Applying stickers used to be something my dad would do for me when I built sets as a kid, and seems to be far less common in today’s adult builds. But anyone paying attention to the space builders this past year has seen a steady rise in stickering, especially in the micro-sized builds. Enter Jacob Unterreiner (4estFeller). We’ve seen him a few times here on this blog but I don’t think we’ve really seen him like this:
That’s a pretty amazing stickering job. But look at it closer, that’s a micro GARC and is only 11×5 studs! Feels a lot bigger, eh? He’s taken stickering to the next level and really able to skew the sense of scale with his intense stickering. By my count (assuming symmetrical stickering and no stickers on the bottom) I found 54 stickers! That’s probably 2-3 times the usual sticker sheet size for a 1000 piece LEGO set.
But dear reader, you might be asking yourself, how does he achieve such wonderful results? Thanks to our friends at Build Like a Boss who have been running a series of tutorials on everything from advanced bricklink buying, building frames or bases, and of course stickering:
You can check out the awesome three part sticker tutorial series:
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
It’s not the first time Sauron’s mighty tower has been blogged here, and it probably won’t be our last. But this latest version is bite sized and amazing:
Built for MocOlympics on MOCpages by Space Cadet Ian Spacek. Ian has integrated lighting to make the eye and lava flow have an eerie malevolent glow adding real atmosphere to the build. I just love how all the orange glows reflect off the bottom of the tower, and of course the eye!
This pictorial map of Europe, by Matt Bace, is a ton of fun! The map itself is very well conceived and colors are really grab the eye, but the crown jewels of this piece are the little ‘icons’ that represent each country. The micro-builds are really fun and totally make this piece. My favorite is the Colosseum in Rome. Which is yours?
This microscale map by THE BRICK TIME Team shows a fictitious continent called Northland. Despite being microscale, the creation is actually quite large, measuring the footprint of four 48×48 stud baseplates. Check out the detail photos on Flickr.
I spent most of last week building microscale trophies for the SHIPtember challenge, so when I saw [Maks]‘s latest build I was thoroughly impressed with his micro abilities and build (and slightly ashamed of mine):
Not only has Maks been able to recreate the iconic ZTL-135 8 wheeled military truck with impressive accuracy, he threw in a working suspension just to make it slightly more impressive.
This micro-scale Classic Space ship hits all the right notes in both shape and detail. The builder, Rancorbait, makes excellent use of a few parts. The one that really drew my eye was the repeated box shape near the front. Then I realized it was Thor’s hammer. It looks fantastic, and totally makes me feel justified in requesting this part in a LUGBulk order.
Microscale and space colonies are a match made in the heavens. Karf Oohlu’s Colony Base Omega may be fighting for life on a foreign world, but it does so with panache. This slick modular sci-fi outpost looks fresh off the mothership and ready to get some terra formed.
Tomorrow is the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I hope we see many moon-themed LEGO models over the next couple of days, but we’ll start with this fantastic microscale version of the lander by Ted Andes.
Ted has been building one vignette a week this year, and this is his 31st. Check out his photostream for the rest.
I’m apparently in quite a spacey mood today, since this is the second microscale space LEGO model that caught my eye. This one is by Shannon Sproule, a med-station orbiting Saturn named Nightingale. The gold is a beautiful touch.
Tim Clark just posted this fantastically complex microscale space scene, complete with a pair of ships flying overhead and two more smaller ones on a landing pad.
This build is a great example of how repetition can really increase the realism of a LEGO model — the pairs of ships, the beacons, and all the small technical details. Real life is full of repetition, and doing the same even in a sci-fi setting adds a level of realism that would be lacking if every detail was unique.
Here’s another great shot, showcasing the landing pad and the biodome behind it.
As we’ve ruminated here before, microscale design is no mean feat. Capturing the essential details while keeping the scale compact takes a great deal of talent, and some of the most difficult features to achieve at any scale are brick-built domes. Rolli (Moriartus on flickr) has excelled at this with his miniature replica of the great Baroque sandstone edifice Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany. The real church finished reconstruction in 2005 after being destroyed by bombing during WWII.
