Tag Archives: Hardsuits

Powered mechanical exoskeletons. For when your minifigure needs a mighty boost.

Black mecha hardsuit is ready to bring the hurt

Armored hardsuits are definitely a LEGO fan favorite subject, and this stocky fellow by Moko immediately caught my eye with some great details. First off, the shoulder guards, which use this unusual hockey helmet, are paired with the Bionicle mask to give the suit a bulky style. The elbow connection is also interesting, inserting clip bars into the underside of a 2×2 round brick. A small detail on either side of the pilot’s compartment is the printed construction tile from LEGO 30529 Mini Master-Building Emmet polybag. The overall effect reminds me of a goliath beetle.

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A sturdy pair of heavy-hitting hardsuits

Sometimes a particular LEGO part can define a model in a way that no other part can. This pair of Maschinen Krieger or Ma.K hardsuits by Marco Marozzi uses a very obscure, and very interesting part from the Scala theme, a saddle to form the torso and primary focal point. But that is not the only fun part use. The sniper uses the head of a LEGO Porg on its chest plate.

While the heavy Gatlin gunner is sporting what looks like an Endor rebel helmet.

One fun detail about these squat and sturdy hardsuits is that they were built to fit an equally squat Duplo pilot

Emmet’s trading in his rocket house for a fancy new hardsuit

We recently featured a breakdown of nineteen new LEGO sets released in advance of the upcoming LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. One of these sets is a 2-in-1 build featuring Emmet’s cute little yellow house, which can be transformed into the rocket version he uses in an attempt to rescue Lucy. Maybe if Emmet were a proper master builder, he could have come up with something cooler, like this great mech/hardsuit in matching construction worker colors by Chungpo Cheng. It even features a bunch of stickers from the custom BrickHeadz set 41597 Go Brick Me.

It looks like Chungpo even left some room inside the mech for an overpriced coffee or Emmet’s green friend, plant-y.

It’s hard to go small

This pair of LEGO hardsuits by Carter Baldwin are ready to go salvage some future junk, and they’re fully outfitted with flexible protection. While they don’t actually encompass a full minifigure, just a head in a bubble, the rest of the brick-built suit has remarkably close proportions to what a mobile armored fig would need. Carter’s also thrown in some great parts uses, from the minifigure backpack mounted on the lower torso to my favorite, the criminally underused tap base for the yellow suit’s gun.

When two warriors meet

2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the LEGO minifigure, and its chunky proportions are beloved the world over. However, as excellent as the minifigure is, it remains stiff and able to strike only a handful of poses. Some builders like √erde’ have turned to sculpting their own characters out of small elements, employing minifigure headgear to give them a lifelike appearance. This pair of warriors, representing brute force on the left, and speed and agility on the right, are magnificent examples. Plus, the photography makes them really seem like they’re on a battlefield.

Large-scale LEGO hardsuit pounds into action

One of the defining subjects of the Maschinen Krieger sci-fi world is the hardsuit, an environmental suit that is meant to help the wearer survive in hostile environments like outer space or in radiation-heavy post-apocalyptic locations. While mini-fig scale LEGO hardsuits may be more common, this one by Marco Marozzi is built to a much larger scale, and as such, is packed with details. Like many of Marco’s mechs, this one has plenty of poseability. I especially like the ball-socket shoulder attached through a wheel rim.

The white engine cowl found on many space shuttle sets provides the hardsuit with the pod-like look that seems to take some inspiration from early deep-sea diving suits, and an abundance of tubes and canisters come together to lend an industrial feel to the model.

Harvesting the ocean’s riches

In the year 2018, Aquasharks is not a word that would turn many heads apart from the occasional hardcore adult LEGO fan. For the younger crowd, Aquasharks is an underwater LEGO theme from the 90’s that had some imaginative set designs and play features like magnets (which, admittedly, were everywhere back then). As opposed to some other themes from the same years, this particular one doesn’t seem to get much love from the online LEGO community, but luckily Jonas Obermaier is here to give it five minutes of glory… perhaps this time we won’t forget about it again?

