Tag Archives: Microscale

Some say “Go big or go home!” but it takes real talent to compress something down to just a few studs and still keep it recognizable. Of course, many of the micro models we feature here aren’t so small after all, whether it’s a vast cityscape or starship.

The world between worlds

Portals, parallel dimensions, time travel, etc. Those concepts sometimes spice up storytelling, like in Back to the Future, and Avengers: Endgame. And sometimes they fail, like in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the sequel fan-fiction that was canonised into a theatre production. Even Star Wars: Rebels tried to explore those concepts in an episode titled “The World Between Worlds”, which didn’t work at all. As for this small two-hour build by Luka (First Order Lego), it works very well.

Titled “A world between worlds,” but totally unrelated to Star Wars, Luka’s creation is a small microscale landscape build. A portal to another world dominates a lush valley with a small cute village built into the cliffside. A barren wasteland from beyond oozes something dark and dreary that pollutes the idyllic paradise. Overall, this has some great details for such a small build. I really enjoy some of the part choices for the greenery, like the green Hero Factory blades for evergreen trees. In addition, a half-hidden Knights Kingdom buildable figure helmet also adds texture to the hills.

Check out more of Luka’s builds!

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Aye, there’s a castlehead for you

There’s trainheads and castleheads, but usually it’s meant to refer to fans of the various LEGO themes. However, here’s a build that takes it quite literally. Designed by Corvus Auriac, this 5,400-piece microscale model depicts a castle built on a rock that might be a little more alive than its builders suspected. It’s packed with lovely details from the dragon burninating the town to the tiny wizard tower sprouting out of the side of the castle’s tallest roof. Do yourself a favor and give this one a close look, as you’ll be rewarded with lots of clever parts usages. One of my favorites is also the one used most here: most of the trees are made from dark green minifigure epaulets stacked on each other.

A medieval winter wonder-castle

Winter wonderlands are a fairly common theme with LEGO builders, and not just houses and villages, but castles as well, like this cozy castle by W. Navarre. I hope they have plenty of tiny logs to burn in their tiny fireplaces. The model features a nice mix of newer and older gray parts for the perfect weathered look and speaking of weather, the scene includes several patches of snow on the roofs and the surrounding grounds. One of my favorite details is the little tower near the left side, which is attached using 1×1 rounded tiles on their side, stuck into the underside of the larger 2×2 rounded plate.

The last (tiny) homely house east of the sea

Rivendell – the mention of the name already evokes a feeling of home. A location in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it appears as a sanctuary, a last respite to characters who are on a journey into “the wilderness.” Builder Elias (Brickleas) built the Last Homely House in all its peaceful glory in microscale in just 100 LEGO parts. While the elven buildings are tiny among the large cliffs, they are instantly recognisable thanks to clever parts usage.

I love the way Elias uses books as the angled roofs, and one stickered book is actually very fitting here. It is the Red Book of Westmarch, the book that Bilbo Baggins wrote during his retirement in Rivendell. The battle droid torso also works very well, since its skeletal nature represents the open-air feel of those buildings. I found the small waterfalls very impressive, using Hero Factory claw pieces which perfectly hug the large wedge used as a cliff. Elias perfectly demonstrates that when building something with a small number of parts, use the best parts.

A plucky little space patrol craft

Flying through space is not at all like dusting crops, junior. While any self-respecting spaceship tasked with defending a planet wouldn’t be seen without a decent cannon, there are other dangers outside the safety of the atmosphere. Alvaro Gunawan knows about some of these dangers, like solar radiation, and maintaining full power at all times, so they equipped their patrol ship with shields, solar fins, and a couple of big engines. This craft even looks like something NASA or SpaceX might come up with… maybe we’ll live to see something like this sweeping the space around our little rock someday.

An intimidating armada responds to an alien invasion

If you are planning to respond to a garbled distress call involving aliens of unknown intent, it is wise to bring as much firepower as possible, as spaceship builder Ryan Olsen knows full well. Building a fleet that is recognizable as being part of a larger faction comes down to using certain design elements that can be repeated at different sizes to fit the design of ships with unique purposes, and Ryan pulls this off beautifully. Take the very back of each ship, which includes a blue stripe in the middle of a larger white stripe.

