Tag Archives: jnj_bricks

A honey of a village shows the sunny side of the dark ages

Joe (jnj_bricks) has impressed us many times with his immersive medieval LEGO displays, whether in winter, by the harbor, or across the Pelennor Fields. For his latest epic build, created over 3 months to show at Brickworld, Joe takes us to Honey Crest Village, an idyllic hamlet bursting with color. Half-timbered homes are quite popular among medieval builders, and Joe is master at rendering the style in LEGO with a great using SNOT techniques (Studs Not On Top) for cracked plaster and finding creative parts (like hot dogs!) for the timber. The color scheme for this build is reminiscent of the Inn Plain Sight building from the Dungeons and Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale set, but Joe has been here before.

Honey Crest Village

What makes this build such a delight, beyond the technique and scale, is how packed with delightful details of village life and crowd-pleasing elements. Joe’s trademark shirtless Woody is there, of course, as are at least 11 types of animals, including the LEGO frog in all 16 available colors. (To find them all you have to visit Joe’s instagram gallery). I’ve only located 4 so far. How many can you find?

This LEGO Dark Knight is more than black and dark gray

While LEGO Batman will forever be Will Arnett, there’s certainly room for creations that take the caped crusader a bit more seriously. For instance, check out this glorious scene from Batman Begins by Joe (jnj_bricks). Within their temple high in the Tibetan Himalayas, the League of Shadows is about to adopt a new member. But Bruce Wayne manages an escape from Ra’s al Ghul and his minions. Here we see the explosion that kicks off the action-packed scene, frozen in plastic-y time. And it’s a good thing, too, because it allows us plenty of time to admire Joe’s impressive use of Harry Potter wands in the vignette. Employed both in the windows above and the railings below, the pair of wands still attached to their sprue provide an interesting and hard-to-achieve texture in the model.

Ra's al Ghul’s Home

Warships used to look so much flashier

You know what the problem with military vehicles is these days? It’s all so grey. Or stealth black, sometimes. Or a drab green. Or some – anyway! Point is, they’re not very interesting colours. Back in the day, warships on the high seas sometimes had a fair bit of bling on them. Joe (jnj_bricks) harkens back to these flashier days by throwing some golden LEGO handcuffs at this Man-of-War. Coupled with that dark blue, it looks rather smart. Sure, it’s not very practical – you could see this coming a mile off. But isn’t that for the better, so that we can appreciate this masterful little build?

French Man of War

A lone pop of colour in a lonely village

We love a good LEGO creation that uses about double the amount of LEGO pieces to be built as you’d expect. This creation by Joe is composed of a lot of small little pieces to create patterns and structures. The scene depicts an abandoned village with one sole visitor. The visitor is apparently the only living soul in the town, just as the blue door is the only thing with colour in the town. Your eye gets drawn to the door due to the vibrant colour, and the door itself is exceptionally well built. But if you look past it, you’ll notice that the rest of the creation is as well. All the walls are made by slopes, tiles and plates to resemble woodwork. The use of the paled fence for windows is quite clever. Throughout the entire creation there are a lot of fangs, horns, angled bars, plates with a handles, and small windows used to represent snow and ice. Of those four, the last two are most resourceful.

Cold Omens

Tonight’s special is Lobster a la Woody

For a giant, bottom-feeding sea bug, these bright red crustaceans sure make for a tasty meal. Then again, a lot of things taste delicious covered in melted butter. Builder Joe of jnj_bricks takes us out for a nice lobster dinner but he’ll probably never call us again. Dated as an Anchorman reference may be, it seems apt given the shirtless Woody getting cozy in the bed of parsley. That’s some definite Ron Burgundy energy. Joe found quite a few uses for the red hexagonal plates with hinges that make up most of the crimson carapace. Beyond the boiled ocean insect, Joe built some delicious lemons for garnish as well as a nice slate serving plate, clever clamps, and a checkered napkin to clean up with during dinner. You might miss it if you don’t look carefully but there are couple actual Lobster pieces used near its mouth for a clever bit of added realism.

Lobster Dinner

I can’t help but wonder if Joe wasn’t trying to make a surf and turf joke with this build. The lobster is on point but Woody is a bit of a stretch. I’ll give it to him since this was clearly a feat of clever organic building.

A rocking ride for some outer space ore.

As part of a Space Jam collaboration with some fellow builders, jnj_bricks has crafted a transport ship designed to carry aurum from an asteroid to a refinery. And no mined rock has ever traveled in such grand style before. This ship is an elegant blend of sharp edges and rounded corners. And the black and white color scheme, accented by medium azure and yellow, is gorgeous. Which should come as surprise, since it’s a color scheme that’s worked for this same builder before.

Precious Cargo

Beware the servants of the Goblin King

Busts have become ever-popular, and with them have come a wealth of fun ideas. Builders trying their hand at sculpting a character’s features with bricks are forced to try new things and innovate. This Goblin bust by builder Jnj_bricks was such a foray that was definitely successful. Texturing really helped this character come through, from the spikey, short hair to the boats used in his jacket. The knobbly, green skin translates well as a Goblin, as do the bright orange eyes which hold a mischievous light. The gold earrings and jutting jaw with sharp teeth add that extra bit of character emblematic of this trickster species in lore, old and new.