The build is technically a hardsuit, but the heavy use of minifig parts (the core of the top half is based on the Aquasharks SCUBA gear) blurs the line between a heavily modified minifig and a compact mecha. With the builder’s skills in minifig design, this is hardly surprising. All sorts of small colourful parts capture the motif of the Aquasharks prints, and with enough imagination, the dark blue minifig hand in the center of the torso could look like a shark symbol!

“Hammerhead” Exploration and Surveillance Suit

There’s a lot to love about this hardsuit by Christopher Hoffmann, from the spot of yellow on the long arm (a camera?) to the random “50” road sign and excellent color blocking between the white torso and dark gray arms and legs. Christopher says that the AC Research, Inc. suit is “For all of your topographical and biological surveillance needs, from Titan to Ganymede.” Sounds about right.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the models I built for Ma.Ktober a couple years ago was building the discrete bases to showcase each model. Christopher gives the base itself substantial attention and detail, with organic landscaping to contrast with the hard mechanical detail of the suit.

Animalistic Hardsuits

This pair of hard-bitten space warriors are sporting hard-suits common to their species. √erde’ has this long backstory about how the wolves are all mean and everything. Don’t you believe it. That bird looks like it deserves everything it gets.

Ooni Brute

Surprisingly, many LEGO fans have never heard of the Ooni or of Galidor, LEGO’s failed action figure line and TV series from 2002. In my ongoing attempt to make Galidor cool, I give you the Ooni Brute. I envision him as a foot soldier of an invading alien army. His helmet assembly isn’t for breathing air, but for regulating internal body temperature because the Ooni are cold blooded.

Pete Reid’s hardsuit hits 10K on LEGO CUUSOO [News]

Last time we highlighted the awesome hardsuit designed by Peter Reid, his LEGO CUUSOO project had just over 6,500 supporters and we were rooting for it to hit 10,000 for the Fall Review Cycle starting last September 3rd. It’s taken a little while longer, but I’m overjoyed to see this highly original, truly creative project hit 10K!

This just happened today, so no official comment from LEGO yet, and based on what we’ve seen over the last several months, it’ll probably be quite a while before we learn whether we’ll all be able to buy a copy of Pete’s suit (well into the next review cycle), but congratulations to Pete for this important first step!

Making Ma.K while the sun still shines

A new super-ship by Pierre is a tough act to follow, but here goes anyway!

I find it incredibly challenging both to build on a deadline and to build within someone else’s aesthetic — I’ve managed to avoid both over the years. I’d admired LEGO creations inspired by Maschinen Krieger for a long time, and I’m reasonably sure I ran across the original Kow Yokoyama kits in hobby shops back in Japan in the 80’s, but I’d never tried my hand at the theme.

At the end of September, I decided it was time to seek my fortune in greener pastures (yup, I’m available!), taking a few weeks off to look for a new gig. Thus, with more “LEGO time” than I normally have, the Ma.Ktoberfest build challenge organized by TR and Pascal seemed like the perfect opportunity to participate.

Faced with a big pile of curvy bricks, I got into the Ma.K spirit by pumping out a few variations on TR’s wonderful SAFS (Super Armored Fighting Suit) design. As much as I love all the hyper-detailed suits at larger scales, I think TR’s design is absolutely perfect for minifig-scale.

This “Wolverine” anti-air unit is based on an original design by B. Kreuger of Maschinen Krueger, where I found quite a lot of inspiration and reference.

But building a few small hardsuits wasn’t what I set out to do; reproducing one of Maschinen Krieger originator Kow Yokoyama’s designs was high on my list of Ma.Ktoberfest priorities. Perhaps a big curvy hovertank might’ve been simpler than the fiddly bits in this automated reconnaissance robot, but I’m fairly pleased with my “Neuspotter”.

Ultimately though, I wanted to create an original design of my own that still felt like it could be from the Maschinen Krieger universe. My “Kookaburra” incorporates pneumatic tanks underneath a sand-green cowling. Oddly, I’m proudest of the detailed base and crew…

Here’s the Kookaburra on patrol with another variation on TR’s SAFS design, a space-based electronic warfare version I’m calling the Growler.

You can see all of my Ma.Ktoberfest contributions in my photoset on Flickr.

So, having overcome two of my building blocks — deadlines & others’ aesthetics — I think it’s time to treat myself to that Ma.Ktoberfest T-shirt that TR designed!

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