Repetition is another key building technique, and you can see several examples of a simple curved shape, or part, like the ski part used in several ships, and even re-created in brick form for the larger ship. In this close-up of one of the ships, you can also see how a simple part like the dark gray storage container (used as a thruster cowl), can add just the right amount of texture and visual interest.

The icy halls of the frozen north

If there’s one word that encapsulates Jeff Friesen‘s LEGO models more than any other for me, it’s “clean.” His builds always seem to have every single piece precisely where it ought to be. And his latest one looks like it’s from a picture book of the ideal Viking winter world (unlike hellish purgatory of Valheim that’s all the rage right now). This microscale creation doesn’t have any obviously new or even unusually innovative techniques, and yet it’s absolutely splendid from the snowcapped peaks to the tiny longships. The village spreading across the slopes with their tiny mounds of snow on top, and the two giant waterwheels give this settlement a fairytale aspect that I can’t get enough of.

Jeff was the winner of The Brothers Brick 2017 Creation of the Year and it’s well worth checking out the other builds we featured in our archives: Jeff Friesen LEGO creations.

Sphinx Secret Surprise in micro scale

GunnBuilding made a creation inspired by one of the sets I regret not getting as a kid. It’s the 5978: Sphinx Secret Surprise and it is done in micro scale. The set is instantly recognizable. With the grey Sphinx statute, the black tent, an Anubis statue and the classic desert car. There are obelisks, a fire place, a palm tree and this micro model even comes with a raised base plate, just like the original set. The Sphinx supports a classic minifig smile which seems more than fitting since the statue in the set supported quite a simple face too.

Ariandel inspired microscale church

I really enjoy it when a builder thinks outside the box. Nathan Hake shows us that he is very capable of doing so. For his micro-scale LEGO church, he used wheel cover with y shaped spikes for the main round window in the church tower. There are ice scates on the roof and the entrance is a plate with tooth which is brilliant in its simplicity. My guess is that this church is gothic inspired because it matches the 5 key architectural elements: large stained glass windows, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, and ornate decoration. The ribbed vaults are a bit hard to spot from the outside, but we can all imagine them there, right?

The tower of Barad-d’aww

How small can the dark lord get? This teeny, tiny tower of Barad-dûr from The Lord of the Rings was constructed by LEGO builder Hubba Blöoba, and it’s got all the right notes despite its diminutive size. A pair of grey bananas make the two spikes that ring the all-seeing eye, while clips and slopes make up the jagged tower itself. The atmospheric clouds elevate this little vignette further and give it an appropriate sense of foreboding.

Big Ninjago style in a little model

The Ninjago City modular sets are large, there’s no doubt about it. In fact, the latest set in the series, Ninjago City Gardens is one of the 10 largest LEGO sets ever released. When you line up the three sets together they take up quite a lot of space. Well, that’s not an issue with Adeel Zubair, who has built the latest city block in amazingly accurate details.

The inverted brown flower stem makes great tree roots, and the hot dog makes a perfect bridge. One more detail that I love, is the teal corner tiles used for those fancy sloped parts used in the control tower.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Adeel has shrunk the entire series of Ninjago City blocks.

There’s a house on my street, and it looks real neat

There are times when a LEGO fan starts building, gets into the groove of things, then finds it hard to stop. Especially when the build is a small street that keeps growing with each mini modular building placed on it. When I (Mansur “Waffles” Soeleman) attended my LUG‘s (LondonAFOLs) monthly meet-up via Zoom, the theme was mini modular buildings. Every year since 2007, LEGO released a large modular building, each of which can be arranged into a street layout. As a fifth anniversary to the lineup, LEGO created a microscale version of the first few buildings. I started to build a micro modular for the meet-up, and then I couldn’t help but build more. A few days after the meet-up, I ended up with a whole street.

Click to see each micro modular building in detail, along with the build process!