Ever wondered what Ninjago City would look like if LEGO decided to use the same format on a medieval-themed build? Wonder no more and just take a look at Benjamin Stenlund latest creation. This amazingly detailed build celebrates the 10 years of existence of The Guilds of Historica. It features an Elven tea pavilion, a tavern, a tights shop, and a cartographer’s shop. On the street level, we find a candle maker, a bookstore, a jeweler, and a room for rent. On the second level, there is a moneylender, an apartment, and a shield shop. Benjamin didn’t stop when he filled up a 32×32 base plate so he had to expand the city to add a Chapel, a bakery, and a barbershop. I know for sure I would love to get lost in this amazing Medieval city. Can you spot all the little shops/businesses included in this massive build?
Tag Archives: Henjin Quilones
Command and control your space
NPU, or Nice Parts Use, is the fan term for taking an unusual and seemingly single-use LEGO element and cleverly incorporating it into something else. It’s rare to see the NPU ethos applied to expensive electronic components, however, that’s exactly what TBB alumn Benjamin Stenlund has done with the 9V battery box controller on this Vic Viper, positioning it so the infrared emitter becomes a cool cockpit. Of course, don’t miss the carrot blasters on this greebled entry to the Novvember fan challenge, too.
Apprentice of the blacksmith
Whenever I go to a new building that is quite large and has a big open space, like a warehouse or a church, I always get the feeling that I am a tremendously small speck of a human being on a very big planet. It is almost humbling in a way. I’ve never had this feeling when looking at a LEGO creation up till now. The picture of the blacksmith created by Benjamin Stenlund evoked the exact same feeling for me. This building has to be between 35 to 40 bricks high. Which by itself is massive.
The building itself is constructed out of brick build bricks. This helps to prevent the Big Grey Wall Effect. It also adds to the feeling that this building is immense. Another thing that makes this creation stand out is the lighting. We have light coming from the oven and light coming through the gate and through the windows. The way the light enters the blacksmith makes it feel like it is a real setting and not just a well-lit LEGO creation. The attention to detail in this creation is superb. The sliding gate gets some nice wood carving. The arched vault windows are made out of cheese slopes, plates, and bricks. These arches also show how thick the walls are which attributes to the big building vibe. Ben describes that the building has to be this big in order for dragons to have their armor fittings. Which sounds like a very valid reason indeed.
Bricks on the High Seas
If you enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, then you’ll love this seafaring LEGO creation by Henjin_Quilones.
Do ye know what a pirate’s favorite letter be? Ye’d think it would be “R”, but his true love will always be the “C”. All jokes aside, this is truly a wonderful little build. Ship hulls are difficult to contrive out of most bricks, but Henjin manages it by using a variety of angles. The sails are made of sloped bricks and automotive spoiler pieces definitely give off the vibe of being pushed by the wind. My favorite part, however, is barely visible. If you look at the deck very closely, you can see a windowpane lattice doubling as the deck grating.
Beep and Sweep: A robot’s guide to mopping floors
Looks like there is a lot of cleaning to do for this poor robot, as Benjamin Stenlund astounds us again with another encapsulating scene. It’s great to see a fully enclosed build, like this, with atmospheric lighting, which suggests that this display has a story to tell. The model is an entry in the Iron Builder contest with the current challenge being to build a model featuring sand blue spoilers. These spoiler pieces appear not only on the robot but also in the fans and the lights on the walls.
Ursula’s tentacles have been cleverly used as the mop head with the handle made out of candlestick pieces. I love the idea that even in a futuristic hangar, they still require a mop and bucket to clean the floors. Check out more articles on Benjamin’s stunning builds.
The old mill at sunset
The lighting in this LEGO creation by Benjamin Stenlund is simply stunning. It looks like the sun is slowly setting (or rising) illuminating only one side of the building. I actually had to look twice to make sure the building wasn’t made of tan and dark tan bricks (note I might be a bit color blind). The spoilers make not only great mill blades but also great roof shingles. The best used part in this creation has to be the plain old jumper plate. They are used to create the insets where the underlying bricks are visible. The effect is simply stunning. It looks like the plastering crumbled down on several spots of the building. Last but not least, can you spot Groot?
Watch out for the Legolex
Bored of looking at your own bland wristwatch? Look no further than the Legolex. Carefully crafted by Benjamin Stenlund, the Legolex has style and grace. Spoiler pieces connect together along the comfortable strap. Brown link chains create the textured border around the delicately placed face of the watch. An elegant crown is used to complete Legolex logo so that others know you have a great taste in watches. And with a Legolex you will always know what time it is. It’s Lego time.
All jokes aside, we’re sad to say Benjamin is leaving our team. We wish him all the best on his future endeavours. Be sure to follow him for more of his wonderful creations, and of course, we hope to see more of his amazing creations here on TBB.”
