Even more than 35 years after its first screening, Raiders of the Lost Ark still remains a perfect adventure movie. Lego Fjotten masterfully recreates the iconic Cairo scene capturing all the characters including that bad little monkey! Bonus points are for the minifigures right from the 7195 Ambush in Cairo set, and with all the accessories around you can easily re-enact that action-packed passage.
If there’s one thing I love more than a beautiful LEGO model, it’s a collection of beautiful LEGO models. Inspired by the Harry Potter vignettes we featured earlier in the year, John Klapheke wanted to build a series of something he was fairly knowledgeable about. The mission John set for himself was to create six vignettes for each of the Indiana Jones movies, each set on a 12×12-stud base.
At first, he was pretty adamant about keeping the entire scene confined to those dimensions. Later, with the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull creations, he relented and let some detail spill over (and sometimes through) the sides of the base. John says “aiming for consistency” was the unique challenge of a project of two dozen separate, yet interconnected creations.
Here’s a LEGO temple to stir the soul of an explorer. W. Navarre has covered his pyramid temple with just enough foliage and texture to create an Indiana Jones adventure spirit in me. I want to scout out these ruins for anything that glitters and sparkles. The mix of greys, and the tumbledown rockwork makes for a real sense of age and decay, whilst the shaping of the structure creates the unmistakable feel of Central or South American antiquity.
You must remember that famous scene in Indiana Jones: The Raiders of The Lost Ark when Indy is chased by a giant boulder and has to run through the temple as the boulder rolls closer and closer? Well back in 2008, LEGO released 7623 Temple Escape with the rolling boulder as a play feature. Australian builder Forgotten Days has taken that set and expanded it – adding style, accuracy and details along the way – resulting in a much better scene.
The surface terrain is nicely built up with gaps to highlight the underground activities taking place. Using an Indiana Jones minifigure at the start standing with the idol, and another at end of the run, is a nice touch. I love that Indy at the end is in the seated position just like in the movie!
The tomb of Sir Richard, one of the Knights of the First Crusade, is buried deep under the streets of Venice, and the shield that marks his tomb can help you discover the location of the Holy Grail. Well, at least according to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Legophthalmos has cleverly recreated the iconic catacomb scene from the film, complete with Richard’s tomb, ossuaries, and of course, piles and piles of rats.
Just looking at this build makes me feel like I walked face-first through a cobweb. *Shudder*
Michał Kaźmierczak (migalart) recently posted a large-scale diorama that illustrates an original Indiana Jones adventure, complete with cliff-hanging, rope bridges, spiders, snakes, mummies, and buried treasure. The diorama may be about Indiana Jones, but the real star is Michał’s landscaping.
This photo of the builder with his model shows just how big his diorama is:
See more photos on Flickr, Brickshelf, and Michał’s blog.
Brian Williams delivers a stunning rendition of the warehouse scene from Indiana Jones. It took me a while to realize there were mirrors used to create the illusion of depth, for the actual diorama is much smaller. If you spend more time taking a closer look, you might find some good laughs in the crate labels.
One of my dearest memories of the summer in 1994 that I spent working on an archaeological dig in Jordan was a weekend trip to Petra. We arrived from Amman late in the evening, but several of my fellow archaeology students couldn’t wait until morning to see the amazing structures carved from the sandstone 2000 years ago, so we snuck across wadi after wadi, avoiding the main paths. Once past the guard posts, we walked through the narrow gorge known as al-Siq — pitch black at night — until the passage opened in front of us to reveal Al Kazhneh, lit only by starlight.
ArzLan built his LEGO version of the Treasury for the Hong Kong Animation Festival, and features Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade visit to this UNESCO Heritage site.
There’s no better builder than Brian Williams (BMW_Indy) when it comes to recreating scenes from Indiana Jones with Lego. This vignette depicts the failed British assault on Gaza in 1917 from The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. The smoke effect is the best I’ve seen at this scale.
Many of you may remember when we posted the job opening at Traveller’s Tales, back in February of 2009. The results of that job search were discussed in our interview with Carl Greatrix.
However, another very cool result of that process was that TT Games recently sent us these two bricks as a “thank you” gift.
They are very awesome. According to TT Games, these two launch bricks are the only ones in the public domain. You will also be happy to learn that the bricks came with one stipulation. They have to be given away. To honor their request, we will be donating them as prizes in some future event. It hasn’t been decided what or when that will be, but it will be something special, as these are incredibly unusual pieces.
For his latest LEGO Indiana Jones creation, Brian Williams looks for inspiration to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles .
The five-foot-long diorama features dozens of awesome mini-scenes and techniques, including gunrunners, leaf springs on the locomotive, proper horseback riders’ legs, and lovely sand-green cacti. Check out the full photoset on Flickr.
Thanks for the tip, Austin!
Jeramy Spurgeon and the team have just released a double issue edition of RAILBRICKS magazine covering all things LEGO trains. It has in-depth articles on a few models we’ve featured here on TBB.
This 100 page issue was a long time coming, but features an interview with UK
builder Carl Greatrix, more Steam tips & Tricks, the Indiana Jones Circus
Train MOC by Brian Williams, Billund’s Miniland Trains, and much more!
Check out the website to download or read the magazine.