It’s generally considered poor taste to keep a god’s gift for yourself, as Minos found out. In the event you find yourself step-parent to a half-man, half-beast like the Minotaur, please be sure to keep your local architect on call to build an emergency labyrinth, if necessary.
W. Navarre gives us this glorious bust of the Minotaur. I like the sculpting and the aggressive horns. The face shows the proper amount of anger at its imprisonment in the labyrinth.
We’ve come to expect great things from Jason Allemann, a talented builder who combines strong LEGO engineering skills with a great artistic flair. Back in 2013, we featured his post-apocalyptic Strandbeest and last month jaws all over the world hit the floor with his working combination safe. Jason’s latest build takes its inspiration from Greek mythology, with the cursed Sisyphus rolling that awful rock up the hill throughout eternity.
In addition to the main model, the base itself includes brick-built bas relief sculptures.
You can see the model’s moving features, along with comments from the builder himself, in this video Jason made:
Indonesian builder Dennis Qiu brings us another stellar example of the amount of character that can be captured in LEGO. This Chinese lion would fit perfectly into mythology or, because I love robots, an episode of Zoids. LEGO has been going gold-crazy lately, but the use of it here is superb.
We’ve seen some interesting builds over the years from Mihai Marius Mihu, and we’ve seen some incredible busts from the talented Tyler (The Deathly Halliwell). So today I was stunned when the best of both builders were combined into one stunning series of builds, a merger of Mihai’s unique style and vision and Tyler’s execution.
Over the past four months, the two builders have worked together to create their own vision of Greek mythology. Mihai started them off with a series of sketches (linked to below) which both Tyler and himself based their designs on.
Hold on tight as we take a trip down The Rivers of Hell, the 5 mythological rivers of the underworld.
The first river that the dead reach is Acheron:
The dead can elect to take Charon the ferryman across, or wander the shores of Acheron shore for a century.
The Styx, river of hate, is next: 
On its shore stalk the Erinyes, visiting justice upon criminal souls.
After that is the Cocytus, river of torture:
And then the Lethe, river of forgetfulness, where the dead forget their mortal lives: 
And lastly Phlegethon, in the deepest depths of the underworld, which holds the prison of the Titans, dreadful Tartarus:
And off to the side guarding the borders of Hell is Cerberus.
You can see all the creations, background sketches and character studies in the Flickr group.
Our next featured creation from Iron Builder veteran and history lover Letranger Absurde features lots of yummy dark brown and one particular example of nice part usage (can you spot it?).
From the builder: “This was built as a request; perfect opportunity for me to build an Arthurian themed MOC since I’ve always wanted to do one. The sword’s pretty much the same from the Witcher build I’ve done previously.”
Tyler Halliwell is best known to our regular readers as a creator of amazing LEGO busts. So his latest work – depicting the Monkey King of Chinese mythology – is an ambitious departure in terms of its size and construction. We think you’ll agree that the attention to detail and the naturalness of this figure’s clothing and facial expression are completely mind-blowing!
We journeyed for several months across the Asian subcontinent, rescuing helpless villagers from all manner of demons along the way, to visit the mountain in which Tyler has been imprisoned for the past 500 years, so we could find out more about this creation…
BB: So how many hours and how many bricks went into this creation?
TH: That’s tough to estimate, but probably about 100 hours over the past two months, with most of it coming into shape in the past two weeks. There’s less pieces than you’d think, as it’s mostly hollow but for a technic frame. So if I had to guess, I would say around 1500 bricks.
BB: What inspired you to choose the Monkey King as the subject of your latest LEGO sculpture?
Prometheus, having stolen fire from the gods, was doomed to a terrible fate of being pecked by eagles for eternity. That’s a bummer for Prometheus, but it just so happens to make a really cool looking vignette, as demonstrated by Mihai Marius Mihu.
Gorgon heads are traditionally pretty fantastic weapons for defeating mythological monsters, but they do have their drawbacks: namely, you’ve got to keep your eyes shut, so you’re never quite sure you’re pointed the right direction, as this lovely little vignette by workshysteve demonstrates.
