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.

A small but perfectly formed spaceship

This micro-scale spaceship built by Sergeant Chipmunk proves that diminutive stature can still have impact. The LEGO genre of Neo Classic Space comes with its own set of rules which Sergeant Chipmunk has obeyed when building his LL-345 Kestral — using the Classic Space colours of blue and light bluish gray, landing lights correctly oriented on wingtips (green-right, red – left), yellow only used for ‘bumble-bee’ stripes that should point forward, and cockpit windows in trans-yellow.

Of course rules are made to be broken but sometimes it is fun to build within a set of parameters or guidelines to test your building skills.

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Arrival at Base Echo 9

There’s nothing quite like coming up on a massive space station while cruisin’ the universe in your tiny ship to give you hope and longing to stand properly. FonsoSac gives us a glorious micro-scale space station, complete with approaching ship.

The build overall is simple, but effective. I like the wheel as engines for the smaller ship, and the main station itself has enough detail to give an appropriate impression of size.

Strategic pursuit

Far from the present, at the Futuron base
A small ship alit on the platform with grace
No ruckus was raised, no alarm began screaming
But the alleys have ears, and data was streaming
A blue and white robot did power itself on
And began to creep silently through the cold dawn
Fly, little ship, you’ve got nothing to prove!
Strategic Pursuer 1 is on the move…

Model by Andrew Lee.

Accurate LEGO Mayflower will teach you about the famous voyage

This extraordinary LEGO Mayflower was built by kaitain for Warren Elsmore’s new book, Brick History. The ship is gorgeous (especially those sails!), but what really makes this build stand out is the incredibly detailed map-like base that the ship floats on. Inside the circle, you’ll find the shorelines of Europe, Africa, and North America. Also, there’s a compass, a school of fish, a whale’s tail fin, and of course, ocean water, which is made up of 22,000 tiny translucent blue dots.

Furthermore, each of the base’s four corners depicts a different scene related to the Mayflower’s journey. The northeastern corner shows the Mayflower loading supplies in London. The southeastern corner shows the Mayflower and leaky Speedwell leaving Dartmouth for their second attempt at the crossing. The southwestern corner shows the landing in Cape Cod and the northwestern corner (my favorite) shows the Plymouth colony.

Check out more of kaitain’s photos on Flickr.

Who ya gonna call on a tiny phone?

Can’t afford the new LEGO Ghostbusters Firehouse HQ set? Never fear. Take a leaf out of ObedientMachine‘s book and build yourself a teeny-tiny microscale version. Immediately recognisable, this is a smart little build. I particularly like the small lintel sticking out above the side door. It’s touches like that which make all the difference in a microscale model.

I’ve built some microscale LEGO Ghostbusters myself in the past. I wish my little Ecto-1 had had this firehouse to return home to.

Tiny Dortmund is a German gem

Michael Jasper has built an excellent microscale model of his home town Dortmund in a similar style to the new LEGO Cities Architecture range.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the city itself, you can admire the quality of these tiny creations. The church is a fantastic build for so few bricks, and the coal mine is a lovely little model. But the undoubted star of the show is the Borussia Dortmund stadium where clever parts use delivers an impressive level of detail. The use of “cheesegrater slopes” set at an angle to provide the stadium walls is a particular stroke of genius.

One small step, one cute spacewalk

Continuing his quest to find the absolute limit of use for the Belville shoe, Grantmasters has stepped it up a notch by creating the most adorable spaceman imaginable–one that manages to use fewer bricks than a pair of hands has fingers. Speaking of which, the spaceman’s arms and legs are actually made from a pair of minifigure hands!

The Brothers Brick wishes you the best of luck on your space-adventure tiny one… You’re going to need it considering the size of your steps!

Cloud 9 has a silver metallic lining

Tim Schwalfenberg takes us to Cloud 9 and induces a state of euphoria with his amazing build. Within an ingenious silver gyroscope lies a beautiful, futuristic city that Tim describes as “one of the galaxy’s top tourist destinations“.

This really is a beautiful build. I love the gyroscope orbiting around the city of Cloud 9, while the city itself reminds me of Dorothy’s first view of the Emerald City. I want to pack my bags and go…

Microscale space fleet protects the Earth

Ryan Olsen has a whole fleet’s worth of space navy goodness standing by to defend the planet. These spacecraft have an impressive sense of scale despite the tiny size of the models, a trick accomplished by the extensive use of textured bricks, grilles and hollow studs. There’s good use of hinges and minifig “hose handles” to create cannons for the smallest of the ships.

The colors look realistic (if that’s even remotely sensible to talk about in terms of a space navy!) and the implementation of the scheme across the assorted craft looks great. Overall, these are nicely-built models coupled with classy photo-editing. Good stuff all round.

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.)

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.