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.

Heroica kicked up a notch

LEGO’s fantasy RPG-lite board game series Heroica may not have seen all much success with adult gamers or builders, but I’d be willing to bet if the boards had looked more like this upgraded version by Kale Frost, there would have been a great deal more interest. With some lovely sculpting, Kale has created an interactive map that retains the checkerboard movement squares for the players, while adding fun micro-builds for the various locations. For details, the scattered trans light blue cheese slopes in the water add a nice bit of motion to the seas, while the robot arms make great bridge railings.

Heroica Deluxe - Draida

Kale notes that he’s planning to expand the game board to make an even bigger playing area, so we can’t wait to see else is in store for these tiny adventurers!

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A divine monochrome Indian Mausoleum

Building in monochrome can often be a huge challenge, even if the source material is too. This lovely mausoleum by Jens Ohrndorf is a really great example of knocking that challenge out of the park. The Taj Mahal-esque creation puts some nice techniques to work, especially on the top. Also, the aged and yellowed bricks give it a feel reminiscent of being true-to-life.
Indian Mausoleum

This close-up photo really shows how neatly everything fits together. Overall, the perfect amount of detail is packed into a satisfyingly compact microscale build.

Indian Mausoleum

We have covered many of Jens’ awesome creations, and some of my personal favorites are his animals, including the mole, polar bear, rhino, and bison!

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The Valzaleer spacecraft has a beautiful veneer

This incredible spaceship by AdNorrel features distinctive profile shapes and smartly integrated LEGO pieces. The lovely bits of filled-in details within the crevasses and armored surfaces of the starship are great examples of greebling done well. Not too out of place, not too overshadowed — there’s some real inspirational craftsmanship here.

The Valzaleer

I don’t want all of my articles to become running checklists of parts, but see if you can spot the messenger pouches, croissants, and frying pans. It’s a really fun scavenger hunt kind of model.

Click to see even more of the Valzaleer

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A magical little windmill

This innovative building technique for windmill sails is simply magic! Magic wands that is. Andreas Lenander leaves some of the new wand pieces from the Harry Potter Collectible Minifigures attached to their plastic sprue and takes full advantage of their interesting shape. Beyond the smart parts-usage for the sails, the mill itself has a decent level of texture for such a small model, and is set within a nice little landscape — suggestive of a wider world around the building. This wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval real-time strategy game. And anything which reminds me of The Settlers is a good thing in my book.

Wandmill

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And the forecast for Jedha city this week is...gray...light bluish gray to be exact.

The scene from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in which an Imperial Star Destroyer menacingly hovers over Jedha City certainly makes for a striking LEGO diorama, and it seems to entice some of the best Star Wars builders. Although we’ve seen Jedha City with a Star Destroyer expertly recreated once before by Hannes Tscharner, this time 0necase has made a much larger version of the scene, and the result is breathtaking.

The Empire over Jedha City

The Star Destroyer is superb, and the shaping on the front and back of the bridge is particularly well done. However, the real star of the show is the mountainous base and city itself. I love the amount of colors and different greebles the builder has incorporated into the city, which serve to make it pop against the beautiful layering accomplished with various brown and earth orange wedge plates. Even the Imperial cargo shuttles transporting kyber crystals to the Star Destroyer are present, represented by minifigure roller skates — a particularly inventive parts usage.

The Empire over Jedha City

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Honey, I shrunk the Exo Suit!

If you take the time to reflect on LEGO news in 2014, you might remember the hotly anticipated LEGO Ideas release of Peter Reid’s Classic Space-themed set 21109 Exo Suit. Builder [E]ddy Plu took his shrink ray and cranked out this pint-sized version of a modern classic, and the icing on the cake is that it seats a microfigure from the discontinued LEGO games series. These particular figures originally appeared in the game 3842 Lunar Command. His build is instantly recognizable and incredibly cute.

Micro Lego Exo Suit (21109)

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A tiny robot – loved by good, feared by evil

Can’t afford the enormous new 21311 LEGO Voltron set, but still have a universe to defend? Try Victor‘s solution — build a microscale version of your own. The colours and shaping are spot-on, making this little model immediately recognisable. I particularly like the mech’s head and that shield. And whilst this version might not come apart into its constituent lion components, it’s rather more poseable than the stiff-legged official set!

Voltron : (tiny) Defender of the Universe

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A memory of the future

The shining white utopian future — so popular with the science fiction writers and illustrators of the 1960s — may well have gone out of fashion, but this hasn’t stopped builder Klaus exploring the theme. Built in microscale, his series of architectural models of a future metropolis use predominately standard bricks, similar to those found in 21050 Studio set, in smart repetitive sequences. The bustling administration complex adds stacked mudguard elements to build its towers, whilst a cigarillo shaped blimp circles overhead.

lego_metropolis_administration3

See more of these monochromatic cities of the future

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A small piece of summer can be enough

Depending on where you live, this creation by Dvd might be something you might identify with strongly right now, or instead as a little piece of summer to break up your winter mood. So sit back and, despite its simplicity, take the time to enjoy the little slice of summer – like a real vacation!

Amazing Summer

I like how few pieces the builder needed to perfectly capture the spirit of summer, with little details like a speedboat dragging an inflated banana, a beach hut that probably houses rentable surf boards or drinks and even a towel and beach seats built at this tiny scale. The best part is undoubtedly the waves though, built into the base with just a little bit of variation in height to simulate them breaking on the sand.

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Build small to win big in Brothers Bricks’ LEGO Harry Potter building competition [News]

To celebrate the biggest LEGO Harry Potter set of all time — 71043 Hogwarts Castle — The Brothers Brick is hosting a “Microscale Magic!” building contest. We want to see your most creative microscale LEGO builds of anything from the Harry Potter universe. Build whatever you like – perhaps your favorite location, creature, character, or classroom. But beware wizardy builders – anything you put together has to be in teeny-tiny microscale!

There are magical prizes to be won, and the builder who is crowned MASTER WIZARD will win the massive new 71043 Hogwarts Castle LEGO set!

Microscale Magic

Read on to see details of the fabulous prizes and the competition categories…

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Microscale Agrabah from Disney’s Aladdin

This microscale model by Koen Zwanenburg is of Agrabah, the fictional city from the Disney animated film Aladdin, and serves as the perfect bird’s eye view to the minifigure-scale scene we highlighted earlier today. The numerous tower tops using a variety of pearl gold domes and curved elements are well designed, and the inkwell part ties them all together nicely. One of my favorite missable details is the use of 2×2 macaroni tiles facing each other to create those lovely dark pink and teal stripes in the three larger towers. It also takes some clever brickwork to pair eight of the pearl gold 3×3 quarter domes together into a solid sphere.

Arabian Nights

And if you liked this microscale Agrabah, be sure to check out Peter Ilmrud’s minifig-scale Agrabah we featured earlier today!

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LEGO Harry Potter 71043 Hogwarts Castle, 2nd-largest LEGO set ever released [Review]

At 6,020 pieces, the new microscale 71043 Hogwarts Castle is the LEGO set with the second-highest part count ever, exceeded only by last year’s 75192 UCS Millennium Falcon at 7,541 pieces. This massive Hogwarts is part of the new wave of LEGO Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts sets, including the minifig-scale 75954 Hogwarts Great Hall. In what is sure also to be one of our longest LEGO set reviews ever, we’re immersing ourselves in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World as we take a close look at this massive set, which retails for $399.99 and will be available on September 1st (August 15 for LEGO VIP Program members).

Read our hands-on review of LEGO Harry Potter 71043 Hogwarts Castle

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