Spooky, ooky, with the most eloquent of moans, Lurch is more than a butler in the Addams household – he’s family. mc tung celebrates Halloween with a lumbering LEGO tribute to lovable Lurch. The builder plays with the Frankenstein association with Lurch’s ears jutting out like the Monster’s bolts. Why is Lurch crying? Maybe he misses Wednesday now that she’s sharing a room with Enid at Nevermore Academy. At least Thing is here to walk Lurch home to the microscale Addams house .
It’s not even Halloween, but some folk are already pining for a winter wonderland. Christmas comes early in LEGO courtesy of Eann McCurdy (Miscellanabuilds) whose delightful midnight train scene is both cozy and clever in design. As his eighth and final entry in the latest Iron Builder competition against Geneva D, Eann incorporates the required red cauldron in the engine’s boiler. The pileup of snow in front of the train is a perfect mix of parts, including ice cream, hoods, and a frog. I especially love the forced perspective created by snow-capped trees at two scales. A tiny red byplane appears in the background, referencing Geneva’s prior Red Baron entry.
As if the brilliant train weren’t a grand enough finale, Eann prints the scene as a postcard for a bonus build that amps up the holiday spirit. Candles, Chrismas lights, and candies show off an abundance of red cauldrons. Dr. Strange capes make a sweet appearance as candy wrappers. Decorated gingerbread is the icing on the cake cookies.
Picture a locked room, a dastardly crime, and a thief hiding amongst the guests and staff of a house full of secrets and you’ll get a scene exactly like this LEGO build by Sam J.J.! The characters in this build have found the secret staircase hidden behind a hinged bookcase, but they are still deceived! To save space on the build, Sam used forced perspective to give a flat series of bricks the appearance of a staircase running deeper into the walls of the house. While the minifigs focus on the staircase, let’s take in the rest of the build. The decorative sections on the wooden columns are mostly made from one, two, three bricks and seemingly a whole lot of friction. The table with its teacup is made from wands and book covers. And finally, the stained glass windows are made from turntable bottoms. Now back to our minifigures. Remember, when there’s a mystery, it’s always the butler who did it!
Atop the bell tower, a solitary warrior confesses her sins to the moon. This striking scene from Clockwork Bricks is a master class in contrast and perspective in LEGO. The foreground elements are dimly lit so as to appear all black against a night sky lit by the pink moon. Pagoda tile rooftops are a popular theme in LEGO architecture, but Clockwork Bricks manages to innovate here, incorporating tires into the tiles and a dragon’s wing for extra flare. Larger tires make up the bell. Brick-built clouds and micro builds of distant mountains sell the forced perspective.
Clockwork Bricks built this evocative scene for the 2024 Summer Joust competition, where it won top prize in the “Pick Your Poison” category.
Here at The Brothers Brick, we love when LEGO builders play with depth and space through forced perspective. For his build “Stairway to Memories,” forestArcher creates a clever trompe l’oeil effect with a framed shadowbox that houses yet another framed image within. Layers upon layers of depth, rendered flat as a painting. I appreciate the added detail of a gold ring hidden behind the potted plant, seen only in reflection. forestArcher credits TBB favorite W. Navarre as an inspiration for using forced perspective, and with this creation he proves an apt pupil.
forestArcher built his stairway illusion for the Summer Joust competition. Check out some of our other favorite entries in this castle-themed building tradition.
Ronin in winter
Fuji-san and red sun rise
Shadows cut the snow
Like a haiku, Cecilie Fritzvold has found beauty in constraints with her latest LEGO creation, a vignette that plays with perspective and color to striking effect. I love the techniques of crisp brick-built shadows integrated into the snow, and the depressions of the ronin’s footsteps. The restrained use of red bricks, especially in the lovely torii gate and the red sun (mirroring the Japanese flag), add dynamism to the quiet scene. Cecilie’s pagoda is a wonderful architectural build on its own. As a whole, the vignette evokes Ukiyo-e woodblock prints with its muted palette and intense perspective. A masterful work of stillness from a builder who is always evolving.