The Goblin

Quite a few techniques were used to achieve all the interesting angles and textures of this build. Though Jnj_bricks says this is a very different style for him, it’s clear it wasn’t too far out of his range.

A new twist on an old windscreen

I don’t know that I have a favorite LEGO piece of all time, but my top five would have to include the long, faceted windscreen that debuted in 1989’s Space theme offerings. Something about that wedge’s multiple sloped angles inspired so many of my childhood builds. I used it to build cockpits, magical jewels, the jaws of various monsters…but I hadn’t given it much thought in the last decade or two. So I was delighted when I spotted the White Tiger Star Fighter by jnj_bricks. One of my favorite pieces had been given new life.

White Tiger Star Fighter

By twisting two of the windscreens sideways and building over the resulting bottom half, the White Tiger employs the existing slope angles to create a new cockpit shape that blends perfectly with the more modern pieces that make up the majority of the ship. It’s got me wanting to dig through my old bricks to see what inspiration might strike.

White Tiger Star Fighter

What’s behind the door in this fantasy LEGO build?

This LEGO creation from Joe (jnj_bricks) was created for the Summer Joust 2021 contest, and it’s wonderfully moody. There are plenty of unique parts used here (see if you can spot the shark head), and the lighting is top-notch. The highlight of the build to me is the brickwork on the wall; it helps tell a story about this building and a lot of work clearly went into it. Another aspect that works really well is allowing the viewer to fill in the rest of the room by having it focused on the door and not having everything self-contained.

Behind the Door

I want much more than this provincial life

It takes a careful eye for detail to craft a large LEGO immersive scene since every corner of the frame has to be considered. But it also takes a large number of LEGO bricks, far more than one would think before beginning the project (especially for the foreground, which always needs more, always). Talented LEGO builder Joe (jnj_bricks) has both the careful eye and the pile of bricks and uses them masterfully to craft this castle harbor scene, with a quay, lots of shops, a castle, and even a drunken pirate down on the dock. It certainly fits the bill as a large scene, too, measuring 144×80 studs.

A Cloudy Day

Joe neglects no surface in the scene, from the textured roofs to the detailed walls. There are slight variations in color to show weathering, and no two houses have the same wat-and-daub pattern. The selling point is the minifigure posing, however, which can be one of the trickiest bits to nail down, but Joe got it just right, with dynamic and natural poses all around. It really sells that this is a normal day with people going about their ordinary lives. Pretty sure I see the baker with the same old bread and loaves to sell. And do you see the goat? He’s got a goat, the Holy Grail of castle builders!

A Day at the Docks

From Midgard to Asgard and the Bifröst bridge in between.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has supplied fans with awe-inspiring landscapes of fictional places such as Thor’s home world of Asgard. Undoubtably the incredible imagery in these films have inspired LEGO builders and content creators alike in recreating these fascinating worlds using their respective media of choice. Builder Joe (jnj_bricks) for example, translates the world of Asgard into the world of LEGO with his wonderful model of the Asgardian capital city.

Asgard

Joe’s model is from the perspective of the gate, where the Bifröst bridge to Asgard begins, the model as a whole is in micro-scale. The build largely utilizes many small elements as well as interestingly molded pieces such as minifigure helmets, weaponry, and other accessories to create forms of various buildings and dwellings. Asgard palace makes use of many pearl gold pieces, most notably 1×1 cylinders and cones and the ornamental golden clam shell. Of course my favorite component of this city-build is definitely the beautiful Bifröst bridge – its rainbow colors rendered by trans-clear plates and bricks of various sizes in multiple colors along with some black elements of the same kind. Overall with Joe’s creation, we get a post-card picture of a fan favorite setting in LEGO form.

On the shores of the sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-Earth

The bittersweet ending of The Lord of the Rings is a scene that impacted many readers and viewers such as myself. It is the last we see of our beloved heroes after so many trials and tribulations in their story. In this scene, our heroes join the elves on a boat departing Middle-Earth to “a far green country under a swift sunrise.” Many see this as an allegory for death and the journey beyond, whether it be heaven or something else. Like Bilbo, I like to think of this in a more optimistic way: a new adventure in an unfamiliar land. JNJ Bricks captured the moment in the Grey Havens right before their departure in a striking, immersive LEGO scene.

Grey Havens

The minifigures of Frodo, Gandalf, and the hobbits stand in the foreground, out of focus and facing away. The elves wait by the boat, ready to take them on their journey out of the completely brick-built harbour. LEGO parts make up everything in this scene, from the water to the sunset sky between the cliffs. My favourite detail, the arches, and towers across the water look just like the movie, despite being so small. The boat, being grey, is distinct enough to not blend into the background. The accuracy of this scene invokes the same emotion in me as I experience while reading the book or watching the movie. Now I am in the mood for some of Tolkien’s poetry…