If you still want to make a gingerbread house before the holiday season officially ends, Jonas Kramm has perhaps the smallest way to make one that’s still loaded with details. He’s created this minuscule candy home with some very clever parts usage. Red crowbars for candy canes, tooth pieces for the frosting piping, and just enough coloured studs to represent whatever kind of sweets you can imagine.
Sometimes the old ones really are the best ones. Eggy Pop says this microscale LEGO castle was originally built back in 2009, but he’s now posted a cleaned-up photo of the creation. The low angle on this photography creates a misleading sense of scale in the image — this model looks much bigger than it really is. The white walls and dark blue roofs of the castle offer a lovely contrast to the surrounding sea. And the technique of placing coloured plates beneath the trans-blue tiles of the sea makes for some welcoming beaches.
Earlier this month, we wrote about Brick to the Past‘s huge Scottish diorama, The Jacobite Risings, a build taking 10 months and using 1 million bricks. Within this creation spanning 16 square metres, were some adorable, microscale models of the Scottish wildlife found in the Cairngorms. Brick to the past have provided instructions so you can build your own Osprey, Deer, Capercaillie and Black Grouse.
Osprey are a bird of prey and returned from extinction within the UK to make their home in the Cairngorms.
Click for more instructions to make Scottish wildlife out of LEGO
As winter blows through in my part of the world, it’s nice to enjoy a touch of summer parklife with this sweet LEGO scene from Sheo. The scale used here is deceptive, I was surprised at how big this model is in real life — those are large quarter-circle fences providing the upper columns in the central rotunda. The pavilion is lovely, with its little fountain, and I like the geometric design of the gardens and their flowerbeds. Nice use of panel parts for the paths too, creating a tiny height difference between the paving and the grass — an almost insignificant detail, but the sort of thing that elevates the best microscale building.
When I first looked at this picture, I thought to myself that someone really needs to clean up the weeds on their mansion, but then with some quick research it turned out there is nobody to do the cleaning. Château Nottebohm is an abandoned castle in Belgium, which has been uninhabited for over half a century. While the landscape looks more like a savannah than a temperate forested plain, Marion has definetely done justice to the mansion itself.
On the outside the building seems to contain no large bricks whatsoever, achieving intense chaotic textures characteristic of decaying buildings. Textures like these feel more at home in larger creations, but Marion has managed to make them look good even at this small scale. There are complex shapes achieved with more or less legal techniques, for some of which I am not even sure they can be done without cutting bricks, so purists beware! For a better understanding of some of these techniques, I suggest anyone interested to look at the work in progress photos, like this example here.
I have no idea what the tiny attacking army is thinking, but apparently they are trying to besiege this cute, impenetrable fortress. The scene, built by Timothy Shortell, is as complete as they get. There’s ingenious use of parts in the siege equipment, the dark green plains are dynamic, the castle is highly detailed and, most of all, the intense cliffs at the back are amazing. I have never believed them to be useful in a serious creation, but at this scale and level of texture, the rocky wedges (part 64867) at the left and right ends of the cliffs actually look perfect.
Every LEGO-loving home should have some brick-built decorations. Why not take inspiration from seb toutouille and build your own lovely little snow globe model? This is so sweet, with good use of unicorn horns and ice cream scoops to create snowy upper branches for the trees. The silver and gold microfigures add a nice touch of festive sparkle to proceedings too. I could just see this as a table decoration during Christmas dinner.
There’s two things LEGO Castle fans love to build: Trees and walls. Showing us interesting ways to do both is this microscale hideout by Dr. Zarkow. The wooden walls around the main structures are simple enough — just brown bars inserted into the hollow studs of flower pieces with some rubber bands for effect. The custom tree builds are the standout, providing a great reason why we need gears in every colour, and the two buildings are great little medieval builds. The base and the subtle twist of the chimney on the one building are nice touches too.
If you feel nervous about the future and dread the thought of grey concrete buildings taking over our cities, these beautiful microscale futuristic cityscapes by Jeff Friesen should calm your fears. Each unique scene is beautifully crafted, with buildings, transportation links, water, and features like bridges, parks, and flora. The colour schemes have been well thought-out and there are lots of clever details in each scene despite their diminutive size.
Take a closer look at these microscale cityscapes
As winter closes in up in the northern hemisphere, LEGO builders’ attention invariably turns to depictions of snow and ice — and for Star Wars fans, ’tis the season to be Hothy. Tim Goddard uses microscale building to great effect to depict the moment when Luke and Han get rescued after their impromptu overnight camping trip at the start of Empire Strikes Back. The little Snowspeeder is nicely done, but the highlight of this tiny scene is that tiny gutted Tauntaun — corpse-based sleeping bags never looked so good.
Fall is changing to winter, at least in North America, and it always seems to inspire LEGO builders to depict these changing seasons in bricks. emillide has put together a lovely set of tiny cottages, experimenting with many interesting roof and tree techniques, some of which are truly baffling.
Take this summer scene, for example. I am at a total loss trying to figure out how that tree on the left is holding together, but I love it. Also, each cottage has a different base construction, making a nice finished model.
Here’s a pair of cute and colourful microscale LEGO space racers from Victor. Great shaping, partly due to them being built around one of the new(ish) large-scale Nexo Knight figure torsos, but also from some smart parts choices — small angled plates, sloped tiles, and some curved Technic panels. The colour choices are brilliant, making these guys stand out from the usual crowd of grey spacey stuff. And I love the slight angle on the hull beneath the cockpit — that’s a class little detail. These wouldn’t look out of place in an R-Type or Gradius clone, and in my universe that’s a compliment indeed.
