Tag Archives: Render

Look and see her, how she sparkles, it’s the Brick Unicorn

’80s animated film The Last Unicorn is a true gem. Like the best fantasy films of that era, it can be scary, sad, romantic, and haunting in a way that kid flicks since rarely aspire to. Also, the theme song slaps. One fan caught under the film’s spell is LEGO builder Gino Lohse who pays tribute with a mesmerizing triptych poster. The central panel mirrors the original movie poster with the terrifying red bull menacing the eponymous unicorn. I’m impressed by Gino’s use of bold colors, layered plates, and flame shafts to create the burning intensity of the bull. And the typography of the title perfectly matches the iconic font.

The Last Unicorn Movie Poster

The ensemble of characters on the left is equally accomplished, especially King Haggard with those piercing blue eyes and wispy hair made from feathers. The castle on the right looks simpler at first glance, but features some very clever use of negative space to create the winding road. With its sophisticated layering, creative mix of elements, and artful framing, Gino’s model continues the trend of LEGO art pieces like the Gotham City Skyline of blending 2D and 3D to stunning effect.

Remember to take a break sometime–the cost could be deadly

This LEGO build comes to us from builder Ghalad through the Digital Iron Builder competition this year. It features the use of the SPIKE Prime color sensor, wonderfully used for the eyes of the skeleton and on the headphones. Every detail of this build is great with so many parts usages from Technic to the more classic LEGO pieces. I don’t know about you, but I really like the use of Mixel joints for the framing of the collarbone. I’m not particularly familiar with the finer details of skeletal anatomy, but this skeleton looks to be fairly accurate, which is something I can appreciate. I know this is a digital build, but this would be awesome to see IRL just to look at it from every angle.

The Cost

A shapely ship soars through space

Sacrificing comfort for style, this LEGO spaceship from Jonas Jensen is easy on the eyes. It features some incredible shaping for a sleek look. The color blocking is well done, particularly those teal pieces. They help frame a few sections and add a pop of color amid the black, grey, and white. The orange pieces help with this too, but the teal stands out more in my eyes. You may be wondering about the sacrificial comfort–let’s look to the cockpit. It can house a minifigure, but one without arms given the narrow space in there. However, I’m sure a minifigure could use a remote or autopilot program to fly the ship. Such great shaping comes at a cost with any vehicle, and this spaceship is no exception.

STORMGULL

This castle’s a keep-er

There were few LEGO sets as a child that were precious to me, but one that was just perfect was the Black Falcon Fortress, and in this miniaturised digital form, ZiO Chao has realised a favourite set of mine that I needed to share! In building this in a miniature scale, ZiO hasn’t compromised on detail at all. Everything that made Black Falcon’s Fortress a great build can be found here too.

Micro Black Falcon's Fortress

Let’s explore more of this diminutive fortress here

Joust waiting around in the summer heat

Something that’s great about LEGO and it’s many unique pieces is the wonderful geometry when they come together. Builder Dan Ko demonstrates this beautifully with these four knights waiting for their turn in the joust. Each of these knights have their own distinct armor and look, and it’s all so satisfying to see. The first knight, from left to right, is mostly curves, their neck craning forward. The second knight is tall and lanky, though their big shield more than covers them, something that’ll help in the competition. The third knight has scale armor, providing more than enough protection and maneuverability over their opponents. The fourth and last knight reminds me of a clockwork figure with that gear for their pauldron and the round textured brick of their arm. If you stand with the knights in their gradient line maybe they’ll tell you stories of their grand exploits and adventures.

Before the Joust

This bridge will suspend your belief of what’s possible!

At first glance, this beautiful scene of steel, earth, and water looks like a photograph! It owes this to Lysander Chau‘s keen eye and clever LEGO building techniques. Truly, this bridge and the surrounding scenes are made up of nearly 53,000 LEGO pieces! The scenes come from Lysander’s imaginative mind, but the bridge itself is modeled after the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong. While the build lives in a digital landscape, it still considers the constraints of reality. For example, the weakest part of the bridge, the middle, is supported by the cruise ship’s tallest point. No doubt there’s room inside the cruise ship to add light bricks, or a lighting kit, to make the New Year’s message shine! And that water! It’s rendered with such detail I can almost hear the waves lapping around the boats and land.

LEGO Harbour Bridge

Take a closer look at the details

This large-scale Christmas scene looks like a cozy place to enjoy some eggnog.

