When the talk turns to awesome mechs, Simmon Kim has plenty of them. His latest diorama of a desert outpost looks quite thrilling. The combination of tan, olive and dark bluish grey makes a perfect сoloration for a military mecha, while the curved road baseplate is a nice addition to the landscape. You’d better choose another route or get ready to give battle…
Today at the New York Comic Con, LEGO officially pulled the curtain from their newest line, Nexo Knights. A cross between Space and Castle, Nexo Knights features knights in robotic power armor riding mechanical hovering horses and driving giant vehicles. The Nexo Knights theme will be accompanied by a companion app titled Merlok 2.0, as well as a 20-episode television series chronicling the adventures of the knights. It airs in December.
While many of our viewers will no doubt be having flashbacks to Knights Kingdom II right about now, it looks like these sets will at the least feature a lot of new parts great for Space and Mecha builders. We also still haven’t seen the full set lineup, so keep your eyes out for the rest of the sets.
Read the full press release after the jump. Continue reading
Joe and Will Merziak bring us this Golem heavy mech platform, a pair of mecha ready for anything. As usual with the brothers, a lovely cinematic shot is included to show off the stunning industrial beauty of their war machines.
Marco Marozzi builds mecha in a very interesting style. If you page through his gallery, you’ll note long, tall torsos, and a lot of equally long arms, and very few with a humanoid head. This creation in particular shares those proportions with its Friends pilot. This latest shares those traits, and features a bulbous cockpit which I love. My eyes were additionally caught by the huge claw-grabbers this thing is sporting for “utility.”
We post a lot of LEGO mecha here on The Brothers Brick, and even though I’m the main culprit I’ll admit that most of them are bipedal, humanoid contraptions that all blend together after a while — the style inspired by anime shows like Evangelion and Gundam. But Moko takes a very different approach with his latest mecha, built for an event in Japan, which is more of a hardsuit or exoskeleton than a true mecha.
Moko himself says that it was inspired more by military helicopters than “Japanese style” robots. A minifig operates the exoskeleton, and I love the jet engines and helicopter blades on the shoulders. You can see more photos on Moko’s blog.
rongYIREN has been bringing us mecha and hardsuits with an organic feel for nearly as long as we’ve been blogging mecha. Rong’s latest is inspired by the 8-bit video game TwinBee, released on the original NES back in 1986, which those of you in the impoverished West couldn’t play until it was re-released in a DS compilation in 2007. I love the red cockpit on blue and gray legs.
A long time ago, not long after I joined the online community, I upset a number of people by openly declaring that I don’t care much for mecha. While I can appreciate quality when I see it, mecha still aren’t my cup of tea. However, make one that can transform into a cool car, like Andrew Lee‘s Lamborghini Countach, and you’ve definitely caught my attention.
This is Andrew’s first working Transformer and he describes it as total pain in the ass and quite the learning experience. I can sympathise. He is no stranger to building mecha, though, as many of you will know, and his experience shows, because the articulation on his model is truly exceptional.
He talks about this and about LEGO transformers in general in the latest episode of his video podcast, aptly titled Bricks and Beers. Cheers man!
Korean builder Simmon Kim doesn’t say a whole lot about the LEGO models he builds — many of his photos don’t even have titles — but build quality always speaks louder than words anyway, and his mecha are awesome. Simmon’s latest mechanical wonder takes advantage of the new Mixels towball socket connections for a wonderfully compact stomper, replete with excellent application of stickers for little pops of color.
Danny Benedettelli builds robots using Mindstorms, and has been doing it for quite some time. He contributed models for EV3, when that was released, including this playable electric guitar. Today, we’re focusing on his robot Cyclops.
Now, granted, it looks like Cyclops has been around for a while, but it’s new to us, and I’ll hazard a guess it’s new for a lot of you, too.
Let’s introduce you to Cyclops:
And how Cyclops is able to move:
Since you can’t have a robot revolution without improving on previous designs, Danny also brings us Cyclops mk III:
via Nerdist
When I first saw this mecha on Flickr, I thought that Izzo had returned after an 8-year hiatus. While that’s sadly not the case, I don’t think I could give a higher compliment to a mecha builder. Instead, this stellar mecha was built by Filipino builder Lu Sim.
Lu writes that the mecha itself was built around the idea for the rail gun, constructed from 16L train tracks. Nevertheless, he does no disservice to the mecha itself, with excellent color blocking and interesting details on the feet and head in particular.
There’s a lot to love about this hardsuit by Christopher Hoffmann, from the spot of yellow on the long arm (a camera?) to the random “50” road sign and excellent color blocking between the white torso and dark gray arms and legs. Christopher says that the AC Research, Inc. suit is “For all of your topographical and biological surveillance needs, from Titan to Ganymede.” Sounds about right.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the models I built for Ma.Ktober a couple years ago was building the discrete bases to showcase each model. Christopher gives the base itself substantial attention and detail, with organic landscaping to contrast with the hard mechanical detail of the suit.
This purple dinosaur probably has more Pokemon influence than the one you’re thinking of, but both have a man inside the suit. This Nidoking-inspired mecha is the brainchild of Stormbringer, and looks ready for an all-out poke-mecha battle.
