024 [News]

We cover loads of amazing LEGO builds over the course of a year on the Brothers Brick. In fact, over the course of the past 12 months, that’s over 700 individual creations! Now they’re all great, obviously – but every year, a handful really stand out to us, and we like to bestow upon one of them the Creation of the Year crown. It might be a creation that uses parts in a new and interesting way. Perhaps it’s a collaborative build, combining the talents of multiple builders to reach new heights (just like last year’s winners!). Maybe it’s so epic in scope and scale that we simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. One thing’s for sure: it will have taken our breath away! The TBB staff have trawled through their memory banks and our site archives to draw up a shortlist of 10 of our favourite builds. These won’t necessarily be the most popular – keep an eye out for that list in the coming days! – but we will announce the winner on New Year’s Eve. Read up on our nominees, and check out our previous winners in the archives!

Without further ado, let’s meet our nominees!

Placid plastic (brick) duck simulator

One of the weirder gaming experiences I had this year was playing Placid Plastic Duck Simulator. If you haven’t played it – and I use the word ‘played’ loosely – it’s an idle game where you watch a bunch of rubber ducks floating around. Why am I telling you this? Because Eli Willsea has created an equally tranquil rubber duck simulator, but this one made of LEGO bricks. In truth, the ducks are probably the most conventional part of this build. There’s some clever parts use, including artists’ boards for lilypads and green katanas for reeds. And the most eye-catching is the use of clear 1x2x5 bricks with some lighting behind them to create the water. Is it realistic? Well, no, probably not. But is it pretty? You bet!

We love Eli’s builds at TBB. I’m going to watch more rubber duckies float around on my screen, but you should go and see what else we’ve featured from Eli over the years.

Here’s one LEGO hedgehog who takes it slow

Small LEGO scenes like this make me smile. With just a few parts and a simple story, Eli Willsea crafts a fun and colorful vignette of a hedgehog taking a walk after a light rain. The chopstick element makes perfect spines, yellow rainboots are instantly recognizable, and he even has a frog friend along for the ride.

Zamor spheres, Clikits, and candlesticks, oh my!

Sometimes a handfull of the right LEGO elements can make you look at your collection in a whole new light. This “Midnight Mushrooms” vignette from Eli Willsea is just such a build, invoking a whole matgical world on a base just 8 studs in diameter. The bulbous tree tops are made from Zamor Spheres, bygone Bioncle ammo, while the mushroom caps come from the Clikits jewelry line from the early 2000s. At ground level, the smiling salamander is a Friends recolor of Elsa’s magical pet and provides the perfect contrast to the cool blues. It’s a fantastic mix of unusual parts.

Well, well, well, what do we have here?

For a lot of treasure hunters, the real treasure was the great LEGO builds we found along the way! This build by Eli Willsea portrays a pair of adventurers delving deep into a empty desert ruin, but what it really shows off is a trove of fantastic building techniques! Down on the floor of the lost well the cracked tiles are made from the immensely useful cheese slope, but did you notice they’re embedded in 1x2x3 windows? On the back wall, Eli uses those windows again with minifigure brackets as decoration. Finally, if you take a look at the well itself, you’ll see that it’s a combination of cheese slopes and 1×1 bricks with sideways studs which fit so well inside an 8×8 dish!

Meat and more are back on the menu in LEGO Isengard

After weeks without elevenses or second breakfasts, with naught but Ent-draughts to sustain them, you can feel the joy when Merry and Pippen discover Saruman’s private food stash. MorlornEmpire (secondary account of Eli Willsea, aka ForlornEmpire) recreates the scene in a delicious LEGO vignette. The builder is no stranger to Lord of the Rings vignettes, and again he showcases his eye for screen detail with dynamic composition at miniature scale. The lattice roof is my favorite feature, providing a nice contrast from the color and textures on the stone walls. Look carefully and you’ll see that the floor is flooded, but not so high as to ruin those barrels of Old Toby.

The scene was created for the Middle Earth LEGO Olympics 2024 for a final round duel against Isaiah Kepner, who ended up winning the competition with his tribute to Rohan’s Golden Hall feast.

Medieval bathhouse is a clean build indeed

LEGO models from Eli Willsea feature clean lines and smooth surfaces where studs have been all but scrubbed away, which makes a medieval hammam (public bathhouse) the ideal subject for his immaculate building style. I love the variety of arches stacked and nested the give the build an airiness, complemented by the bits of greenery around the scene. Of course this wouldn’t be a ForlornEmpire build without some mind-blowing parts usage. DUPLO brooms are a truly unexpected part that fit so naturally into the scene. Droid arms and binoculars link so neatly into the arches, it’s hard to believe LEGO didn’t design them for just that purpose. The greatest trick in the scene has to be the water effect, made from upside down transparent baseplates, creating the perfect bubbly surface.

Luminous and ominous; the Numinous Isle!

When LEGO builders collaborate, great things are bound to happen. Micah Beideman, Eli Willsea, and Grant Davis have gotten together to build the mystical breakwater called the Numinous Isle. Let’s talk gold! At the very top of this build, you’ll find a few gold 4×4 wedges. Those pearl gold pieces were only available in two sets from 2013. Behind the gold sais and interlocked gold bar clips is the grand dome of the build. That dome is one half of the Star Wars planet Bespin from a set released in 2012. Take a look further down at that grey arch. Did you know that macaroni pieces fit into a large arch so neatly? I sure didn’t! Even lower down, there’s a pair of fins from an A-Wing masquerading as part of a wall. Check out that fountain too. It looks like the ingots fit just perfectly into that specific wheel. All of that beautiful building only takes us to the shoreline. What other secrets are hidden beneath the waves?