The Hiding of the Druid Shrine
I am an absolute sucker for LEGO photography where all that meets the eye is LEGO. Hardly no backdrop visible. Just bricks. For me this helps me stay in the scene a lot better versus seeing it as a creation made of bricks against a nice backdrop. A good example of this is Benjamin Stenlund’s latest creation. It depicts a druid in a sacred shrine. For the druid Benjamin used the sorting hat, which to me always looks like the sorting hat. Therefor it always looks kinda out of place in non Harry Potter creations. However in this case it works perfectly fine thanks to the shadow cast on the druid figure. Benjamin made a rocky landscape covered in foliage. The rock work looks really intricate and I would have no idea where to start when making them. The trees give a nice pop of colour to this creation. There even is a waterfall that lights up in the dark. My guess is this is where the secret treasure is hidden. Somehow this creation gives me strong Lord of the Rings vibes, but this is not the case. You can read the backstory to this creation in Benjamins caption.
Always remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle
As a LEGO fan, reusing seems like second nature, but reducing can be hard; instead, the desire is always for more, more, more, right? Recycling is something that LEGO fans do, too, taking the same ideas and making them again and again, in slightly different forms, or else taking parts from one build and using them in another. In my case, I took parts from a Star Wars Eta-2 Actis-class Jedi Interceptor and turned it into a Vic Viper-style racing ship. The central cockpit stays, the sloping side wings stay, but the engines get an upgrade (and it needed a hyperdrive, of course) and of course a giant fin gets put on the back. It looks faster than the basic Interceptor, ready for some serious space racing. I added a large space gate, too, so that it had something to fly through, marking the space race course.
This was built for the Space Jam racing team collaboration category, as well as for the Iron Forge. So many contests. But while you are here, you should check out our collection of LEGO spaceship builds and make Benny proud.
Cooking up something special with bananas
The LEGO banana element is not necessarily the most useful piece, right? It has only one connection point, at one end, and no matter what you do with it, it still looks like a banana. That has not stopped LEGO from using it all over the place, whether that be gold bananas in Ninjago sets, grey ones in Mixels, or white, teal, and dark blue from various Chinese festival sets; but it still looks like a banana. But when I was taking my almost-two-year-old to the bathroom the other day, I realized that the handles on the faucet looked remarkably banana-like, with the same curve and general shape. So that got me thinking: could I make a kitchen that used a banana sink? In my own collection, I have only yellow and gold bananas, so it had to be a gold sink, but brass is coming back in, right? Or was it in, and now it’s back out again?
The rest of the kitchen came together around the sink, scaled to that. It’s loosely based off of the kitchens from my last two houses in layout, though the dishwasher should be to the right of the sink for better accuracy. It ended up using almost all my dark brown tiles and bricks and plates (as well as slopes!) for the cabinets, so I’m glad I did not go bigger, and if you look closely at the sand green walls, you’ll see that they are largely made of 1×2 plates. I am not looking forward to taking this one apart. The ceiling came last, but I knew I needed one, since I wanted an immersive shot, and those always look more convincing with the ceiling and a controlled light source. So I made it studded, to replicate the horrible textured ceilings that so many houses have (including my own), and made the light for the photograph come through the ceiling fixture, with a little reflecting in from the window and the banana moon (which would have been better in white, admittedly). I’m fairly pleased with the build, though I do think the floor is ugly, and so does my wife, but that’s the tiles I had in abundance, so that’s what I used. Maybe we’ll remodel it someday.
If you like this build, you’ll probably like this collection of LEGO kitchen builds. And don’t forget to tune in to the Iron Forge competition, where the banana is the seed part.
Not all bounty hunters are Mandalorians
I’m one of those annoying Star Wars fanboys who liked Boba Fett for no good reason. What did he do to deserve the adulation poured down upon him? Nothing. Ok, he had some menacing lines, and cool looking gear, and an awesome spaceship that flew the wrong way (or maybe landed the wrong way), but beyond that all he did was get embarrassingly knocked into a Sarlacc mouth by a blind guy with a spear. But as we all know by now, bounty hunting is a complicated profession, and the popular love for Mandalorians and their ilk has only grown, getting featured in The Attack of the Clones, The Clone Wars, Rebels, and even getting their own eponymous show. My love has grown correspondingly, too. So when one of the categories for this year’s Space Jam was to build a LEGO bounty hunting ship, I was all about that, and started making something inspired by the Razor Crest.
Click to read more about my design process
This cow doesn’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain
It’s a tribute to the enduring power of certain images that I cannot hear the word “cowbell” without thinking of Blue Öyster Cult and fevers. And the LEGO minifgure torso looks remarkably like a cowbell, if one ignores the holes where the arms should go; so when I faced the challenge of coming up with creative uses for the part, I just had to build a cow with a cowbell around her neck. The whole time I was building it, I had to resist the idea of scrapping the build and trying to craft a hairy Will Ferrell holding the cowbell instead, and “The Reaper” was playing on repeat in my head. Ever try to build LEGO while dancing around playing air cowbell? It ain’t easy. I snuck in another torso in the barn, and added some of my dad’s old bushes and trees around it for some microscale detail in the background. LEGO is truly a multi-generational toy!
While you’re feeling rustic, here are some more LEGO builds of barns and LEGO farms. And don’t forget to check out the Iron Forge, and even get a few entries in yourself!