Before co-founding Studio Ghibli and going on to win two Oscars for Best Animated Feature, it was Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that cemented Hayao Miyazaki as Japan’s great animation auteur. Joffre Zheng pays tribute to the film with a brick-built Nausicaä on her swooshable glider racing over a herd of Ohmu as they skitter across the desert. The diorama uses forced perspective to sell how high Nausicaä soars over the titanic bugs. The use of bowed slopes to give the dust clouds a sawtoothed edge does a great job evoking Miyazaki’s style and conveying the Ohmus’ terrifying speed. As a bonus detail, Nausicaä’s glider features an LED that lights up with a button press.
For other masterful Nausicaä models, check out these builds from Tino Poutiainen, TBB alum Iain Heath, and Alex Hui.
Forced perspective is one of those artist’s buzzwords (or phrases) that means to achieve the illusion of a vast depth of field within a very narrow space. LEGO artist Jaap Bijl understands forced perspective quite well. The central road bisecting the composition down the middle appears to trail off into the long distance, but from the sky to the foreground, the composition is no more than twenty studs deep.
The builder tells us the width is more than a meter across, which certainly helps create the illusion of depth. The other trick Jaap clearly understands is the use of color. This is a world bursting with color for sure but the brightest of which is relegated only to objects in the extreme foreground. Midground is awash in a bit more subdued pastels, clueing us in that, even that far down the road, this is a colorful world but dialing back the intensity and details helps create the illusion of depth. The sky shifts the color palette and dials back the amount of detail, giving us a suitable background. This builder is a true artist indeed, but check out our Jaap Bijl archives to see what I mean.
Builder Josh Parkinson has become quite the LEGO master of juxtaposing the near and far. I was wowed by his technique in the Doctor Strange vignette he made last year. And his powers of forced perspective have only grown since then, as is evident in this beautiful North Pole scene. Josh continues to astound with his ability to make minifigure habitats, six of them in total making up the two interiors seen here. But I’m also quite impressed with his snow layering on the roofs, trees, and distant hills. When combined with the backlighting at the build’s horizon, the whole scene pops, giving “the luster of midday to objects below.”
We get through all sorts of superlatives to describe LEGO builds here at The Brothers Brick, but there’s surely only one way to describe MySnailEatsPizza‘s Children of the Mountain: majestic. Isn’t it just? It’s reminiscent of the way monarchs were painted in the middle ages. The framing coupled with the forced perspective mountains make this look truly epic. We don’t know who this character is, or what their purpose is, or where they’re going; but that’s not necessary. All we know is that they’re doing it in style.
The LEGO castle building contest, Summer Joust, got underway recently. And one of my favourite categories this year is that of Silhouettes. The brief is simple: make whatever you want, but at no more than 6 studs depth. Considering LEGO’s inherently three-dimensional nature, it’s quite the challenge – but one that’s no match for Ids de Jong. He’s built this atmospheric castle scene that really leans into the theme of the contest. The mostly monochrome scenery is offset by the sunset in the distance, which emphasises the forced perspective at work. You could also see a deeper meaning here. The dark colours and creepy-crawlies in the foreground, coupled with the knight walking away from them towards the sunset and brighter pastures, indicate to me this soldier has overcome a great challenge. Perhaps that’s how Ids feels about this build!
After over 30 years of building with LEGO, I can’t tell you how many rubber tires I’ve amassed in my collection. And as someone who never designs anything automotive (primarily due to lack of skill), they have sat collecting dust for far too long. But Tom Studs gives me hope for their eventual use with this brilliantly floored scene. Utilizing forced perspective, Tom gives us a view out the building’s main portal into a green wilderness, complete with a perfectly positioned minifig to convey all those feelings of wanderlust. The interior of the door is beautifully designed, with plenty of intricate brown designs that stand in stark contrast to the verdant outdoors and its winding stone path. But, again, the real star of the show is the cobbled black floor, comprised of a multitude of brick “nuggets” each wrapped in an appropriately-sized tire.
