Tag Archives: Lord of the Rings

LEGO began releasing official Lord of the Rings sets in 2012, followed quickly by LEGO Hobbit sets, but LEGO builders have been recreating the people and places of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth for just as long as there have been books and bricks. Relax in the Shire or battle Saruman and his Uruk-hai army at Helm’s Deep and the Tower of Orthanc, but wherever your LEGO journey takes you, beware the watchful eye of Sauron!

Beorn’s beautiful building built by bricks

A few years have passed from The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit hysteria that included an official LEGO theme, but many builders still find inspiration in Tolkien’s fantasy universe. Roanoke Handybuck is one of these builders and his latest creation is Beorn’s house. We can see the party of dwarves accompanied by the Grey Wizard and Bilbo Baggins meeting the master of the house.

Queer Lodgings...

The builder uses colours and their combinations to great advantage, especially mixing the dark tan and olive green, which seem to naturally fit together. Do not limit your attention only to the beautifully flowing roof, because the stonework of the house’s walls is quite impressive too, as is a plethora of details spread around the diorama.

Hobbiton is more than just Bag End!

The excellent photography and advanced building techniques may be what drew my attention to this creation by Patrick B., but they are not the most interesting part to me. What is so unique about this creation is the accompanying description, crediting a handful of builders who inspired Patrick’s Sandyman’s Mill, either by building their own versions prior or as Patrick’s sources for some techniques used. It is normal for builders to both reuse previously discovered techniques and credit their sources, but I rarely see it like this particular example. It almost reads like a scientific publication!

Sandyman´s Mill

Click to see and read more about the build!

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

At the far end of Bagshot Row at number 10 is the house of Fredregar “Fatty” Bolger, the son of Odovacar Bolger and Rosamunda Took. Patrick B. has captured Fatty with his wife and a furry friend outside his beautiful house at Bag End — another Shire creation for his “ExploringTheShire” project he started a year ago.

Bagshot Row 10 (Hobbiton)

Like many a member of the online LEGO community, Patrick has credited fellow builders in the comments on Flickr to acknowledge where he has “borrowed” Jonas Kramm’s cobble design and appropriated the watering can design from Simon NH. I love how the online LEGO community reminds me very much of Hobbiton in more than a few regards.

Elven underworld, so far from the stars

The Lord of the Rings is constantly present as a theme in LEGO fan creations, although less so in the past year or two. As an extension, other stories of Tolkien’s universe find their way into bricks, notably and in this example by Carter Witz, the Silmarillion. The build represents the gates of Menegroth, the thousand caverns, which is one of the most beautiful motives in the Silmarillion in my opinion.

Menegroth (main)

As the obvious centerpiece of the diorama the stone door is beautifully crafted with carefully and effectively placed sand blue pieces to break up the gray, as well as some neat part uses, from the shields and a ribbed hose above the gates to the moustaches used as door rings. I should point out the landscaping, which has a good mixture of greens for a realistic grass effect and a neat tree with simple yet effective roots extending beyond the base.

An atmospheric moonlight cruise in unknown waters

The first word that comes to mind when describing this LEGO swamp scene is atmospheric. Markus Rollbühler has clearly been affected by the dark and damp Danish winter and channelled those dark thoughts when creating this scene The cinematic style is very well done, there are some really fantastic effects – rippling water surface, fog, huge depth of field and the soft lighting.  The scene shows some intrepid explorers paddling towards an orc settlement consisting of houses set on high stilts, it makes for a very eerie setting.

A Night in the Swamp

Taking a closer, clearer look at the Orc’s stilt houses reveals some fantastic details. The side panels are made from tracks and the hose stilts look suitably risky as an engineering feat. I love the simplicity of using the curled minifigure whips as a way to hang the lanterns, it’s very effective.

Click here to see a closer view of the swamp monsters

The coziest hole you ever did see

Last month we featured Patrick B.‘s lovely version of Bag End, Bilbo’s house in the Hobbit and later Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings. It turns out Patrick wasn’t done making cheery hobbit holes, though, as now he’s followed up with Samwise Gamgee’s home on Bagshot End, which is just as welcoming and snug.