At first glance, you might not realize this idyllic holiday scene is made from LEGO. That’s because builder aukbricks has made use of roughly 14,000 digital bricks to render a spacious living room at a scale large enough to trick the eye. I’m particularly impressed by the mosaic hanging on the wall, made using the tips of bar elements. Although this model is a computer rendering, aukbricks assures us that only existing bricks/colors were used. So, you can build this yourself in reality…assuming Santa brings you enough LEGO this year. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Imperial Soviet Nuclear TIE Bomber

Yes, you read that right. And your eyes are not deceiving you. LEGO builder Ghalad managed to combine an obscure nuclear seaplane from the Soviet Union with a classic Star Wars TIE fighter. The resulting digital build is something you could have expected to appear in the sequel trilogy of Star Wars films.

Tiekranoplan Heavy Assault

It’s unlikely you’ve heard of the Lun-class Ekranoplan, a Soviet-era seaplane capable of launching nuclear warheads through tubes based on top of the plane. It was developed before the age of ballistic submarines, filling the gap between land-based nuclear bombers and sea-based launch platforms.

From Wikipedia

Click to see more pictures

A box full of nightmare fuel. How jolly.

Spooktacular builder Corvus Auriac is back with another creation determined to haunt your dreams. I’ve never liked the concept of a Jack in the Box – to me, they were always a thin veneer of playfulness over a dark core of “who hurt the toy designer as a child.” As such, it’s kind of refreshing that this one isn’t even trying to pretend to be friendly. There are plenty of complex techniques in use here, but the most chilling has to be the use of minifigure epaulets to form those terrifyingly real teeth.

Evil Jack-in-the-Box

The picture above is a computer-generated render, meaning this doesn’t exist for real. Yet. Corvis has said that a real-world version is on the way soon. We can’t wait. (Oh, wait, yes, we can.) If you’re looking for other builds that cross the line between reality and imagined, check out our render tag.

Escape in a escape pod. Guaranteed almost completely Alien free!

The Aliens franchise has seen its share of high and low points, but there are certain moments that have been well and truly integrated into the pop culture world. One of them is Ellen Ripley’s escape at the end of the first film aboard the Narcissus, the escape pod from the larger USCSS Nostromo.  Michael Steindl has created a truly remarkable digital scale model of the craft, full of complex angles and movie-accurate styling.  My favorite touch is the 1×1 round brick used to create the textures on the rear quarter panels, with a close second being the use of 1×2 ingot bricks along the engine exhausts. In space, they say, no one can hear you scream. But maybe if you listen close enough you can hear some applause for this build. But probably not, since physics doesn’t play favorites like that.

Alien Narcissus

If you’re looking for more extraterrestrial-ly inspired treats, check our our Alien tag!

Beauty comes in all different shapes

One of the joys of building with LEGO is working with lots of shapes in order to create new ones. Clever builders will use parts with a particular origin and morph them into something with an entirely new purpose. Like shields for leaves or balloon panels for a vase base, or shoulder armor for petals. This expertly crafted render by _Regn takes it further by creating a particularly complex shape: a hyperboloid. Essentially, if you twist a cylinder at its center, you create an hourglass-shaped design. It makes for a gorgeous centerpiece!

Bloom of Crimson Glory

Unfortunately, there are elements of this artwork that would likely be too difficult or impossible to build in real life. Those shields, for example, don’t come in green. And the connections would be very precarious. Still, it’s certainly beautiful to look at, and a superb bit of rendering!

If you’d like to see more flower-based creations, check out the exquisite new LEGO Botanical Collection and other custom flower builds in our archives. Oh, and if renders are your thing, we have plenty of those too!

May the cookies be gingerbread, always.

Halloween has barely passed, but holiday themed everything has already arrived in the shops near me. Perhaps the season’s greetings has also prematurely arrived in other spheres as well, such as the LEGO blogosphere! Koen Zwanenburg’s render of a gingerbread LEGO Star Wars dogfight is case in point!

Gingerbread Dogfight

The X-wing starfighter pictured, much like last year’s LEGO employee gift is sweet, but instead of being candy inspired it is the X-wing imagined in the form of gingerbread. The color scheme consists of browns with whites, greys, and some splashes of gum drop and candy cane colors. The TIE fighter on the other hand is a strict snowflake icing and cookie design — no extra sweets for the dark side. Overall, this is a pretty sweet render, and it certainly makes me feel that holiday sense of cheer.