Tag Archives: NikiFilik

Nature reclaims all as Vignette Week comes to a close [Feature]

Bricks down! After seven grueling days of non-stop building, RebelLUG’s Vignweek 2025 has come to an end. The first five challenges gave builders just 24 hours to create a LEGO vignette around the daily theme, but for the final challenge, builders could take 48 hours. This time the theme was “Reclaimed by Nature,” which is the perfect excuse to pull out those bins of leaf parts and create something beautiful. As the Vignette builders break out their brick separators, let’s take a stroll through an overgrown LEGO world with some of our favorites of the day.

FS Leinad participated in all six builds, but his final creation is my favorite. The orangutan is a great design (per the builder, “RIP 3-in-1 Forest Animals) but it’s those vultures that have stolen my heart… and pick it apart with those brilliant hook beaks.

ILB Creations completed 5 challenges and also ends on a high note. I love the larger scale and the light blue mortar between crumbling bricks.

Forage for more vignettes that nature has reclaimed

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We’re head over heels for Vignweek’s day 5 upside down builds [Feature]

Do not adjust your screen. Today’s round-up of Vignweek builds features topsy-turvy creations around the theme “upside down.” This is also the last set of builds created with a 24-hour limit. Some builds are photographed upside down, others are constructed from the ceiling down, and others split the difference with mirror worlds. These are just a selection of the incredible upside-down vignettes from both familiar builders and some new faces.

You can always count on NikiFilik for bright and playful builds, and today is no exception. What a fun twist on perspective as this stunt plane flips in the sky.

Someone had to do it, and that someone was buillding_after_dark. Spider-man’s upside-down kiss remains one of the most iconic scenes in all of superhero cinema and the builder recreates it perfectly.

You’ll flip for the rest of these upside-down vignettes

Fishing up some amazing nautical LEGO scenes from Vignweek Day 3 [Feature]

Day 3 of Vignweek has closed, bringing with it a bounty of brick-build vignettes with the theme of “nautical.” Participants had plenty of leeway to interpret the theme and offer up watercraft ranging from ancient to futuristic, structures both cozy and apocalyptic, and sea creatures big and small. And every build here was constructed in just a few hours! Thanks to @RebelLUG for hosting this creative contest. Now on to some of the Day 3 highlights…

CRCT Productions plunges beneath the waves for this evocative scene of submarine exploring a deep sea reef. The submersible is great, but I especially love the fish made from quarter round tiles.

Joël Jurg sticks to the ocean theme with a Roman Emperor’s pleasure barge. I love that w not only get an incredible miniature model, but a history lesson about how insanely luxurious the Emperors lived.

Brownbricks brings us to minifig scale with a seasteader living in a makeshift container house. It must be a lonely life – good thing he has a cat to keep him company!

Voyage on for more aquatic vignettes

Vignweek Day 2: Color us impressed with these monochrome creations [Feature]

Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. Just 24 hours to turn around a build with no rest days! It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. We rounded up our favorites from day 1’s “Archaeology” theme here. For day 2, the theme is “Monochrome,” challenging builders to make a vignette using just one LEGO color. Here’s just a sampling of the amazing creativity born from this challenging constraint.

Jakub Kozina gets his greebling on with a tribute to the knobby little bits that space and machine builders so adore. Excellent glue and modeling scissors too!

Sydrarian offers a microscale scene of a tower in the clouds. There are so many impressive curves in this lovely composition. The builder also gets a bonus color through use of negative space to give the tower windows that pop.

NikiFilik‘s creation may be red, but I’m feeling green with envy at the skillful technique on display.

More monochrome creations await

Digging up some awesome LEGO vignettes as Vignweek 2025 kicks off [Feature]

Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. 5 weekday builds and a weekend build, for a total of 6 builds in 7 days. It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. The contest kicked off on Monday with “Archaeology” as the theme. Here are some of our favorite creations from day 1.

Carson Lacy zooms in with Johnny Thunder exploring a lush jungle site. I hesitate to call them “ruins” as this location seems as slick and studless as they day it was built. It’s probably cursed, but this beautiful build certainly isn’t!

