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.

Perfect home for a melancholy samurai

Some beautifully sinister and gloomy Japanese-style micro architecture on display from Tim Schwalfenberg. With it’s moody black and silver color scheme and wonderful levels of detail, this fortress could be a piece of concept art from 47 Ronin. (And that’s intended as a compliment – although the film as a whole might not have lived up to expectation, it looked very pretty indeed).

The fortress walls are impressively detailed and the curved roof is an obvious highlight, but it’s the neat little bridge and the base which add the finishing touches of brilliance. This could be the first set in a new LEGO theme of Fantasy Architecture. (If LEGO were to launch such a line they could literally take all my money. All of it.)

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The cutest LEGO Star Wars base you ever will see

Boba-1980 wanted a way to show off his LEGO Star Wars Microfighter X-Wing, Millennium Falcon, and TIE Interceptor, so he built this scene of a Rebel base under attack. The whole model has a great chibi vibe, perfectly blending minifigs and microscale just like the official microfighter sets.

Si-Moc’s shrinking LEGO talent

TBB’s very own Simon Liu was celebrating yesterday… No, not a queue of ladies at his door on Valentine’s Day, but the 5-year anniversary of his first “big boy build” and explosion into the LEGO community. To celebrate all that is LEGO (fun, friendship, contests, community spirit, etc), Simon is running a celebratory Mockaversary competition, best described in Simon’s own words:

Give me an idea that you want.
I’ll choose stuff only from this page.
If I build it.
It’s yours.

The third Mockaversary gift is a microscale build called Micro Katoren that fulfilled two requests, build a castle and build in the Kaliphlin style as part of the larger Guilds of Historica (GoH) community. GoH was one of the first Build-RPGs hosted on Eurobricks and Simon was heavily involved in the initial concept. This is an anniversary moment in itself as the community is still thriving. Micro Katoren is a microscale replica of The City of Katoren, a collaboration between jsnyder002 and soccersnyderi.

What a lovely guy Simon is. I’m just a bit concerned about how he is going to ship my life-sized LEGO Canadian Mountie all the way from Canada to the UK… Maybe I should have asked for a LEGO beaver instead.

40 Wall St built with LEGO trumps the real thing

Following on from his recent adventures in London at the Houses of Parliament, Rocco Buttliere is back on the other side of the ‘pond’. Rocco’s latest build in his 1:650 Architecture series is 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.

Rocco tells us that 40 Wall St is a 927ft, 70 storey skyscraper, completed in 1930. It held the title of World’s Tallest building for less than a month before the Chrysler Building took the title (albeit after a bit of arguing). The building was designed by lead architect H. Craig Severance in collaboration with associate architect, Yasuo Matsui.

The view of the other side of 40 Wall Street shows the number of setbacks required to form the building. Rocco tells us, “The dramatic massing due to the density of setbacks on the major block of 40 Wall St, is a result of the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This ordinance required the footprint mass of the building to diminish accordingly as the height of the building increased.” In other words, as the skyscraper goes up, it needs to get smaller – seems like a good idea to me too…

Apparently this creation had been on hold until LEGO Architecture Venice 21026 was released as it provided the sand green quadruple convex slope which tops the gabled roof. Did you spot the screwdriver at the top?

Game on: When LEGO and consoles collide

Grantmasters has recently built a scaled down version of the Playstation 4. As an extra challenge for this month, Grantmasters is using this unusual Belville shoe part in his builds. The game controller is particularly cool in this build thanks to the shaping provided by the shoe part.

Video game consoles have been represented in LEGO by a few other builders too. Chris McVeigh (powerpig) has a lovely collection of consoles, including his previously blogged Atari 2600. Chris’ Nintendo NES comes with cartridges to blow on before you insert them into the console.

If you want to see more video game consoles and handhelds constructed from LEGO, here are some others that we have featured:

Atari 2600 complete with television and the Star Wars video game in action
Life-sized Atari 2600 and joystick
Simon (maybe one for our older readers, ahem)
Nintendo NES complete with light gun for Duck Hunt
Nintendo 3DS
Sony PSP and Nintendo Game Boy Colour
Amiga Wico Red Ball Joystick
Nintendo DSi that was 7ft wide and weighed 250 lbs
Nintendo Game boy with battery compartment and game

Clickety–clack, clickety-clack... Choo Choo!

