Mecha builder Sam Cheng amazed us with his trio of Autobot Transformers, and he’s back again with another classic all-time favorite, the RX-78-2 Gundam. At an estimated 700 piece build weighing in at 0.66 pounds, Sam spent a period of 3 weeks with some amount of interruptions to build this detailed brick mecha including a good deal of time ensuring that he could capture a number of signature poses.
Who knew LEGO brick separators could be so handy? Kevin Low turned his extra brick separators into claws for this swift-looking mecha. The flashy orange claws stand out as the key features of this creation, and the subtle use of orange pieces elsewhere ties the whole model together.
Builder Marco De Bon is continuing the long line of LEGO builds which can easily be mistaken for Gunpla model kits. This “Leonidas” mech stands at a rather large 20 centimetres (8 inches) which helps hide some of the LEGO seams.
This build only gets better when the weapons come out. It features a system of optional cannons for both the shoulders and forearms.
Switching it up from the Titans of Titanfall, Marius Herrmann presents another massive gaming mech, the Thunderjaw from Horizon: Zero Dawn. His deceptively large model is quite accurate to his reference material – from the armor plating, to the back-mounted disc launchers, and even the arrays of eyes. Even the pose of his mechanical creature is as menacing as its in-game counterpart.
See more photos of the Thunderjaw on the builder’s Flickr stream.
As the release of the live-action version looms, expect to see a bunch of LEGO creations inspired by Ghost In The Shell. However, all you would-be ThinkTank builders out there should beware, Pascal has cornered the market in cute-but-deadly styling for your favourite mecha design. The use of olive green and the tip-toe stance are nice, but it’s the neon burst of pink coupled with the stark backdrop which really makes this model stand out.
If Batman builds in black and sometimes very dark grey, Christian Lintan is the exact opposite – he only builds in white and no other shades. We recently featured his ghostly X-wing and TIE fighter, and now he’s back with an original design of two mechs sparring. Building in a single color is a limiting factor as it takes away an artist’s palette for distinguishing different parts of a build, but Christian uses great lighting and distinct shapes to bring out the best in his builds.
There is much to love in this scene by BobDeQuatre. Of course, the cute space boxes are nice and the tiled floor catches the eye, but we all know the star of the show is the Space Mariner Powerlifter monowheel suit. While it uses interesting building techniques and resembles Peter Reid’s Ideas Exo-suit, the real reason I find it so attractive is the effort the builder had to go through to have it stand. This difficult equilibrium makes it look like there is a real working gyroscope in the mech, rendering the build very realistic (for a sci-fi mech).
The maths involved here are simple: (LEGO + T-Rex) * Mech = AWESOME. Mitsuru Nikaido knocks it out of the park with this amazing mechanical menace. The white cladding gives just enough structure and shaping to the model, whilst still leaving plenty of room for the greebly details to show through beneath. The restrained colour scheme works well, the dark grey mechanical gubbins offering sharp contrast to the panels. This could have been enhanced further with a different colour of backdrop for the photography, but that’s a small gripe at an otherwise excellent creation.
There’s so much good work on display in this model, but the highlight for me is the use of minifig chainsaw pieces for the jaws — simply perfect.
Tyler Sky has been thinking about Friends minidolls and the retired LEGO Exo-Force theme, and perhaps eating a little too much cheese before bed. “What if Exo-Force continued to evolve, and then got assimilated by Friends?” These six Exo-Friends were the result. The minidolls look very cute with their new hair styles even if some of their exosuits are rather more intimidating.
We have an eye-catching lime exosuit, loosely-based on the alternate build suggestion for 7712 Supernova. Those clawed toes look very flexible and give the impression this Exo-Friends character is not limited by gravity and can climb any obstacle.
Lu Sim brings the Titan FS-1041 from the Titanfall 2 single player campaign to life with LEGO bricks. In the game, the FS-1041 is a Vanguard-class Titan like the main protagonist BT-7274, but with an alternate color scheme. Lu Sim’s minifigure scale replica is full of great details in both spot-on paneling and small greeble bits, and a smart use of a Bionicle armor plate as the FS-1041’s eye/AI Core. In addition to accurate aesthetics, it is fully articulated, has two opening hatches for cockpit access, and can carry the massive and detailed Predator Cannon.
It’s always interesting to see minifigure-scale vehicles that can transform and look great in both modes, like James Zhan’s spaceship/mecha hybrid. I enjoy the angles throughout the fuselage and minimal greebling on the prongs, focusing on a beautiful overall profile.
Much like a Vulture Droid from Star Wars, the prongs on James’s ship fold downward as the legs of a mecha. The well-hidden arms and feet fold out, making mecha mode look just as interesting as flight mode.
In the second episode of Rick and Morty (or as I like to call it “Back to the Future on acid”) Morty’s dog Snuffles is fitted with a device that boosts his intelligence, a move that (not surprisingly) escalates to Snuffles leading an army of dogs wearing robotic exoskeletons to enslave humanity. Ultimately the dogs are banished to their own world, which is envisioned here in LEGO by none other than Richard Van As, one of the show’s animators:
