Tag Archives: Jordan Fridal

Gleaming the cube in LEGO

Where did the cubes come from? How long have they been here? Was it aliens? Jordan Fridal offers no answers, only questions in a pair of builds featuring enigmatic cubes in ancient ruins. After creating his first cube, based on a design from geometric LEGO genius Zachary Steinman, Jordan was inspired to create a suitably mysterious setting to house it. Jordan’s first cube sits on Aztec-inspired ruins in a dense jungle. Normally a vehicle builder, this was Jordan’s first time playing with LEGO foliage.

Jordan set the second cube amidst Greek-style ruins deep beneath the sea. The explosion of color in the surrounding reef includes some clever parts usage, with orange combs, magenta hair, and frogs in pink and gold doubling as coral.

Will scientists discover a third cube, perhaps frozen the in the ice or buried in Egyptian sands? Only time will tell. For now, we can only specualte who left them…

It was aliens.

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Secret weapons of the TIEwaffe

Whether the mission calls for flushing fugitives out of hiding or reducing enemy bases to rubble, the imposing TIE-110 bomber will have the rebels on the run. Over the past two years, Jordan Fridal has been mashing up Star Wars vehicles with WWII aircraft in LEGO to brilliant effect. For his latest build, Jordan fuses the TIE Bomber with a Messerschmitt BF-110. The model captures the best of both sources, supplemented with custom stickering for the windshield and insignia. While I would hate to be on the receiving end of the TIE-110’s payload, I do wonder how that asymmetry would fly for in-atmosphere bombing runs.

TIE-110 update

The TIE-110 joins a growing roster of Imperial sky-fi craft: the TIE-109, TIE-190, and TIE-262. It’s quite a fearsome fleet! Thankfully Jordan made sure the Rebel Allies have equally awesome fighters.

die TIEwaffe!!

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These Star Wars/WWII mashups are just plane awesome

It’s no secret that George Lucas looked to World War II-era dogfights for inspiration when envisioning the space battles of Star Wars, so a mashup of the two in LEGO form simply makes sense. Here, Jordan Fridal elegantly blends the celebrated North American P-51D Mustang with Star Wars‘s X- and E-wings, with pleasing results. The two ships (fittingly nicknamed “Rebel Scum” and “Laser Bait”) look ready to duel German fighter planes or Imperial TIEs, whichever they happen to run across—a testament to both Lucas’s original vision and the skill with which they were executed in brick form.

E-51 to X-51 comparison

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Bringing Star Wars down to Earth

It’s a matter of record that George Lucas used World War II combat footage as a placeholder for the starship battles in early cuts of the original Star Wars. LEGO builder Jordan Fridal has built on this fact by creating an inspired series of digital mash-ups; Star Wars vehicles combined with the WWII-era planes that might have stood in for them before the special effects were done. Here we see an X-Wing/P-51 Mustang trying to outrun a Tie Intercepter/Messerschmitt ME BF-109. And just like groundbreaking special effects need a team to complete them, sometimes a LEGO creation takes more than one person to bring it to life. With that in mind, Jordan credits brick_squadron and Inthert for a bit of help on the X-51.

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