Tag Archives: F.S. Leinad

Huzzah, LEGO Castle fans! Your Summer Joust 2025 winners have been crowned [Feature]

For fans of LEGO castles and medieval life, the Summer Joust is one of the biggest events of the year as dozens of incredible builders construct incredible models on the year’s themes. The judges have made their decisions, and this year’s Summer Joust champions have been named. We’re excited to present the list of winners. Many of the models we’ve spotlighted on the site before, but some come from talented builders we’ve yet to feature. Check out the amazing models and be sure to follow and congratulate the winners on their amazing builds. For the full list of runners up, visit the Summer Joust flickr page. A big thank you to -soccerkid6 for organizing the event and prizes.

See the amazing winning entries after the fold

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Fishing up some amazing nautical LEGO scenes from Vignweek Day 3 [Feature]

Day 3 of Vignweek has closed, bringing with it a bounty of brick-build vignettes with the theme of “nautical.” Participants had plenty of leeway to interpret the theme and offer up watercraft ranging from ancient to futuristic, structures both cozy and apocalyptic, and sea creatures big and small. And every build here was constructed in just a few hours! Thanks to @RebelLUG for hosting this creative contest. Now on to some of the Day 3 highlights…

CRCT Productions plunges beneath the waves for this evocative scene of submarine exploring a deep sea reef. The submersible is great, but I especially love the fish made from quarter round tiles.

Joël Jurg sticks to the ocean theme with a Roman Emperor’s pleasure barge. I love that w not only get an incredible miniature model, but a history lesson about how insanely luxurious the Emperors lived.

Brownbricks brings us to minifig scale with a seasteader living in a makeshift container house. It must be a lonely life – good thing he has a cat to keep him company!

Voyage on for more aquatic vignettes

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

An unconceivably good LEGO tribute to The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride, the classic film based on the book by ~~S. Morgenstern~~ William Goldman has it all: Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles… It’s a wonder we don’t see more tributes in LEGO. Thankfully, FS Leinad has stepped up with a fabulous build of Westley and Buttercup fleeing through the Fire Swamps. There’s a lot to love in this compact model, from the dense forest of dark grey tree trunks full of odd parts like Bionicle joints and jackhammers, to the evocative flames made of carefully twisted trans-orange chains to the spot-on minifigs. Having escaped the Lightning Sands and figured out how to avoid the Fire Spurts, the only other hazard these true lovers need worry about is the R.O.U.S.es. But the Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.

It’s only fitting that FS Leinad return to The Princess Bride, as the builder’s first shared creation was an Ideas tribute to the film that made it to the 10k club. It’s impressive how far Leinad has grown as a builder in the years since.

Digging up some awesome LEGO vignettes as Vignweek 2025 kicks off [Feature]

Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. 5 weekday builds and a weekend build, for a total of 6 builds in 7 days. It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. The contest kicked off on Monday with “Archaeology” as the theme. Here are some of our favorite creations from day 1.

Carson Lacy zooms in with Johnny Thunder exploring a lush jungle site. I hesitate to call them “ruins” as this location seems as slick and studless as they day it was built. It’s probably cursed, but this beautiful build certainly isn’t!

Behold_The_Loaf offers up an alien archaeologist scanning a future Earth. What do they make of this Octan fueling station?

Join us as we dig up more amazing LEGO vignettes

A haunting still life to make you ponder

If you’re like me, you’ve always considered LEGO creations to be works of art, and this build by FS Leinad is a perfect example. This still life is a wonderful visualization of life’s impermanence, with a skull set amongst blooming flowers, and the contrast of the two candles at different stages. And it isn’t just the composition, but the technique that I admire. The melting wax made from a minifigure beard and wisp of black smoke made from droid arms are lovely touches. I hope I live long enough to get this good at building.

Knight finds himself between a rock and a horned face

2025 is turning out to be a banner year for LEGO dragons, with sets like 31161 Medieval Dragon,
71847 Guardian Dragon, and 10375 Toothless, but our favorite dragons are the ones hatched up by brilliant builders like FS Leinad here. This MOC on a rock pulls big personality from surprisingly few parts. Folded wings and a curved neck made from simple arches and plates pair with Bionicle forearms. The scene-stealing NPU (nice parts usage) is the dragon’s face, brilliantly made from robot arms tucked inside an Atlantean squid warrior head piece. Excellent use of verticality makes this 12×12 vignette seem much larger than the footprint would suggest. The dragon has the knight on his back, but the big lizard looks more curious than murderous. I hope these two work things out without resorting to violence.

FS Leinad built this “Encounter” as an early entry into the 2025 Summer Joust, which runs through August 1.

An owl that’ll make you say hoo-boy!

When building for the RogueOlympics, an online LEGO building contest with a strict part limit of 100 pieces, working in silhouette can be your friend – if you can master the shape of your subject, that is. Thankfully, builder FS Leinad has got their shapes down with this great image of an owl hunting at twilight. I’m a big fan of the wing-work here, utilizing partial connections between black plate to fan those “feathers” out, while letting a little of the yellow Duplo in the background bleed through. The mouse is also great, standing upright with an outstretched minifigure spoon for a paw.

“Arch” rival builds vie in Iron Forge [Feature]

The Iron Builder competition pits a veteran building champion against a challenger in a LEGO twist on the Iron Chef cooking show. But how does one become a challenger? One path is the Iron Forge competition, where everyone is invited to build and share models using the “seed part,” with the pool becoming a bracketed competition until one is chosen. The free-for-all phase just wrapped up, featuring the seed part of “any mudguard with only one wheel arch.” Here are a few that caught our eye.

“Fun at the Fair” by Dominique Boeynaems – 21 mudguards

“Mud-Guarded” by Bousker – 33 mudguards (each of those traps on the wall uses 4!)

Keep on rolling to more creative mudguard builds

Upping the ante with some Nice Parts Use

F. S. Leinad is up to his usual LEGO-building antics again. This is a creation that he tells us he’s been antsy to share, inspired by one single part. Who could have anticipated that Garmadon’s helmet would make such a great nose for this bug? Not me! He’s upped the ante on this one. And while I could antagonize you all with some more ant-related puns, they might be getting a bit antiquated already. Let’s just file this build into the NPU anthology and be done with it.

Never practice turning people into frogs in the mirror

Witches are known for, among other things, flying around on broomsticks and turning people into frogs. F.S. Leinad‘s LEGO witch has certainly got the former nailed – this particular broomstick uses some minifigure hair to mimic the bristles flapping in the wind. As for turning people into frogs… Well, her spell seems to have backfired somewhat. Her nose, hat, hands, and feet have all transformed into tiny amphibians! She’s probably not very happy about it, but surely even the grumpiest of witches can appreciate some Nice Parts Usage.

In the golden forest, a LEGO dragon blocks the way

When I first spotted this exquisite LEGO creation by F.S. Leinad, it was most definitely the dragon that made me stop for a deeper peek. It’s such a beautiful agglomeration of parts and connections forming the small beast. With a neck made from a robot’s foot and horns from minifigure goggles, there’s so much to love about its construction. But you may not see the forest for the dragon, so to speak. These yellow-foliated trees are a wonder! They form such natural shapes with their trunks and boughs, providing an irregular, natural look that’s a far cry from the standard LEGO leaf parts. I’m absolutely taking notes on this one!