Bagshot Row 3 (Sam´s Home)

It’s loaded with details, including lots of clever uses for unusual elements, such as the unusual Scala flower pot and vase paired together along with mini-doll Belle’s light yellow dress as large garden jars. Each section of this homely dwelling bears close scrutiny to tease out all the shrewd techniques. Continue reading →

Flip the One Ring into Mt. Doom with this LEGO Lord of the Rings playable pinball machine [Video]

Dutch builder Vladimir van Hoek has created a fully functional pinball machine from LEGO, inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The table includes scenes from all three books and movies, from Hobbiton above the ball shooter to Mount Doom in the opposite corner. Every element of the pinball machine is built from LEGO, including the targets, lanes, and flippers. Official minifigures from the Lord of the Rings sets add character to the scenes, but the microscale buildings and landscaping are excellent in their own right.

LEGO Lord of the Rings Pinball

See more photos and the LEGO Lord of the Rings pinball machine in action

Denethor stars in Tolkien’s A Christmas Carol

What do you get if you cross Charles Dickens’ famous novel, A Christmas Carol and  Tolkien’s novels, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit?   Patrick B has answered that question in a series of six creations that show the journey of Denethor as Ebenezer Scrooge. Each of the six vignettes tell a part of the story in beautifully detailed LEGO scenes from Scrooge’s miserable start, a warning from Saruman as Jacob Marley, experiencing visions with the ghosts of past, present and future,  before the final change to a more benevolent man.

Gondor´s A Christmas Carol - Humbug - Part 1 (MOC Series)Saruman appears as Jacob Marley to warn Scrooge to change his miserly ways or face a dark future of unhappiness.  I love the clock on the wall and the chair in the corner in the bedroom.

Gondor´s A Christmas Carol - The Warning - Part 2 (MOC Series)

See the next four Tolkien’s A Christmas Carol scenes

Lord of the Rings – Weathertop confrontation

It seems like only yesterday we featured Sanel Lukovic‘s post-apocalyptic ruins, but sometimes a builder keeps knocking it out of the park. He has done it again with the hill of Weathertop from The Lord of the Rings. If you aren’t familiar with your Middle Earth geography, Weathertop overlooks the Great East Road east of Bree, about midway between the Shire and Rivendell. (Although really it is on a large farm near Port Waikato, in the Waikato Region of New Zealand.) It was the location where Frodo gets stabbed in the shoulder by a Ringwraith in the first book. It took Sanellu about 4 months and around 30,000 LEGO elements to build this beautiful scene from The Fellowship of the Ring. Have a look and let your eyes feast on this sumptuous banquet of bricks.

Lord of the Rings " Weathertop"

Living the rustic life alongside the Water in Hobbiton

Roanoke Handybuck has built Sandyman’s Old Mill from The Lord of the Rings, which you may briefly recall from The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton by crossing the bridge. The sculpted look of the bridge and landscape adds an organic, rustic feel to the scene.

You can see some work in progress shots on MOCPages.

Doing a stand-up job of keeping hobbits out of Mordor

Barad-dûr — or as most people will know it, that tall black scary thing that can see very far — has magical properties and scares hobbits. Created by Koen, this intricate reconstruction of the Dark Tower is about as tall as the LEGO Saturn V. The bright Eye of Sauron and glowing lava stand out instantly, but it’s not until you look close that you notice the amazingly fine details. I love how the builder has integrated the blacks and greys around the base of the tower and the hundreds of spires, ramparts and turrets adorning Lord Sauron’s base of operations.

Barad-dûr

“Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.“

Many names for this towering sight

Orthanc, home of the corrupted white wizard Saruman, is an important part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is even referenced in the title of the second book, The Two Towers. The film version of the tower may not be quite as iconic as Sauron’s Barad’dur, but it’s still managed to burn itself into the memories of fantasy lovers all over the world. This microscale LEGO recreation by Maelven isn’t the first LEGO Orthanc model we’ve featured, but the builder has added a lot of great style to it.

Saruman's Pride

Although quite a departure from this builder’s comfort zone of highly accurate Star Wars vehicles, Maelven did not disappoint in this turn to fantasy. The intense details on the tower will keep your attention for more time than you would expect, but what I really like is the gradual but very fluent tapering of the tower’s shape towards the top — an effect achieved by slightly tilting many bars and plates on the surface of the creation.

Like this tiny Orthanc? Check out this diorama of the breaking of Isengard featuring a 7 ft tall Orthanc, or a detailed 8 ft tall Orthanc with a full interior.