Current Iron Builder competitor Tim Schwalfenberg is chugging through the competition, having already completed seven builds. His most recent creation is this delightful microscale train scene. That pin connector looks great as a tank car. But I wonder what that tiny village needs two full tanks of. Gasoline? Milk? Mountain Dew Code Red? Tim’s packed a lot of detail into this small build — my favorites, other than the train itself, include the railroad crossing sign and that glorious gorge-spanning bridge.

Microscale plane gets props for its props

Karf Oolhu is the busiest builder I follow. My Flickr stream is regularly filled with his latest creations – always fun, always imaginative, and often packed with interesting parts use. This cute little plane and hangar is no exception…

Look at the propellers. LOOK AT THE PROPELLERS. Ice skates in control lever bases, clipped onto seat backs. Undoubtedly an illegal connection (as in a combination the designers of official LEGO sets would not be allowed to use) but utter class all the same.

Mister Sandman, build me a mech...

Pascal is a prolific builder, and a master of microscale mechs, managing to pack heaps of character into a tiny handful of bricks. His latest creation, the Sandman, is a typical example of his signature style – a delicious combination of whimsy and menace…

The body of this small model is pretty simple – nowhere near the realism and complexity of the awesome heavy robot Andrew blogged recently. However, there’s a nice level of detail with that green “eye” and the gun barrel striping providing welcome splashes of color against the tan and grey. What makes the model for me is the smart parts usage around the head, creating a sensor array with a real air of functionality. Couple all that with some sharp macro photography and you end up with one of my favourite microscale models so far this year.

Neo-Classic Micro Space goodness

Jeremy Williams brings us a beautiful microscale spaceship in Neo-Classic Space livery.

The level of detailing and “greebliness” of this build is amazing for such a small model. This is made possible by some nice parts usage with paint rollers, syringes and droid arms all making an appearance alongside textured and curved bricks.

And as if it couldn’t be any better, Jeremy’s also done some excellent boxart. I want to own an entire fleet of these…

Si-BORED Industries new drone creates a BUZZ of excitement

Now the festivities are over, the presents opened, and the New Year welcomed in, we can turn our focus to Droneuary. During the month of ~~January~~ Droneuary, there is a definite surge in the production of new drones within the LEGO community. These Wichtigtuer Beinenstick (lit. “busy-body beehive”) drones by our very own Simon Liu are busy with a hive task.

Simon’s winged, honey-logistic drones were developed in response to comments on the original Wichtigtuer drone, which launched a couple of days ago. The original pectacular drones came armed with an ingenious brick-built weapon, complete with ironsight. Clearly the winged drone had to drop some lower body weight to achieve the miracle of flight.

Going where no lime wedge has gone before

British builder Tim Goddard (aka Rogue Bantha) is well-known for building Space-themed creations, and his newest build is an eye-catching lime spaceship. The ‘classic space’ colours of grey, blue and transparent yellow have been shunned to create this sublime spaceship. This is another of Tim’s own explorations to broaden his use of colour within the Space theme; we previously blogged his white, tan and azure microscale spacecraft.

Tim’s curved ship is beautifully shaped and vaguely reminiscent of a lime wedge in my mind. There are some lovely little details including discrete use of official LEGO stickers. I am definitely a fan of Tim’s ‘greebles’, whose positioning suggests a hugely complex spaceship by showing a ‘teaser’ surface view. The ship’s hull is suitably futuristic with just the right amounts of lime balanced by white and light blueish grey.

The somewhat garish lime colouring and abundance of probes suggests this is more of a scientific exploration vessel, unless it has a cloaking mechanism…

All the world’s a stage...

…and all players are utterly creative combinations of pieces. Letranger Absurde’s vignette depicting a theatre stage blows my mind with its extremely unsual usage of a regular frog animal piece: once for the actress’ hairdo and several more as seats in the hall. When I saw this little masterpiece for the first time it took me a moment to decide what astounded me more — the fact that I can distinguish the emotions of these tiny little microfigures or the rats in the background…