Behold_The_Loaf offers up an alien archaeologist scanning a future Earth. What do they make of this Octan fueling station?

Join us as we dig up more amazing LEGO vignettes

The world’s smallest LEGO castle? [Building Techniques]

I’ve seen some small castles in my time, heck, I’ve even built some, but this island castle by Nikita Filatov has got to be one of the smallest. The minifigure binoculars are great as tiny towers, but my favorite part is the rounded white tile balanced on the back of an ingot. But the great techniques don’t stop there. The water base is made with studs-not-on-top connections which adds a bit of visual weight to this microscale build.

A classic typewriter, perfect for your next microscale manuscript

If you are anything like me, you have an entire drawer full of dark gray LEGO ball plates, which were first introduced in the Mixels theme. well, it looks like NikiFilik does too, and they found the perfect use for them as tiny typewriter keys. But the inspiring parts usage doesn’t stop there. Minifigure helmets are used as ribbon spools, and the little vents capture the look perfectly.

NikiFilik spells out how to build your own LEGO wizard [Instructions]

Blue is a great color for wizards. Majisto, Disney’s Merlin, Gauntlet‘s best hero… Tolkien fancied the idea of a blue wizard so much, he made two of them! But the prize for the cutest blue wizard around goes to NikiFilik, whose LEGO mini-mage is about 90% beard, which is the ideal proportion. This build is a remake of an earlier character design from last August that NikiFilik created for the Vignweek competition. Small changes, like the new hat, cuffed sleeves, a curlier staff, and smoother boots, show how even a small build can benefit from iteration. And now you too can have a li’l wizard buddy for your desk as NikiFilik has generously made free instructions available to all.

A Robo-Driller digging up Rock Raiders nostalgia.

Custom builds like NikiFilik’s Robo-Driller, an homage to the short-lived LEGO Rock Raiders theme (1999-2000), are easily recognized by their use of iconic grays, teal, and brown, evoking nostalgia in older LEGO enthusiasts. Based on set 4940 The Granite Grinder, Niki uses updated parts and techniques to enhance the original model with posable arms, a brick-built driver cage, and an overall stance that better resembles a two-legged mech. While beautifully bridging nostalgia and innovation, we’re quite perplexed by the presence of the bright green slug. I don’t remember that part of Rock Raiders….

This owl won’t ruffle any feathers!

Occasionally, an excellent example of great parts usage shows up online. One of the most recent such examples is this Colorful Owl by Nikita Filatov! This artist has done a splendid job of repurposing parts from the Wildflower Bouquet to create this adorable little friend of an owl. The dark purple bicorn hats make up the fluffy plumage of the owl’s wings, while the belly feathers are made of magenta paddles, and the eyebrows, which add so much character to the little bird, are made of wavy swords. If you, like me, didn’t recognize the disks that make up the whites of its eyes, have no fear; in that tan color, they are from the Wildflower Bouquet – and the part was made originally for the wheels of the James Bond Aston Martin. I’m looking forward to seeing more builds from NikiFilik. This one has been a (wait for it…) hoot!

Broken LEGO always turns me Inside Out with anger!

The rage I feel for LEGO bricks from the brittle brown era is something I’ve felt time and time again. But thanks to Nikita Filatov and their depiction of Anger of Inside Out-fame, I’ve got a much better idea of what’s going on inside my head. I can almost hear the voice of Lewis Black ranting about ABS integrity and how he should’ve used dark tan instead! Probably not the best time to tell him that LEGO discontinued trans-neon orange….

The Untitled Goose Game build you didn’t know you needed

I’ve earned a reputation in my LEGO circles for introducing fellow builders to a certain indie video game through one of my creations. And while I was building to express my love of Stardew Valley, NikiFilik is all about the equally-excellent Untitled Goose Game with their latest construction. This may look like a standard water fowl to the uninitiated, but the nameless goose was instantly recognizable to me from its head shape, simple color palette, and malicious gaze. The use of the plane fuselage for the bill is spectacular, as is the complex network of white slopes and wedge plates to nail the bust’s overall shape. Villagers beware, this bird is out for blood!